Some raw data for those who aren't in meltdown mode. This is pretty ugly. PER Roy 23.1 Outlaw 18.5 LMA 16.9 Rudy 14.9 Oden 14.5 Webster 13.9 Miller 11.9 Przy 8.4 Blake 6.9 Howard 0.9
and yet he is +15 for the season, but we are -27 in these same 5 games with Miller... Maybe we should sit Miller and let Blake all his minutes too. We would be an extra 40 points or so for the season... Blake's PER might be that low because Miller and Roy control the ball in the 3 guard line-up without using him properly? Who knows - but Blake, for all of his inefficient play - does not seem like the one the team is struggling with.
That doesn't mean much though unless you take it with perspective. Miller unfortunately has been stuck in that shitty lineup with Miller, Blake and Roy on the floor that keeps getting throttled, but not been out on the floor for the good part of the game where the team is making hay. You talk about Blake being high on the +/-, but then I can talk about how in the first part of the game yesterday, Out of the first 33 Blazer points, 28 of them were scored by Roy and Alridge, and Blake had little or nothing to do with them. When Miller comes in with the second unit, he is a creator. A creator who has Joel "Hands of Stone" Pryzbilla to throw to. A creator playing with the Travis "Jab step fade away jumper" Outlaw. Rudy has got scarce minutes. When Bayless was playing with Miller in the pre season, they played very well together because Bayless played at SG. No where to be seen in the regular season. I wouldn't be surprised if Miller got to pay with the elite studs on the team, that those +/- numbers were completely reversed.
+/- isn't an individual stat, it's a team stat. Blake benefits from playing significant minutes with the starters where he's on the court with an actual center and power forward. Miller is penalized with whatever hodepodge experimental five guard, undersized line-up Nate feels like throwing out there to give away games in the 4th quarter.
Miller played planty of time last night with Roy and with Aldridge and still finished with -13. On the other hand, Blake was part of the bad Miller/Roy/Blake line and still finished with +2. So - I am not really buying that argument. I am telling you that the spacing looked just wrong with Miller on the floor, to me, last night. Maybe Aldridge and Roy can not score as efficiently with Miller in the line-up because he can't shoot from distance and the opposition does not have to cover him on the outside.
Miller played tons of minutes last night (about the same as Blake) and he was in with Roy, he was in with LMA and he was in with Oden. The team still struggled with him on the floor - and I am telling you exactly why, in my opinion. Spacing goes to hell with him on the floor, the center is clogged making it harder for Roy to penetrate, making it harder for LMA to play his mid-range game. +/- is a team stat - but we have seen that last year the 3 guard line with Joel hands of stone at center and Rudy instead of Miller was fantastic. Miller's inability to space the floor makes him a bad, bad combination without a fast-pace team - it seems. I hope they can figure it out - but I did not like the way the team looked on offense with him - even when he played next to Roy and LMA.
So, where were Greg and Joel at that time? Sitting on the bench while Nate gave up our rebounding and interior defensive advantages and went small. It's hard to have a good +/- when the unit you are playing with is getting killed on the boards and can't defend the paint. There's more to +/- than offense. You will have negative +/- when your team is giving up easy baskets and second chance points. I'm not claiming Miller is without fault, but it was Nate's insistence on playing small ball with Greg and Joel BOTH on the bench that cost the Blazers that game last night. That small ball line-up also happened to also coincide with a lot of Miller's minutes. So, of course, he had a poor +/- for the game. Of course, when he was racking up 9 assists in the first half, he was playing in a more traditional line-up that featured either Greg or Joel at center. The Blazers didn't seem to have any trouble scoring with that line-up.
I went over the play by play from: http://scores.espn.go.com/nba/playbyplay?gameId=291103022 And tried to look at Miller's play time without a center vs. with a center, assuming I did the math correct here is what I came with: Code: 3:23 Miller enters the game, Joel is playing. 1:39 Joel goes out for Travis. End of 1st quarter 1st Quarter - 1:41 with Joel, 1:39 without 2nd quarter - Greg is in the game 7:24 Joel comes in for Greg 2:03 Travis comes in for Joel End of 2nd quarter 2nd Quarter - 9:57 with a Center, 2:03 without 3rd Quarter - 3:18 Miller and Greg enter the game 1:05 Travis enters for Greg End of 3rd Quarter Miller with a center - 2:13, without a center - 1:05 4th quarter - no center starts 6:00 Greg enters 4:24 Blake for Miller 2:47 Miller for Blake 0:56 Greg out End of 4th Quarter Miller with center 3:25, Miller without center - 6:00 Seems to me that other than the 4th quarter when he played 2:35 minutes more without a center than with a center - he played more with a center than without. So, there is something to say about him playing without a center - but the rest of the team seemed to have done it as well and he still played more time with a center than without.
During the bolded stretch above Miller had 9 assists in a little over one quarter of play. 8 of those 9 assists came when he was playing with a center in the line-up. Very limited sample size, but Miller seems to play much better in a traditional line-up, with a center, PF, SF and SG than he does in a three guard, small ball line-up. He's much more effective playing with a big line-up than a small line-up. He's very good at setting up big men for easy baskets - given the opportunity. His game simply isn't well suited to playing small ball with two other guards. That's the line-up Nate used in the 4th quarter and that's also when Atlanta came from behind, took the lead and pulled away. The whole idea of playing Miller, Blake and Roy together is just plain stupid and obviously doesn't work. Blame Miller if you want, but I blame Nate for creating a bizarre line-up where Miller is doomed to fail. BNM
Just for reference, you guys should probably check out this site: http://popcornmachine.net/cgi-bin/gameflow.cgi?date=20091103&game=ATLPOR
For chrissakes, can we please for the love of god stop misusing the +/- stat. IT IS ABSOLUTELY MEANINGLESS EXCEPT WITH A LARGE SAMPLE SIZE, not to mention it's practically worthless without it being adjusted for opposition and teammates (autocorrelation being the biggest issue).
I disagree. I don't feel it tells the entire story on performance, but it's a raw data number that in part shows a player's impact on a given game. I wouldn't call it absolutely meaningless. Perhaps "an incomplete assessment" is the term I'd use.
+/- is not meaningless for discussing a specific game with detailed line analysis - which is exactly what we are doing here.
How did Miller negatively affect Aldridge, when he assisted on 5 of Aldridge's 9 attempts, including 2 dunks and a layup?
If I am reading the popcorn machine correctly - we were also -5 during the stretch. Who cares how many assists he gets if it still results in -5 points?
And thus the problem with +/-. He finishes off the 1st quarter, and his stat is negatively affected because ZaZa got 4 FT attempts. Yeah, he was on the floor. So his TEAM got the minus 4 for those two possessions, but how does that reflect on Miller? That he didn't run down there and block the shot? This applies to Blake as well, but just using +/- as a blanket assesment is pretty flawed.
Well it matters in that it shows that DEFENSE was the problem during that stretch not offense. Miller needs to have good defenders around him, especially on the perimeter. He should be shackled to Martell as he is currently our best defender on the perimeter (weep). Speaking of which where is Roy's improved defense? Man this team is in a funk right now.
I find it hard to blame Nate for trying it - and I can tell you why I suspect he tried it - and it goes back to my original issue - spacing is needed for Roy and Aldridge to operate. This spacing does not seem to be there when Miller is in. My guess is that Nate tried to play without a big with a Blake/Roy/Miller line - because he hoped to see that space available if you remove the big from clogging the post. This, in my mind - is why he tried this line. The problem of course is that the defense really suffers and our guards do not set proper picks - which leaves LMA and Travis to set the picks. Not a pretty picture. At the end of the day it comes to the same the problem - they have to figure a way of playing Miller and Roy more together and still allow Roy and LMA operate where they are effective. Honestly - I am just not sure that there is a solution in the half-court sets with Miller there - he can not create the spacing for them, period. If Roy plays 36 minutes - I would look at having an entire quarter with Miller playing when Roy is out - and having LMA and a center next to him trying to play half-court - and when Miller and Roy play together - they have to play fast pace only with Miller handling the ball and Roy on the wing. If this does not happen - I am afraid that the entire Miller experiment will be a failure - and they will have to play him limited minutes, because anyone that would rather play Miller over Roy is out of his mind.
