Camden wrote:FNG, this is pure comedy at this point. Not only did you spend time writing that "gotcha" toned rebuttal, but you didn't even give the accurate numbers in statistics that you typically drool over.
You said D'Angelo Russel has a negative net rating this season... Well, no he doesn't. His net rating of 8.8 ranks third on the team even with his poor shooting percentages. The team is 21.4 points better with Russell on the floor than when he's off. Oh, and he has a traditional plus-minus of 5.4. These are all positive numbers in statistics that you and others here value heavily.
This is what I was talking about. We watched Ricky Rubio shoot 30-percent from the floor for years only to be represented well in these kinds of metrics and get absolutely fawned over. Why shouldn't Russell get that same level of appreciation from the plus-minus fanboys? Or is it because of something else... Hmm.
Anyways, I was being a smartass in previous posts in this thread. Apparently, those comments struck a nerve a day later. All good. I'm looking forward to tomorrow night's game.
I get that you were taking the humor route, and that's fine...it just seemed to miss the point of how the targets of your post use these stats, that's all. I think we look at different sources for net rating, cam. (Which one do you use?) I use the difference between a player's ORtg and DRtg on basketballreference.com as my source because I have found that over time it provides a reliable measure of a player's worth. As I've said before several times, there are only two max players in the NBA with career net ratings of -10 or worse...D'Angelo Russell and Andrew Wiggins...and I think that speaks volumes (about both them, and unfortunately about the franchise we all love) This year DLo's DRtg is a career best 107, which matches the eye test of many of us here. But his ORtg is a career worst 89, which also matches the eye test.
https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/r/russeda01.html
But as Kek and you have mentioned (and I have also mentioned in GDT's), uncharacteristically his on/off rating through 6 games on cleaning the glass is a very good +19.3...third best on the team behind Ant and Jaden. But again, both of these stats show the danger in using too small a sample size, because there is a clear disconnect between Jaden and DLo's excellent on/off stats (near best on the team) and their horrible net ratings (near worst on the team).
My point remains the same. Small sample size statistics may be both interesting and not meaningful at the same time. But a statistic that is consistently good or bad for a player throughout his entire career has to be considered in measuring a player's contribution, or we're just fooling ourselves. And I think we can all agree that DLo doesn't measure up well over his career in net rating, on/off. or TS%. You may find those three particular statistics meaningless, and that opinion is fair game for disagreement and discussion. But I will argue that any team with a max player who throughout his entire career has underperformed in those three stats is destined for mediocrity. And that's why I continue to say the only hope for this franchise is either a massive overhaul in DLo's game (something I'm not giving up on...he's certainly talented, and I've seen signs of change this season) or Gupta finding an effective way of moving him. I don't see any other option for us going forward.
