nykshaknbake wrote:Yikes. Does anyone know how rpm compares to old +/-? It seems just to be a gimmick made to drive traffic to espn.
Traditional plus/minus is the point differential when a player is either on the floor or on the bench. Take two different examples. The Iverson 76ers. When he was on the bench, how was that offense doing? The Jackson Lakers. When Shaq was sitting, how was the offense doing with Kobe there? There's a lot of context that gets lost here.
RPM accounts for both defensive and offensive efficiency, not just points, looking at every possession a player has during a given season, but again focusing on the last 100 possessions on both the offensive and defensive end respectively. It's a better metric to use to determine a young players value against his rookie contract and what he might give you over the long haul.
The complexity comes in when you have any NBA player being able to impact any given play at any given time. Bernie Williams could only get so many at bats in a game. When he batted, no one else could help him hit the ball. Basketball works much differently. This naturally creates some complex sampling size problems to evaluate.
RPM is not innovative in any way. The basis of it uses core modeling from other systems in place.
