2016 RAPM/RPM/etc. *Full 2016 RS + PS RPM & RAPM Updated 6/24*

[SideshowBob]

Low. The POY battle is almost entirely for 2nd place unless Curry goes down or Lebron reverts to 2013 form.

[HeartBreakKid]

Anyone notice that Kawhi Leonard has surpassed Curry in RPM.

http://espn.go.com/nba/statistics/rpm/_/sort/RPM

Wow, so, good as time as any I suppose to ask what are the odds Kawhi wins POY. Thoughts?

Leonard would have to have a GOAT type of playoff run for that to be a consideration, and Curry would probably need to play a bit below what he is doing now on top of that.

[lorak]

Forget about Kawhi over Curry. Jokic at 14th place with +5.4 is really amazing. He was also in top 25 in last RAPM published by Engelmann in February. How many rookies were so good in +/- models? Tim Duncan for sure, anyone else?

[JLei]

Low. The POY battle is almost entirely for 2nd place unless Curry goes down or Lebron reverts to 2013 form.

When/ if Warriors get eliminated the question gets real. Until then it's not a contest. And we all watch the Warriors...if they lose it will be because Steph didn't play up to standard since everything they do on offense relies on his abilities.

Curry is like a 10-9 vs. Kawhi, Bron, Russ, KD. It's clear he's had the best season but he's not like completely gapped himself from the next 4 dudes by a lot. They are still performing at superduperstar levels.

Any of the 4 light the world on fire in the playoffs and win the championship and Warriors go out early and I think a case can be made for any of them.

Kawhi with the best chance since he's on the best team other than the Warriors and has been that good. The RPM stats prove that out.

Bron to me gets a bit of a benefit of the doubt and a regular season pass (which is earned at this point). If he produces at a near peak level in the playoffs and wins the title are you really going to punish him for taking it easy in the regular season? Maybe his attitude and failure to make his talented team a well oiled machine without him is something you can take him down a notch for. But it's a 31 year old with 5 straight Finals runs behind him in a conference where he is favored to get to the Finals. I'm not punishing him for pacing himself when it's what he should be doing. Maybe it comes to a point where try hard Lebron can't mask everything wrong with that team (and there's plenty). But to me, he's earned the chance to at least show us if he can.

There are very few cases where I don't take the regular season into account more than the playoffs. This one is. Any over 30 guy who's playing for a contender deserves to be judged more on his playoffs than regular season since it would be smart for him to conserve himself. Even if 11 Dirk had 12 Dirk's regular season. He still would have been my player of the year for 2011.

[Doctor MJ]

Anyone notice that Kawhi Leonard has surpassed Curry in RPM.

http://espn.go.com/nba/statistics/rpm/_/sort/RPM

Wow, so, good as time as any I suppose to ask what are the odds Kawhi wins POY. Thoughts?

Leonard would have to have a GOAT type of playoff run for that to be a consideration, and Curry would probably need to play a bit below what he is doing now on top of that.

Well, I think the much more likely possibility is that Curry falls off some sort of cliff for me. Not saying that I predict that, but I think that's much easier to imagine than Kawhi actually being GOAT in the playoffs.

[colts18]

Kawhi could play at a GOAT level and no one would notice it.

He would average 25/8/4 on 63 TS%, amazing D, and 30 PER. But no one would consider it because his D would get underrated and his box score stats are underwhelming.

[hundreth]

I'm not a big stats guy but if the top 3 for this specific metric are all from the same team, clearly this metric is broken. Klay Thompson has the biggest boost of all here. He shouldn't be top 3.

There needs to be some kind of normalization somewhere to account for team success.

[Doctor MJ]

I'm not a big stats guy but if the top 3 for this specific metric are all from the same team, clearly this metric is broken. Klay Thompson has the biggest boost of all here. He shouldn't be top 3.

There needs to be some kind of normalization somewhere to account for team success.

Actually part of the issue here is that there's too much of what we might called "normalization". The purest form of +/- regression is just APM. These other metrics outperform APM because they essentially take some of the harder to swallow outliers with a grain of salt, moving players back more toward the mean.

If you look at the nadir of APM - the Pistons in the '05-06 season - what you see is that teammates who played a lot together end up with drastically different APMs. That's because of the issue of collinearity where players get judged disproportionately based on what they do in the rare times.

RAPM/RPM metrics have an approach that helps prevent this...but the result seems to be that in this outlier case, it isn't able to distinguish between the teammates very well.

It's not really that big of a deal to me honestly. I use these stats a lot, but I don't use them blindly.

[PCProductions]

I'm just wondering how Curry with almost a +26 NET On/Off and clearly better box score stats can be edged out by Kawhi with a +7ish On/Off with less impressive on court +/-. I'm guessing Draymond is bringing down his RPM.

[HeartBreakKid]

Wow, so, good as time as any I suppose to ask what are the odds Kawhi wins POY. Thoughts?

Leonard would have to have a GOAT type of playoff run for that to be a consideration, and Curry would probably need to play a bit below what he is doing now on top of that.

Well, I think the much more likely possibility is that Curry falls off some sort of cliff for me. Not saying that I predict that, but I think that's much easier to imagine than Kawhi actually being GOAT in the playoffs.

When I mean a GOAT like run I mean something comparable to Nowitzki 11 or Wade 06, I don't think that's outside the realm of possibility for Kawhi to play at that level, he might have a gear that we haven't seen yet or just get flat out locked in the zone for a 20 game stretch.

Curry is playing at such a high level, that for him, playing at the same level he did in his 2015 post season would be falling off, I think him playing significantly worse than that is extremely unlikely, I mean that guy would have to have been the biggest pretender of all time.

[Dr Positivity]

Deandre Jordan is 9th, earlier in this career I thought he was going to be one of those guys who got lots of reb and blk but was out of position and not actually good at that end, but he's turned himself into a legit great player

[jinxed]

I'm just wondering how Curry with almost a +26 NET On/Off and clearly better box score stats can be edged out by Kawhi with a +7ish On/Off with less impressive on court +/-. I'm guessing Draymond is bringing down his RPM.

Because the Spurs bench on it's own would be the third best team in the NBA. So not such a huge drop off then Kawhi goes out and Manu,Mills,Boris,West come in..


[url]
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-spurs-bench-could-probably-make-the-playoffs-on-its-own/[/url]

[Krodis]

Deandre Jordan is 9th, earlier in this career I thought he was going to be one of those guys who got lots of reb and blk but was out of position and not actually good at that end, but he's turned himself into a legit great player

I mean, being 9th in RPM is pretty dependent on those rebounding and block numbers, although his single-year RAPM this year looks good.

[UDRIH14]

why is djordan so high, yet LMA isnt anywhere near top50 who has been beasting since allstar break...

[Texas Chuck]

I'm just wondering how Curry with almost a +26 NET On/Off and clearly better box score stats can be edged out by Kawhi with a +7ish On/Off with less impressive on court +/-. I'm guessing Draymond is bringing down his RPM.

Because the Spurs bench on it's own would be the third best team in the NBA. So not such a huge drop off then Kawhi goes out and Manu,Mills,Boris,West come in..


[url]
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-spurs-bench-could-probably-make-the-playoffs-on-its-own/[/url]

Sure they'd be the 3rd best team in the league.......

Their stats are impressive--no question, but let's at least attempt some context before such absurdities.

[jinxed]

I'm just wondering how Curry with almost a +26 NET On/Off and clearly better box score stats can be edged out by Kawhi with a +7ish On/Off with less impressive on court +/-. I'm guessing Draymond is bringing down his RPM.

Because the Spurs bench on it's own would be the third best team in the NBA. So not such a huge drop off then Kawhi goes out and Manu,Mills,Boris,West come in..


[url]
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-spurs-bench-could-probably-make-the-playoffs-on-its-own/[/url]

Sure they'd be the 3rd best team in the league.......

Their stats are impressive--no question, but let's at least attempt some context before such absurdities.

From the article

" But the Spurs’ non-starters have an eye-popping cumulative BPM of +11.5. If we convert that number into its Elo-rating equivalent,2 the Spurs’ bench would come in at 1760 — enough talent to net between 64 and 65 wins over an 82-game season.

In other words, if the Spurs’ bench were to break off and form its own team, it would be either the second-best team in the NBA — trailing only the Spurs’ starters in terms of per-possession production this season — or the third-best, if you take a page from our Elo rating system’s book and give Golden State credit for its longer track record of greatness. Either way, the Spurs have a ridiculous advantage over the rest of the league."


Now of course this analysis isn't the end all-be all. But just points to how good the Spurs bench is, and why Kawhi's Net rating doesn't approach Curry's.

[Texas Chuck]

the bench is very good, but they are fooling themselves with statistical voodoo if they honestly believe those guys minus the starters win 64 games.

[Dr Spaceman]

the bench is very good, but they are fooling themselves with statistical voodoo if they honestly believe those guys minus the starters win 64 games.

Yeah I've had major issues with 538's basketball writing for a while now. Part of the magic of that site's political commentary wasn't just that their models were better than everyone else, it was that they had guys who could see through the statistical noise and tell you what's really going on underneath.

Their basketball writers are now basically just reporting the noise. Like that guy who said earlier Steph should shoot 50 times per game. And with this article, I mean it took me 20 seconds to point out every flaw in these numbers: the 5 man hockey bench unit almost never plays together, none of these guys approach a minute threshold required for NBA starters, and aside from Ginobili and Diaw none of them regularly compete against opposing teams' best 5 man units.

I mean that's just basic stuff that anyone who's ever done more than passively absorb basketball should know. It also instantly loses you credibility with anyone who knows what they're talking about. Is the Spurs bench the best in the league? Yes obviously. Does that make them well-suited for other purposes beyond that? Maybe, but probably not, and in any case the data aren't saying anything like that. It's just strange that a site that bills themselves as the most reasonable data guys in the room are churning out garbage like this.

That said, I've no issue with jinxed who made a good point about why Curry's net rating is so much higher. I just wanted to get this rant in.

[Doctor MJ]

the bench is very good, but they are fooling themselves with statistical voodoo if they honestly believe those guys minus the starters win 64 games.

Yeah and I think the explanation is pretty straight forward:

The Spurs bench succeeds as it does because it's largely playing other benches from teams focused strategically on stopping the Spurs' first line.

They are the best bench in the league, and they are the reason why the Spurs have the best SRS despite their starting lineup not being anywhere near as dominant as the Warriors, but it makes no sense to talk about them like they'd be contenders on their own.

On the other hand:

If the Rockets a few years back could regularly get to .500 with no stars and no genius coach, I honestly wouldn't be shocked if Pop could do that with his backups. It's just that when you start talking about beating the actual bad teams in the league, they do a lot of things wrong that Pop's backups don't.

[SideshowBob]

JE uploaded a spreadsheet with updated 2016 Single-Year NPI RAPM to compare with his new Win Probability metric. No offense/defense splits though.

Link

Draymond at +8 now with a pretty comfortable lead over the pack.

Curry/Leonard at +6.4, Lebron at +6.2.
LMA on the rise
Durant with some separation over Westbrook (+5 vs. 3.6)
Frye has popped into the top 25

More thoughts?