Camden wrote:Q12543 wrote:I believe that so long as DLO and KAT are healthy and in the starting lineup, the sole metric they should be judged upon as individuals is Net Rating (Ortg-Drtg). They are the two vets on the team and at this point their combined output and leadership needs to start translating to winning basketball while they are on the floor. Of course one might then say wins should be the only measure, but I'm trying to narrow it down a bit to the individual which Ortg and Drtg do since it consists of only their time on the floor.
(And I'm using NBA.com version of Ortg and Drtg and Net rating, not basketball reference's).
We've hashed this out before, but what various plus-minus stats and team ratings fail to do is account for the quality of teammates and opposing players that share the floor with said individual. It also doesn't include the flow/situational component of the game. For example, why might Naz Reid appear to be a largely negative player? Could it be because Karl-Anthony Towns boosts the team a lot more than Reid does therefore the team is obviously going to play better when he's on the bench? What about when a role player -- for example, we'll name drop Ricky Rubio -- plays the majority of his minutes with the team's best players versus primarily playing with other (lesser) role players? Might that be a reason for Rubio's consistently good production in those metrics? That's not to say that either of those players don't have strengths and weaknesses, and they obviously don't control who they play with or against. Additionally, I'm not even saying that those stats shouldn't be used at all. What I am saying is that those stats are not all-encompassing and players should be evaluated using a multitude of different metrics rather than just one or two.
We have hashed through this before and your points are valid. Here is my main point: If DLO and KAT are as good as their paycheck says they are and presuming they stay healthy and start together, I don't see the talent around them as being so inferior that it should drag them into negative net rating territory.
In fact, we got a little taste of this late last year. In the last 15 games, DLO was a +4 and KAT was a +3.2 (I'd personally like to see it even higher, but they were in the plus column nonetheless). They were playing the majority of their minutes with largely the same guys they will be this season, minus Rubio, Davis and Juancho and plus Beverley and Prince. Presumably McDaniels and Edwards will be a bit more refined. We have zero rookies in the rotation unless Bolmaro breaks through.
So my point is that if these two guys are truly max players, we should see them both end up fairly easily in the plus column when it comes to net rating given what I think is an adequate supporting cast that seems to be trending upwards. Now how the team does when both are on the bench or either are hurt might be a different story. Bottom line is these guys are the team leaders now, the highest paid players, and they need to be on the healthy plus side of the +/- column when on the floor.
