To stick a +/- on LeBron's game last night, might be one of the greatest misuse of stats ever.
He played one of the greatest games in NBA history last night.
He played one of the greatest games in NBA history last night.
2018 NBA Finals
- Thread starter gedman211
- Start date
There are a lot of reasons why you wouldn't want to evaluate a player based only on the +/- of a single, or even collection of games, ever.
Many of these stats are really only really useful in terms of understanding units. People just try to apply them to individual players and use words that makes it sound like it makes sense even though it doesn't stand up in terms of statistical theory.
Not only this, but they should allow the officials on a play like last night (block/charge, already being reviewed) to have the option of essentially calling it a tie and just playing it like they would an inadvertent whistle, the team keeps the ball, side out, no FTs, no foul. This would almost never come up, but it would be nice to have the option if it did.
Sorry to challenge a point from hours ago, but Cavs/Warriors is by far the best Finals matchup for the NBA despite it being the 4th consecutive time. LeBron, Curry and Durant are the three most-popular players in the league, and the Warriors and Cavs are the two most-popular teams in the league. No other matchup would generate the same ratings.
But, that also supports your point about the silliness of people thinking the refs reversed the charge call due to a pro-Warriors conspiracy. The best thing for the series would have been a Cavs game 1 win. Would have made game 2 even more compelling.
Here's the official NBA rule on the block/charge, fwiw:
Seems like a poorly conceived and written rule — if legal guarding position and unnecessary contact are reviewable, I don't see why a question about them shouldn't be sufficient to trigger the review, regardless of whether the defender was in the restricted area. As written, though: I'm still not sure the refs did anything wrong: "not reasonably certain as to whether the defender was outside the restricted area" allows a pretty wide berth for interpretation; it's quite possible on a bang-bang play like that they're not focusing on the players' feet enough to be "reasonably certain." It looked 100% certain to us at home ... upon replay. Was everyone 100% certain before they saw the replay?
As far as I can tell, the rule also gives no precedence to the ruling on the court in the same way the NFL does, so I'm not sure the "not indisputable enough to overturn" argument that I've heard here and elsewhere applies. If the review looks like a 65/35 block v. charge (my eye test, give or take) there's nothing in the rule that indicates that's not sufficient to overturn the original call.
I was definitely surprised by the overturn, though; and definitely think they need to refine the rule, or spell it out more clearly.
(12) Officials have determined that illegal contact has occurred on a block/charge foul but are not reasonably certain as to whether the defender was inside or outside the restricted area during the last two minutes of the fourth period or last two minutes of any overtime period(s).
Page 55, Official NBA Rules, Section II: Reviewable Matters:
l. If an instant replay review is triggered as described in Section I-a(12) above, the Replay Center Official and the official who called the foul would review the video to determine:
(1) Whether the defender was inside or outside the restricted area.
(2) Whether the defender was in a legal guarding position.
(3) Whether any unsportsmanlike acts or unnecessary contact occurred.
Page 55, Official NBA Rules, Section II: Reviewable Matters:
l. If an instant replay review is triggered as described in Section I-a(12) above, the Replay Center Official and the official who called the foul would review the video to determine:
(1) Whether the defender was inside or outside the restricted area.
(2) Whether the defender was in a legal guarding position.
(3) Whether any unsportsmanlike acts or unnecessary contact occurred.
Seems like a poorly conceived and written rule — if legal guarding position and unnecessary contact are reviewable, I don't see why a question about them shouldn't be sufficient to trigger the review, regardless of whether the defender was in the restricted area. As written, though: I'm still not sure the refs did anything wrong: "not reasonably certain as to whether the defender was outside the restricted area" allows a pretty wide berth for interpretation; it's quite possible on a bang-bang play like that they're not focusing on the players' feet enough to be "reasonably certain." It looked 100% certain to us at home ... upon replay. Was everyone 100% certain before they saw the replay?
As far as I can tell, the rule also gives no precedence to the ruling on the court in the same way the NFL does, so I'm not sure the "not indisputable enough to overturn" argument that I've heard here and elsewhere applies. If the review looks like a 65/35 block v. charge (my eye test, give or take) there's nothing in the rule that indicates that's not sufficient to overturn the original call.
I was definitely surprised by the overturn, though; and definitely think they need to refine the rule, or spell it out more clearly.
Agreed — good thing no one was doing this. I have no idea what LeBron's plus-minus was last night, nor do I care.
A single-game sample of plus-minus tells us almost nothing. A (hypothetical) infinitely large and infinitely varied sample of plus-minus would tell us everything we need to know about a player's impact. A big sample somewhere between those extremes (say, a full season) probably tells us something about a player's impact, but of course ideally should be looked at in the context of other evidence (previous seasons, most common floor-mates, traditional stats, etc.)
But I mean, you can say the same about PPG, FG% or any other single metric people like to cite. Bill Russell averaged 15.0 ppg over his career on 44% fg. But I'm guessing his plus-minus was pretty decent.
Random thoughts on the game:
- George Hill should buy JR a diamond watch or something, because due to JR's blunder everyone forgot that all Hill had to do was make a free throw to win the game.
- Even apart from the block/charge, Hill/JR, etc. drama, the Cavs should have won this game. Nate Duncan pointed out the Cavs were 3/17 on catch-and-shoot 3s following a LeBron pass. They missed a ton of open looks.
- This was a terrible Durant game on both ends. He settled for too many difficult jumpers, took too many bad shots early in the shot clock, his off-ball movement wasn't great. And he was bad on D as well.
- The Warriors' defensive rebounding was horrible. They got out-rebounded 53-38 and Cleveland had 19 offensive rebounds. This happened in Game 7 against Houston too. They just got outworked down low. They need to do a better job of getting bodies on guys and boxing out. KD's failure to box out JR on Hill's missed free throw was emblematic.
- The Warriors need to go small more. If they're going to get killed on the glass anyway, they might as well go small and play someone who can actually do something on offense. Bell and especially Looney are very limited offensively, and they are not doing enough on defense/rebounding to justify big minutes. Play another shooter or Livingston, who can at least punish teams for ignoring him. Livingston played only 13 minutes in regulation. They finally went small in OT and got great shots almost every time down (Livingston played the entire OT).
- LeBron is largely unstoppable, but the Warriors weren't even making it hard for him. How many uncontested dunks and layups did he get? Make him hit some long jumpers and pray he misses.
- George Hill should buy JR a diamond watch or something, because due to JR's blunder everyone forgot that all Hill had to do was make a free throw to win the game.
- Even apart from the block/charge, Hill/JR, etc. drama, the Cavs should have won this game. Nate Duncan pointed out the Cavs were 3/17 on catch-and-shoot 3s following a LeBron pass. They missed a ton of open looks.
- This was a terrible Durant game on both ends. He settled for too many difficult jumpers, took too many bad shots early in the shot clock, his off-ball movement wasn't great. And he was bad on D as well.
- The Warriors' defensive rebounding was horrible. They got out-rebounded 53-38 and Cleveland had 19 offensive rebounds. This happened in Game 7 against Houston too. They just got outworked down low. They need to do a better job of getting bodies on guys and boxing out. KD's failure to box out JR on Hill's missed free throw was emblematic.
- The Warriors need to go small more. If they're going to get killed on the glass anyway, they might as well go small and play someone who can actually do something on offense. Bell and especially Looney are very limited offensively, and they are not doing enough on defense/rebounding to justify big minutes. Play another shooter or Livingston, who can at least punish teams for ignoring him. Livingston played only 13 minutes in regulation. They finally went small in OT and got great shots almost every time down (Livingston played the entire OT).
- LeBron is largely unstoppable, but the Warriors weren't even making it hard for him. How many uncontested dunks and layups did he get? Make him hit some long jumpers and pray he misses.
Well, there were still almost five seconds left and presumably GS still had timeouts (I'm not sure).
Yeah, there were 4.7 seconds left. Given that Curry can get a shot off in like 0.0002 seconds, the game was far from over but Hill's miss robbed us of seeing a game winning shot attempt, which sucks.
Charlie Huddy proved the usefulness of the stat was limited immediately.
https://oilersnation.com/2017/06/25/top-100-oilers-charlie-huddy-13/
In 1982-83, Huddy won the NHL’s first Plus/Minus Award with a ridiculous plus 62
Points, assists, rebounds and any associated % are individual stats, and can tell you about the game the player played. The +/- tells you more about the effectiveness of five guys on court.
And like you, I've no idea what Russell's +/- might be, I assume they are positive. But given that a strength of many of his Celtic teams were the 6th-man led 2nd units that usually extended leads, its possible guys like Ramsey or Havlicek might have superior +/- as the Celts started to pull away in the 2nd qtr.
Its just a guess though.
If you look at the stat for an individual player independent of unit, then you penalize really good players for putting in extra minutes with poorer players, so you end up penalizing a player for being great.
Where it would be really potentially interesting would be in, say, seeing if certain players have wildly different +/-s in different units, and then trying to figure out why, learn about the synergies and where they aren't.
Where it would be really potentially interesting would be in, say, seeing if certain players have wildly different +/-s in different units, and then trying to figure out why, learn about the synergies and where they aren't.
Well, I think we know the answer to this one -- most of the Cavaliers supporting cast are scrubs. The most reliable non-Bron outside shooters happen to be defensive sieves so it puts them in quite a conundrum.
Yeah, they had one, and Kerr was about to use it (to avoid a replay of the end of WCF Game 4, where he failed to call a TO and got rightly skewered for it).
Looking right at him too. If he thought the Cavs were up 1, he should have passed to LeBron. If he thought they were tied, he should have passed to LeBron. Dribbling around aimlessly made no sense in any scenario. So dumb.
Thanks for posting the video.
Give JR credit for pushing aside Durant and grabbing a rebound. That should never of happened! Great Play!! And it wasn't an obvious easy put back, what with his body kind of going away from the hoop and Durant turning quickly. But dang, to just dribble it out?
I am guessing he just didn't want to make a stupid mistake (i.e.; take a wild shot, or have pass get stolen), so he did the simple thing. Unfortunately, it was kind of dumb. Still, it's not like the game was lost because of this (it was a tie game!)
And remember how we used to (a week or so ago) talk about the Marcus Smart experience (such as missing a ft he wants to make, then hitting one he wants to miss).
Being more concerned with fucking up over trying to do the right thing is one of the most effective ways to fuck up, yeah?
Kind of dumb. Sure. Dribbling out and just playing for overtime, on the road against a huge favorite, instead of actively trying to win the game was only kind of dumb.
100% checks out with how bad the GS offense has been when running it through Durant and his love for slow-developing contested mid-range shots.
2 minute report confirms blocking foul. The replay showed “James was not in a legal guarding position because he was turning his body and moving into Durant when contact occurred,” according to the report.
Hat tip to those who got the call right at game speed, including:
Kliq
stp130
maufman
Mystic Merlin
DrewDawg
Hat tip to those who got the call right at game speed, including:
Kliq
stp130
maufman
Mystic Merlin
DrewDawg
My view is that review should be consistent for the whole game. The block call in the second quarter isn’t reviewed or reviewable and it shouldn’t be in the fourth quarter. Check the position of where it occurred and that’s it.
Javie may be covering for his fellow officials but earlier today he said that if you polled 50 NBA refs, 25 would say it was a block and 25 would say it wasn’t. He said that of the 3 officials on the floor last night, one had it as a charge (Brothers I think he said) one had it as a block and one had it as possibly inside the circle. The ref in HQ made the final call.
Good post coremiller.
Not sure if it’s been said but assume so, the Cavs owe the Celtics for getting them to up their game. The Cavs looked like the same team we saw at the end of the Celts’ series. They were grinding yesterday and I kinda wish they had won the game.
Not sure if it’s been said but assume so, the Cavs owe the Celtics for getting them to up their game. The Cavs looked like the same team we saw at the end of the Celts’ series. They were grinding yesterday and I kinda wish they had won the game.
I don’t know man. Any time you pass the ball you’re increasing the chances of a turnover by some %, no matter how low it is. If you’re up by one, dribbling out to no mans land is entirely definsible.
He’s still an idiot though
If f he doesn't make a heck of a play (the rebound over Durant) he doesn't put himself in a position to be dumb (his failure to take advantage of an opportunity to win).
The JR experience in a nutshell!
(I prefer the Marcus Smart experience by a metric ton....)
JR is accountable and I'm not saying no one reminded anyone of the time/score situation prior to the second FT. I'm just saying based on my firsthand personal experience this is what we do and it's what most, if not all, programs do that I've been involved with or have been around. We huddle before the first FT and go over our Reminders and then we reiterate before the second FT inside two minutes, and we Remind all of time/score situation which starts with me the coach and extends to our captains. We also have hand signals for time/score situations during actual play on the court. In fairness, IDK if this is SOP at the NBA level. I was just pointing out that it could be and it may not all be on JR's shoulders. But, maybe, it was. Quite possible that all Cavs were on the same page going into the second FT and he screwed it up completely alone. Not out of the realm of possibility.
What I didn't like is that you stressed this strategy doesn't happen at all and then said unless it's with eight-year olds who would of course would be lucky to understand what the hell any time/score situation meant at all.
I get that your HS team didn't do it years ago. Point taken.
I get that your HS team didn't do it years ago. Point taken.
Man, I just watched this again. WTF was Love thinking? He is as lucky as Hill is that JR Smith is an idiot
Every generation has to live down their fashion disasters, mine had to try and explain bell bottoms, LeBron will spend the rest of his life failing to defend the suit shorts choice
