At what point does his play match the level of the hype? I mean we had guys on here who actually said while he was in college, wait til he plays REAL competition. Understandably he has had injury problems, and still may, but the kid can play. He's on a different level than most just turned 20 year olds.
Tonight, Zion scored 32 points in 33 minutes in an 18-point win over the Wizards ... and he was a plus-4. Brandon Ingram was plus-28. Steven Adams was plus-27. Lonzo was plus-23 and only played 15 minutes.
The Wiz, BTW, started Bradley Beal, Robin Lopez and the imposing other starting three of Jordan Bell, Raul Neto and Isaac Bonga.
What does this say about using +/- as a way to measure a players value? Lonzo ball is a +23 and Zion a +4?
The validity in using plus-minus in this case is the wide gap in the numbers and three of the four players had significant overlap in the minutes they played. The most minutes Zion could have been on the floor without Ingram and Adams is 16, and in that time the unit Zion was playing with would have to be a minus-24. I think that says Zion is a phenomenal scorer, but there must be a lot of things he isn't doing that contribute to his team's success that those other guys are. Might be that he is a poor defender or that he allows the other team to take advantage of defensive mismatches. Might be that his team doesn't run the offense as efficiently when he's on the floor -- maybe the spacing's different or the ball doesn't move well enough to make other players better. If it was being looked at in a vacuum, you'd have a point. This is comparison with his own team in a game it won convincingly.
It's an arbitrary stat, so the "first ever to do it" isn't really the important thing. The important thing is that he's an insanely efficient scorer for, essentially, a rookie (he's not even through his first 40 games, let alone his first 82). To really be a "generational player," like a Giannis or LeBron, he'll have to become a high-caliber defensive player. I think he has the tools to do it, but so far his focus and intensity on that end of the court have been spotty. Of course, again, he's basically still in his first season's worth of games--rookies usually struggle on defense.
