Minnesota Sports Forum

Q-is-here wrote: ↑Sat Dec 20, 2025 10:09 pm After last night, Dillingham is now in the 66th percentile of NBA defenders according to Estimated Plus Minus. That's the good news. The bad news is he's considered the worst offensive player in the NBA according to the same metric.

Who would have thought that Rob would be a neutral-ish defender and league-worst shooter/offensive player coming out of Kentucky? It's nuts.

AussieWolf3 wrote: ↑Sat Dec 20, 2025 11:10 pm

Q-is-here wrote: ↑Sat Dec 20, 2025 10:09 pm After last night, Dillingham is now in the 66th percentile of NBA defenders according to Estimated Plus Minus. That's the good news. The bad news is he's considered the worst offensive player in the NBA according to the same metric.

Who would have thought that Rob would be a neutral-ish defender and league-worst shooter/offensive player coming out of Kentucky? It's nuts.

I'd put money on him finding his shot, so I'd say it's very very encouraging that he has innate defensive skills that will enable him to be a pest and hopefully a good team defender

Lipoli390 wrote: ↑Sun Dec 21, 2025 10:14 am

AussieWolf3 wrote: ↑Sat Dec 20, 2025 11:10 pm

Q-is-here wrote: ↑Sat Dec 20, 2025 10:09 pm After last night, Dillingham is now in the 66th percentile of NBA defenders according to Estimated Plus Minus. That's the good news. The bad news is he's considered the worst offensive player in the NBA according to the same metric.

Who would have thought that Rob would be a neutral-ish defender and league-worst shooter/offensive player coming out of Kentucky? It's nuts.

I'd put money on him finding his shot, so I'd say it's very very encouraging that he has innate defensive skills that will enable him to be a pest and hopefully a good team defender

I agree. I’d be concerned if he hadn’t developed into a remarkably solid pesky defender. I like his tenacity and instincts defensively. I also like that he’s shown significant improvement protecting the ball - avoiding silly turnovers. The more I see of him, the more I see a truly gifted passer/playmaker. Those are the things he needs to show and he’s shown them. His shooting will be fine. He’s shot well at every level. I’ve watched him consistently nail his threes in pre-game warmups. And again, you can’t give any meaningful weight to the stats of a player averaging only 11 minutes per game.

If the object is to have the best chance of wining games right now, I’d put Bones ahead of Rob in the PG rotation. But looking ahead to March and beyond into the playoffs and next season, Rob is the guy in my view. The first hurdle psychologically for Finch is to move on from Mike Conley.

AussieWolf3 wrote: ↑Sun Dec 21, 2025 11:14 am I'll just keep plugging this because it's a really great resource

https://apanalytics.shinyapps.io/DARKO/

I was curious if there was any useful or encouraging statical information that we could glean regarding Rob and what so cool about DARKO is that it's really easy to compare players across generations even.

Anyway, I plugged in Rob, Fox, Conley, Garland and Jamal Crawford for the hell of it. You can compare multiple different stats, like ast/100 or ast%, RimFG%, ECT and there is also DARKOs signature stat, DPM.

Rob's DPM is very discouraging, but when you track other stats you get a better picture and it's a bit more encouraging. For example his Ast% compared to those players at similar ages or games played is in a good place- higher than Mike's, well below Foxs, and right in line with Garland's.

The stats don't tell the whole story but this tool does offer clues and really has helped paint a picture for me of how significant of a factor age is. Consistently good players have had an upward trend that only level off at about 25 to 26 years old. Which is why I'm so bullish on Edwards being just fine.

Anyway I recommend giving it a perusal