johnnyvann840 wrote:Well, adding the box score contributions made the stat heavily weighted towards offensive only players the way I understand it. I thought the old RPM actually gave us pretty solid picture but only with a relatively large sample size. The stat was pretty useless when looking at half a season or even a whole season, but if you had several years I think the stat became pretty useful.
It doesn't really matter, but several flaws with this, but I never found it too useful on an individual basis. The problem was the data changed faster than the data could be accumulated. It never held up well when guys changed teams, especially with the big outliers. Also if data has to be accumulated for several years, then its going to significantly underrate young developing players (like LaVine) because their data is changing considerably faster (and we've seen this with LaVine in particular as his efficiency, volume, and ability to handle significant offensive role have all improved).
Now, I think it heavily favors a player like Lavine who puts up great box score numbers, but still has the same negative impact on the scoreboard.
You are assuming your conclusion and saying the stat is bad because it doesn't support your conclusion rather than questioning whether your conclusion is perhaps bad. It's not like Zach is a superstar under RPM either, he was a slightly net negative player.
Zach was 180th in RPM this last year with a very slightly negative -.21 with a good positive affect on offense and a negative affect on defense. For a guy who was a high volume efficient offensive player and a known poor defender, that seems like a very accurate projection of who he was.
If you think Zach is worse than the 180th player in the league, then I think you are being unreasonable in your view on Zach. It's actually much easier to work around someone like Zach's defensive limitations than it is to find guys who can score efficiently on high volume while fighting lots of double teams.
If anything, I think RPM, even in its new form, underrates Zach by playing him a the 180th best player. I would definitely have Zach in my top 100 because his strengths are harder to find and his weaknesses are easier to cover up.
At any rate, I know you don't care for LaVine and don't think he's a winning player, and I'm not trying to argue you out of that stance (truly), but I think he's at least a neutral player at this point with some really good strengths and some really glaring weaknesses.