ESPN says Dame is 7th on the player ranking list

http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/1...rry-chris-broussard-player-power-rankings-nba

7. Damian Lillard

Portland Trail Blazers
Pos: PG
RPM: 2.65 (No. 51)
MVP odds: 150-1

His shockingly low RPM notwithstanding, Dame D.O.L.L.A. is making folks pay for all sorts of snubs -- not recruiting him out of high school, leaving him off of top-five PG lists and, of course, failing to name him to the All-Star team.

With a chip on his shoulder the size of his hometown of Oakland, he's averaged 33.7 points since the All-Star break. More importantly, he's got the team everybody left for dead playing some of the league's best ball and in the thick of the Western Conference playoff race.

 

I had to refresh my memory what RPM was. Real Plus Minus.

Dame is shockingly low. 51st in the NBA. 2.65 is also only 9th for PGs.

http://espn.go.com/nba/statistics/rpm/_/sort/RPM

To me Dame's defense has improved greatly this year but maybe not enough to help with this stat because it doesn't seem he is playing with other scrub players. That would be more McCollum.

 

His RPM is terrible..... Which says more about RPM than it does about Dame.

 

The top 5 RPM guys are Curry, Westbrook, Kawhi, Draymond Green and LeBron.

Looks like who I would expect to be at the top to me.

 

Yup. I feel like Stotts' defensive scheme might play a large part in that.

 

What has Dames RPM been in this recent stretch though? It's understandable his RPM would be low from struggles earlier in the season. He had a few games with big -#'s if I remember correctly.

 

Also RPM is a made up stat by ESPN loosely based on the +/- system. I'm not a huge +/- guy, definitely not an RPM guy...

 

I not big on individual plus minus either. That stat is garbage. Which is why they are trying to make up a new stat like RPM that works better imo.

It is easy to spot a junk stat to me. When the top 5 guys are Curry, Westbrook, Kawhi, Draymond Green and LeBron then that stat seems to paint a decent picture. Who would you expect to be top 5?

I think Nate has it close. He is probably low due to our defensive scheme.

 

It's another one of these stats that tries to grade an individual player based on their team success. The Spurs are inherently a better than than us, they have more talent and better players. Same with the Warriors. But take Kawhi Leonard and swap him with Damian Lillard and I bet you see those two players switch places on the RPM rankings.

Oh, and the fact that ESPN doesn't even release how they calculate RPM, yeah I'm calling bullshit.

 

Do you know exactly how it's calculated though?

This article gives a very loose explanation...

 

Damian is 8th on offensive RPM.

Problem is he is 414 of 445 on defensive RPM.

 

So the eye test says he has really improved on D this year. Maybe the eyes are misleading a bit.

 

I posted their explanation in the quote above. It isn't complete though. They do leave some things up to only them.

 

Exactly. Dame isn't the 414th best defender in the league. I think there's been a lot of content lately about Stotts' system, and I imagine that Lillard's numbers are suffering because of how we scheme defensively.

 

RPM is really good. Its sort of a plus minus but they have a team of stat personell trying to correct for teammates, minutes, opponent, matchup, roles on the team, basically everything they can. Yeah it has some glaring quirks such as Damian but overall its more useful than most stats. Might be the single best stat out there if you had to pick one.

Guys like Ed Davis, CJ and Aminu ranked really well on it last year; partly why Kevin Pelton thought we'd be one of the better lottery teams and maybe fight for a playoff spot.

 

The defensive RPM is kind of odd too because its dominated by centers and bigs. Besides Kawhi all of the players in the top40 are C's and PF's.

 

Then they do need to work on that stat a bit.

 

Interesting RPM note; Mason Plumlee is the highest ranked Blazers at +3.70 which is 28th in the NBA.

Ed Davis is right below Dame at +2.49 ranked #53.
CJ is +1.66 ranked #72
Aminu is +1.42 ranked #80

I agree in that Mason and Ed are our 3rd and 4th best player.

Odd how we have two great point guards and two great centers. Somehow it works!

 

When in doubt, I say go with your eyes.

 

Basically they tell us it removes a lot of noise......by telling us nothing about how it's calculated. How can we verify their assumptions without just taking it for face value?

Yeah, you're going to have to work a lot harder if you want to convince me DeAndre Jordan is the 7th best player in the league and Mason Plumlee is 28th.