That might say everything we need to know about Monroe though. Granted both DET and MIL aren't great destinations but to turn his back this early.....
You've kind of made my point for me. Take a look at the link in my signature. Meyers isn't a PF and Plumlee isn't a C. It's really that simple.
and you say PER is a over-rated? +/- is heavily influenced by EVERYONE on the court at the same time he is, nothing even close to an individuals statistic and if you've cringed as much as most people do when he's on the court, i think we can attribute a lot of that extrapolation to the others on the court at the same time - crabbe - davis - harky - whoever. cliff beats him out at PF on real plus minus @ espn interestingly enough , ed davis on the other hand is 16 for C's. top 12 +/- in the league has 4x GS and 4x OKC players - it benefits great 'teams'.
In January over 9 games he's shooting .455 from three, .533 fg%. He's not amazing, and he's still only putting up 9pts/5rebs, but if you combine last season and this one, the first 28 games of this season where he shot like crap seem like more of the aberration. Hopefully he can build on recent success. At the rate he's going he'll be back in the starting lineup fairly soon.
Do a quick google search on RPM- it's a junk stat that ESPN holds as proprietary b/c they know if they put out the methodology it would either A: blow up in their face b/c they copied and tweaked a measurable or two and rebranded it or B: people look at the work down and peer review it and call it the useless stat that it is. If you go through every post criticizing it, nearly everyone in analytics laughs at it. You can't use a proprietary formula and then claim it the end all be all, ya know because, reasons. It's the same thing with their QBR non-sense. They package up and market these great new stats that everyone is supposed to just accept without any reasoning or objective criticism. If Cliff Alexander in 20 minutes of play time is qualifying and beating someone in a statistic- that should tell you instantly it's a junk stat. As far as +/- , I'm not a huge fan of it b/c you can't parse out the individual aspects- however it's a nice cursory tool when looking at multiple lineups. If someone has a higher +/- and that carries over across a variety of lineups it's usually a good indicator that positive things are happening with that player on the floor. Not a guarantee, but a possibility, and that's how I use it. It's informative but not necessarily indicative of anything. Then there's PER- color me suspicious of any metric that pens Mason Plumlee as a +3 expected wins added- more than Duncan, Gobert, Bogut, and Adams. I mean... by that metric Jokic is better than all of those players?! That's when you just have to stop. Step away from the keyboard, and burn that thing to the ground.
The most important stat in basketball is not the individual stat in my view, it's the team stat...all you need to know is the percentage in the win/loss column. I think far too often we tend to isolate individual stats and not look at the system as a collective. When asked about Golden States success..Dame said their defense is a cohesive string that clicks...this is the area we need to improve...the team's ability to defend and score as a team. 2 seasons ago we were the best defensively with Joel Freeland in the game and not because of his individual stats, it was how he anchored the defense
I believe free throw % is probably the only pure stat for comparing a player’s individual skill level to other players, and is important. The assist to turn over ratio may not be a 100% pure individual stat, but a good indicator of how well a player takes care of the ball, as well as a possible indicator of BBIQ. After that, the individual ratings turn into voodoo theories based on faulty models. When analyzing players, computer models are not anywhere near as accurate as the old eye test and sometimes the gut test.
I agree very tough to come up with a pure stat. Better looks generated by better screens more assists produced by better looks created by better screens and so on. There is something to be said for rebounding though. Hard work does get more rebounds and yes free throws do single themselves out.
