I ignore no such thing...Marbury has been the best defender all year...Marbury has worked the hardest on defense all year...he draws the best offensive player in the back court....Curry's defense is horrible as is Lee...Lee refuses to play perimeter D...

Curry is the number one option, he often draws double team as part of the other team's game plan...U see any other Knick having that impact???...

[Edited by - holfresh on 01-07-2007 6:08 PM]

i BEEN saying Lee was our best player BY FAR

Posted by Bonn1997:

I hear what you're saying. I don't view the stat as useless, though. I view it as imperfect. You do have to remember who the guy is subbing in for. In this case, that would only help Curry as his sub is either Jerome James or Channing Frye, who despite recent improvement is having a very poor season.

Untangling the net of confounds isn't as simple as that. For instance, suppose that when Curry is on the bench, regardless of who subs in for him at center, Lee tends to play more minutes at PF in order to make up for the lack of size. Then Curry's +/- will be affected not just by Frye, but also Lee. And suppose when Lee is in the game, Jamal tends to play more to provide more offensive punch. Then you have Curry's +/- being affected by Jamal as well. And so on. And that's not even considering interaction effects among individual teammates-- e.g., maybe it's true that Frye plays better when Curry is on the bench than with Curry on the floor, which adds another layer of wrinkles. (not to say that any of the preceding is the case-- it's just hypotheticals for the purpose of illustration)

And all that still isn't considering matchups with the other team, or game situations.

There do exist statistical methods that can be used to try to control for all the confounds and truly isolate the difference in +/- due to an individual player's contributions, but that data is difficult to calculate and requires enormous sample sizes.

The raw and scaled +/- is just too messy to support any firm conclusions about how a given player affects the game, holding all else constant.

Posted by EnySpree:

Posted by Elite:

i BEEN saying Lee was our best player BY FAR

Who is the genius that started the lee poll?

Lee is one of our best players and the absolute best at what he does and the whole world knows it. Whether you watch games or box scores. Lee is the freakin man and the dude needs to be out on the court as much as possible. When he is out there he makes everyone better.

including the guy he is guarding...

and Marbury albeit rarely

we're much better today then we were when the season started, and so are our players.

looking at the last 20 or so games,I think we may be on to something.

One of my math teachers once told me that numbers don't lie. You can't argue with a number. With that said, keep in mind, Curry got off to a putrid start to the season, only to pick it up the last 20 games, so I'm sure the numbers are down a little when you factor in the first 20 games.

But Fish, numbers aside, can you honestly say that Curry hasn't had a positve impact on this team the last 20 games?

Dont you think Currys presence and the attention he draws frees up Lee to freelance a little and pick up offensive rebounds?

The biggest impact that he has is the Mike Tyson factor. He worries coaches before the game and forces them to scheme and perhaps go against what they are comfortable doing. Most coaches dont like to double or triple team opponents because he leaves them in scramble mode and offensive players are wide open all over the court. Curry had the Chicago Bulls, usually a solid defensive team, sending doubles at Curry with the defensive player of the yr guarding him. That has to count for something.

If we had more consistant shooters, Currys assist would be up a little. How many times has Jeffries or craw clanked a jumper that Curry kicked back out to them after being doubled?

Plus, Curry usually has the opposing big man in foul trouble early and often (remember Bogut) eliminating an offensive threat on the other end.

Like I said, its hard to argue against numbers, but I wonder what those numbers look like for the last 20 games.

fish, you said you'd trade Frye, Lee, and Nate for Chris Paul because he's just that good. Want to guess what Paul's +/- was last season? It was -1. Apparently he wasn't much more of a game changer last season than Curry is this season. Or more realistically, maybe +/- cannot support inferences about how much a player brings to the table.

^^^YOu're missing the point. THe stat is relative to your team performance and the level of your compention. If you are Bench player who usually comes against against other teams benches or when your team is playing badly, then your numbers always look good. The numbers are self affirming and starters always have bad numbers.

Posted by nyk4ever:

Paul was a rookie last year, -1 for a rookie is pretty good.

Are you sure? Or are you just making that up?

Some other rookie +/-s from last season:

Bogut +6.4
Felton +4.2
Villanueva +5.3
Frye +8
Lee +2.4
Nate +6.1

If -1 is pretty good for a rookie, last year must have been one of the all time great rookie classes. All those +/-s blow Paul's out of the water, yet Paul won the ROY easily. And you know what, he deserved it.

You can't draw conclusions about how much a player brings to the table from his +/-.

I just realized what ^^^ means... lol my bad.

I thought you were pointing to his post about Paul which I thought was a poor example but Tom just showed me it wasn't.

[Edited by - nyk4ever on 01-08-2007 12:04 AM]