Hoops

+/- of best players on best teams

As with any statistics Jack, I agree you have to look at them in context and of course a statistic on its own is as subjective as it comes, especially in a game such as basketball.

With +/- though, if you take into account long term consistency I find it can give you some indication of a player's value to his team and as such it isn't a useless statistical measure.

I take on board your comments though, however how hard would it be to determine statistically how hard it was on court during the time a player spends on court, who is / her opponent is or the standard of the other team on court at the time?

A nightmare comparison to attempt to quantify I'd imagine...

Like everything, context is important. I would like to see the +/- broken down into a "red" or "green" +/-. Ie. green when the team is ahead, or red for behind.

If your team is in the green and they have a strong team on the court, then it should be harder to get a + than if you are in the red and it's trash time. In trash time, a stronger bench will alway beat a weaker bench, especially if the leading team is up by 20 points and they have their weak players on. The know they have won the game, whereas the behind team is playing for pride and the bench playing for extra court time.

Starters with a high +/- are more likely to be playing against starters and most likely in the first half of a quarter, whereas an impact player off the bench comes along with tired starters, or a weaker team. They are more likely to claw back some points from behind as opposed to extend a led.

+/- is good, but context is important. I used to look at +/- per player against their opponent. Quite a bit more interesting with matchups. You might get two point guards who scored 20 points each, but who scored 7 points each on each other and the other 13 points on the backup guard when their man was on the bench.

Data singled out like this is like a bikini. It shows you some stuff, but not the full picture. Completely overrated on it's own and needs to be looked at with a variety of different numbers.

Coaches love the plus-minus stat.

I see it has been released, what do people think will be big games?