Warriors Plus-Minus Through 1/25/09

There you are, 82games update, you old rascal! Let's see how the last six games have juggled the numbers. We've removed 'Buike, Jack, Law and Bell, on account of small sample size/team departure/both. Kept Mikki on there for the LOLs, though.

What we're seeing here, more than anything, are distortions caused by our recent improved play. Folks who've been around for it (Martin, Tolliver, etc) have taken a leap... folks who haven't (Randolph, Morrow, CJ, etc) have thus moved down the totem pole. Grains of salt, people, especially when looking at the dudes who haven't played much.

There are no caveats when it comes to the numbers of Corey Maggette. Well, his opponent PER might be a tad higher if you corrected for positional effects, but it's not like our defense collapses when he takes the floor. Our opponents actually shoot worse against our Maggetted defense than they do against the Corey-free version, but when he plays, we don't pick off as many passes and send our opponents to the line a bit more often. And if you factor in the yeoman's work he was doing against fours for much of the season, you could easily argue he's been no worse than an average defender. On the other end, of course, he's been anything but average: Maggette is the league's most efficient scorer and one of the ten most effective offensive players overall. As a matter of fact, Corey Maggette is having the most efficient scoring season ever by a Warrior. You must respect this man... do not make him barrel into you, jerk his head back as if shot and throw the ball eighty feet in the air, hoping for a whistle.

Below Maggette, we find two conjoined pairs of players. Anthony Tolliver and Cartier Martin have the two best net plus-minus ratings of anyone who's still under contract here; that obviously has more to do with their teammates than them, but they at least haven't gotten in the way, and I'd say their strong defensive numbers here are at least partially deserved. Anthony Morrow and CJ Watson have had uncannily similar years, if you think about it. Both started strong, working their ways into bigger roles through red-hot shooting... both went ice-cold around the same time. Both rate as middling offensive contributors in sum, but both have shown defensive improvement by all metrics, and both are clinging to positive net plus-minuses, despite missing some of our best stretches of play. We could really use a re-awakening from one of these two. Tonight wouldn't be a bad time, CJ.

Anthony Randolph and Ronny Turiaf are amusing opposites: Randolph's strong production has netted him a -2.1 NPM to date, while we've outscored opponents by 6.4 per 48 during Ronny's hobbling bobbling misadventures. Maybe veteran savvy's to blame for some of the gap, but when you look at Ronny's on-court/off-court numbers, it's hard to see where he's made a real impact. More than likely, his good showing is a fluke. Stephen Curry's strong recent play has him in the black for the first time by plus-minus, but only barely. Our offense is 3.2 points better when he plays, thanks mainly to more efficient team shooting (which probably has as much to do with his own strong shooting as as his passing), but our defense is 2.0 points worse. For all the hype, his overall season does not yet rate better than CJ's. At the rate Curry's been scoring, though, that'll change soon enough.

Monta Ellis continues to boast a surreally awful net plus-minus... the only NBA player who's fared worse in starter's minutes is OKC's Jeff Green. In the eight years for which 82games lists plus-minus data, the worst NPM by a guy who played in 50% or more of his teams minutes is -11.4, posted by our old friend Al Harrington in '03-'04. If current trends hold, the "leader"board will read 1. Green, 2. Harrington, 3. Monta. We still only have about six games' worth of off-court data for Monta, but, goddamn. This still ain't working.

I'm no Devean George fan, but I think he's actually earned his roughly neutral plus-minus... he's shown some nice grumpy-old-man defense in recent weeks. Chris Hunter's good showing is probably more of a fluke, but his on/off numbers at least suggest the possibility that his beefy presence has had positive effects: we grab many more rebounds on both ends and get to the line more often when he plays.

This is the first update where I've started to worry a bit about the showing of Andris Biedrins. I think he's played better than Nellie, most fans, these numbers and even Biedrins himself seem to think -- he's rebounded and passed excellently and shown a bit of a spine on D, and his return has coincided with our best stretch of ball. And yet we've been worse with him on the court... only by a tad, but worse. The reason? Whistles. We take fewer free throws when he plays, and make many fewer (thanks in large part to his woes)... meanwhile, his sky-high foul rate means more trips to the line for our opponents. The result is a six-point-per-48-minute swing that negates all of Biedrins's genuinely helpful contributions in other areas. For Biedrins to once again be the big asset he's been in recent years, we need him to chop that disparity in half.

Vladimir Radmanovic and Mikki Moore... remember when that was our starting frontcourt? Ye gods. As impossible as this sounds, if we beat the Kings tonight by 15 or more, we will have outscored our opponents overall in the 80+% minutes we've played without Mikki. Remember that the next time someone tells you the end of your bench doesn't matter.