paul nicholson

NBA plus/minus?

In Basketball, Sports on December 18, 2007 at 8:16 am

Wow. After bragging about hockey for having some of the best stats out there, it looks like the NBA is finally wising up and matching them in at least one category.

The NBA is now tracking players plus/minus. I just noticed it on the box score for the Spurs game from last night (don’t look, it wasn’t pretty). Going back in to the archives, it looks like they only just started reporting the stat at the start of this season on October 30th. They aren’t publishing complete plus/minus numbers for players for the season though, which is unfortunate. This is the one stat that should start to a quantifiable number for defensive-minded players. I look forward to being able to dig in and watch these numbers as the year progresses though, and even better from year to year.

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  • Anonymous

    How are they computing these ratings. In last night’s game(6/15/08) Radmanovic had a rating of +20 and Paul Pierce was blowing by him all game long. Vladamir only ended up with like 9 points, so how is he a +20…… I am confused.

  • Paul Nicholson

    Same as other sports (like hockey). If you are on the court when your team scores 2 points you get +2, when you are on the court and your opponent scores 2 points, you get a -2. Add up everything for your time on the court, and even though Radmanovic only score 9 points himself, his team scored 20 more points than his opponents while he was on the floor.

    It helps show a players other contributions (such as good defense and good passing that may not lead directly to an assist, etc).