Minnesota Sports Forum

Mikkeman wrote:Sample size is increases (18 games now) but Rubio effect remains remarkable.

Here are updated values after Clippers game:

Wolves Ortg with Rubio has been 105.9
Wolves Ortg without Rubio has been 96.6

(I know that Ortg without Rubio shouldn't change since he has played all games lately. So I assume that I have had it wrongly calculated in earlier posts)

Wolves Drtg with Rubio has been 107.8
Wolves Drtg without Rubio has been 108.5

Those 18 Wolves opponents that they have played with Rubio have average Ortg 104.2 and average Drtg 101.6. Whole league without Wolves has average Ortg 102.6 and average Drtg is 102.3. So Wolves have had currently clearly tighter schedule with Rubio than without him, which makes above numbers even more impressive.

When Ortg and Drtg with Rubio is compensated with the strength of schedule, we will get following numbers:

Wolves compensated Ortg with Rubio has been 106.6
Wolves compensated Drtg with Rubio has been 106.1

How Wolves would rank in league with those numbers? Their offense would be 6th best (tied with Atlanta) and their defense 27th.

The numbers are a bit skewed. Rubio hasn't played a game without Martin or Pek

Another bad loss and more Zach bashing. Nevermind that Martin and Rubio flat out sucked in their own right. Nevermind that Zach was on the court with Dieng, Hamilton, Bud, and Neal. Everyone rushes in to throw more dirt on Zach. Strange obsession this board has with eating one of their own.

CoolBreeze44 wrote:Another bad loss and more Zach bashing. Nevermind that Martin and Rubio flat out sucked in their own right. Nevermind that Zach was on the court with Dieng, Hamilton, Bud, and Neal. Everyone rushes in to throw more dirt on Zach. Strange obsession this board has with eating one of their own.

Might want to reread the thread, cool.

You're a bit misguided in your criticism of recent posters in this thread.

Q12543 wrote:Usually Rubio's impact is felt more profoundly on the defensive end; interesting numbers in terms of how he's driven more improvement in our offense, despite his continued struggles to score efficiently. Obviously he is a maestro with setting people up, but historically his On/Off numbers have tilted toward more of an impact on defense.

Part of this could be sample size. We have played a murderers' row of opponents lately - I mean some of the best offenses in the NBA multiple times (Golden State, Clippers, Atlanta, etc.).

Q, remember that these are whole Wolves team Ortg and Drtg values in games that Rubio has played. So these are kind of estimates what Wolves Ortg and Drtg could have been without injuries since they have been calculated from only games that Rubio (and mostly also Pek and Martin) have played.

I have calculated Wolves numbers without Rubio basically just by taking Wolves Ortg and Drtg from NBA.com (or ESPN since they have same values and I expect that they have been calculated by using same formula that I have used.) and then removing the effect of games that Rubio has played from it. Still it is possible that NBA.com uses also little different formula for calculating number of possessions than what I use (taken from Wikipedia) and that causes bias to these numbers.

Rubio's individual Ortg and Drtg values tell also this season same thing that you mentioned that Ricky has bigger effect on defense than in offense. Based on Basketball reference's on/off values Wolves Ortg with Rubio on the floor has been 106.1 and with him off the floor it has been 101.4. Wolves Drtg with on the floor has been 104 and with him off the floor it has been 112.4. (these numbers from Basketball Reference are not fully compatible with my numbers. I have not yet figured out the reason for difference but I suspect that it is something related to team rebounds and/or calculating possessions from free throws different way.)

AbeVigodaLive wrote:I know he has some duds. Last night was one of them...

But what are Kevin Martin's ratings? Most of Rubio's time has been spent with Martin on the court, right? And he's the team's most prolific and savvy scorer, so that has to help a bit too.

Abe, I was not able to find any site that would list team Ortg with certain two man combinations. 82games.com has lists about most frequent five man combinations and it is possible to get rough estimate about Wolves offensive efficiency with both Martin and Rubio by calculating weighted average of most frequently used five man combinations that have featured both players. Unfortunately those numbers have not been updated since middle of February, so they containi quite little data about Rubio-Martin combination.

Basketball reference has plus/minus numbers for two man combinations and based on those Martin won't have dramatic effect at least on Rubio's plus/minus since Rubio's average plus/minus is 2.1 and Rubio-Martin combination has plus/minus 2.3. Of course it is still possible that Wolves Ortg with both Martin and Rubio is really high but Drtg is bad with that combination and thus plus/minus is not that impressive.

Pek, Thad and KG seems to have biggest positive impact on Rubio's plus minus. Since Ricky has played only 612 minutes so far, sample size for many of the 2-man combinations is still so small that it doesn't make sense to make much conclusions about these numbers.