Colbinii wrote:If anything, this shows how impressive Jayson Tatum is at impacting an offense. If the Celtics without Tatum are worse than the Bucks without Giannis, then Tatum crushing Giannis in +/- is even more impressive--not less impressive.
The Celtics are +11.4 per possession when Tatum plays vs Giannis at +8.0 (The Bucks are -2.4 without Giannis to Celtics -2.9 without Tatum). I wouldn't call that "crushing".
I'm not going to put stock in total +/- which obviously takes into account other factors in games played, mpg and pace, or really total stats of anything, if someone in the MVP thread on GB used total points to say Jokic has been a high volume a scorer as Embiid this year I would roll my eyes for similar reasons. On/off is already a flawed enough stat on its own and I don't really need to go even more reductive. As I said though if someone wants to say Tatum was probably worse than Giannis but deserves to be higher because he played more minutes, I'm not really against it.
You're beating a dead horse here. This isn't how RAPM works--it doesn't measure goodness.
But it does for Tatum vs Giannis?
Hill's RAPM is high cause he's +13.6 on/off on the Bucks, despite not even shooting 3s well this year (31%), probably because he correlates with their success more than causing it, in addition to somewhat flukiness that can happen over one year, such as shooting luck for his teammates.
While this is unlikely to be as big an issue for stars who play more minutes, the same problems still exist, there are 9 other players on the court and 10 other players who are affecting the number when he's not playing. Tatum correlating with Celtics success is not the same as causing it as NBA teams are impacted by fit and not just talent, and you can be the jenga piece that causes them collapse when they fall out. For whatever reason Brown carrying the team without Tatum is a disappointment, some of that is the vacuum Tatum leaves, but some of it could be him being hurt by the players being benched at the same time as Tatum, the wrong fits of bench players being around him, etc. If Brown was better at carrying the team, Tatum's +/- would be worse, so would that make him a worse player? eg. Paul and Booker don't even have that good of +/- this year because they play with each other and a high performing bench where the sum is greater than the parts.
Furthermore as I mentioned with Hill, over one year +/- it seems perfectly plausible for there to be swings based on shooting luck. Who's to say the difference over one year Tatum's teammates can hit wide open 3s when he plays and miss them when he's off, and Giannis the opposite, enough to make up for the difference in their +/-? Which is probably what happened to 2017 Kawhi when his defensive +/- was ridiculous bad (+8.4), while he declined from his DPOY seasons I'd guess that the difference between his numbers that year and his 2019-2021, is probably variance. Tatum's last three years before this in on/off were +4.6 (2019), +11.1 (2020), +5.4 (2021). It seems clear that there are some swings that aren't just based on their level of play.
I care about +/- when it's comparing Tatum to say, prime Melo, but comparing +14 player on/off to +10? It's too close to me to act like it's meaningful, personally.
It's going to be a glorious day... I feel my luck could change
