Mr. Plus/Minus: Amir Johnson

http://thesportsquotient.com/nba/2015/11/7/mr-plusminus-amir-johnson




Mr. Plus/Minus: Amir Johnson


by Ryan Nolan 7 November 2015, 11:30 AM




Not everyone has heard of him, but he’s one of the NBA’s most underrated players.


When viewing the Boston Celtics’ team roster, it looks like they didn’t go out and sign or trade for a star to complete their team. However, General Manager Danny Ainge went out and signed former Toronto Raptors forward Amir Johnson, perhaps the NBA’s most underrated player.

“Amir’s name came up early and often as a target,” according to Brad Stevens.

Not only was Johnson a good fit for a complex, yet heralded system run by Brad Stevens, but his name was listed as a top player in the NBA on certain stat sheets. It seems odd that one of the most quiet and underrated signings would go unnoticed throughout the NBA fan community. On the other hand, according to a recent GM survey, the Johnson signing was the forth best player acquisition this past offseason, showing faith in a guy that has dominated certain stat sheets for years.

One of the most relevant advanced stats for teams is the Plus/Minus stat, a statistic that Amir Johnson was 16th in out of the whole NBA during the 2013-14 season. With a few injuries during his 2014-15 campaign, we will take a look at his 2013-14 season stats to prove his full value.



Mark L. Baer-USA TODAY Sports

The Plus/Minus (+/-) stat is a statistic based on a top down metric, or an individual’s production that is statistically built only upon the production of whole lineups. The Plus/Minus stat specifically is the points scored by a player’s team while he’s on the court minus the total points scored against his team while he’s on the court. A player accumulates more positive +/- numbers when their team is outscoring the opponent.

Johnson had a real +/- value of 4.61. To compare, Blake Griffin had a value of 4.65 at 15th in the league. Johnson isn’t a consistent starter and often came off the bench, so being named 16th in the league according to the +/- statistic is something that should be recognized more throughout the NBA.

The other side to the +/- stat is that it is heavily biased towards players that play with good teammates. So imagine if I were in the NBA, and I was always on the court at the exact same time with Steph Curry and Klay Thompson. I could stand in the corner and do nothing on offense while Curry and Thompson lit it up from behind the three point arc, giving us all the same +/- stat of lets say +30. In a span of ten minutes, lets say Curry, Thompson and I never substituted out, and we only gave up 15 points on the defensive end. Once we subbed out, our +/- value would be +15, including myself even though I did nothing but stand still on offense and defense.

As you can see, just being on the court with good teammates can give someone credit whether they are involved in the game or just standing still. I’m not saying Amir Johnson just stood still on the court, because he did quite the opposite when he was subbed into the game. However, it’s important to understand all there is with the +/- statistic.

Johnson wasn’t even named to Bleacher Report’s Top 200 players from the 2013-14 season, meanwhile he ranked 16th in the NBA with a 4.61 +/- value.

Diving in a little deeper into Johnson’s game, he tends to play better when he plays the center position rather than power forward. According to 82games.com, Johnson has better stats when you compare his production at both ends of the floor.




Now that Johnson wears Celtics green, his production definitely will help the Celtics, considering they are desperate for defense at the center position. His role with the team is vital to their success and the end to their rebuilding.

Everything about Johnson is what the Celtics were looking for when they brought him to Boston. As a highly respected player, he has a high motor and is greatly underrated. Also being a very stats-oriented player with financial flexibility, he is the Celtics’ greatest asset to their team right now.

People may say that the Celtics’ greatest asset right now is their financial flexibility and draft picks, however, right this very moment, the key to ending their rebuild and becoming a dynasty again starts with Amir Johnson and leading this young and inexperienced team to contention.  




bob
MY NOTE:  I'm not a fan of the +/- stat and I don't like it any better when we're talking about Amir Johnson any more than I do when we talking about Kelly Olynyk or Jared Sullinger or anybody else.  Here's a key statement:  "The other side to the +/- stat is that it is heavily biased towards players that play with good teammates. So imagine if I were in the NBA, and I was always on the court at the exact same time with Steph Curry and Klay Thompson. I could stand in the corner and do nothing on offense while Curry and Thompson lit it up from behind the three point arc, giving us all the same +/- stat of lets say +30. In a span of ten minutes, lets say Curry, Thompson and I never substituted out, and we only gave up 15 points on the defensive end. Once we subbed out, our +/- value would be +15, including myself even though I did nothing but stand still on offense and defense."  Exactly.  Precisely.  Who you are on the floor with, and against, makes a HUGE difference in your +/-.  Jordan Mickey, whom I really like, might have a great +/- but then he has only come in during garbage time and is playing against scrubs.  That's why summer league stats are worthless, it's because they are being racked up against players who, for the most part, are never going to play in the NBA. If our scrubs are better than their scrubs our scrubs will have great +/-.  I am not a fan of PER neither (and Sam, certainly, was not either.  He, a professional statistician, was completely dismissive of John Hollinger and this stat) since it under-weights defense (it only counts measurable events and many things that happen on defense are not quantified; like tipped balls, contested shots and boxing out.  Only steals, blocks and rebounding go into the calculation. A shot intimidator would get no credit for forcing a bad shot or for forcing the kick out pass, especially if the pass produces a bucket. Good defense, bad +/- and PER because they scored anyway, but it was the right defense to play).

Having said all this I am still a fan of Amir, I like what he's bringing us, I just don't like nor trust these statistical attempts to prove it.  I can almost guarantee you someone could come up with a lot of players with +/- and PERs that say they are one thing, good or bad, and we would all look at those players and think they are something very different.  


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+/- and PER are very different. PER seems like a stat created to make offensive stars look better than they are. It emphasizes offense, trivializes defense, and rewards volume scorers.

Volume scorers being the type that espn likes to glorify.

Nobody plays exactly the same minutes at the exact same time as any other player.

With +/-, you take all of that into account, what the player's role was, who he was playing with, and whether he was starting or coming off the bench, etc.

It shouldn't be accepted without thought, nor should it be rejected without thought.

There are so many aspects of basketball that don't show up in the simple stat sheet. So many little things that a player can do, or even not do, that just lead to winning basketball that you won't see in any simple stat, or the finally discredited PER stat.

Amir and Kelly are known for setting great screens, putting max effort into defense and especially help defense, making the extra pass, and boxing out their man even if it doesn't lead to a rebound.

Not to mention Olynyk (and increasingly, AJ)'s impact just by stretching the floor and opening up the lane to be attacked by teammates.

All of those things won't show up in simple stats, but we all know they are very important for winning team basketball.

According to simple stats, Rondo was still a very good defender his last 3-4 years here, and most people still thought of him as one. Some even thought he was defensively elite.

But advanced stats told another story, as did Rondo when he finally admitted to not even trying on defense the last 3-4 years he was here.

+/- is a very valuable stat, more valuable than any other as long as you have a big sample size, and put the proper amount of thought and perspective into the numbers.

Like, the author of this piece didn't even put any thought into the fact that Amir is now 2 years older than he was in he '13-14 season. He just assumes that he's still as good at 29 as he was at 27. He dismisses last season because Amir had bad ankles, but he doesn't even think to remember that Amir still has bad ankles, and one of them was twisted before the last two games.

So some of +/- 's most enthusiastic supporters will fail to convince others, because they haven't put enough thought into contextualizing the numbers.

Bradley, Turner, and Zeller played tons of minutes together last year, so it's hard to make sense of their similarly negative +/- stats.

But they're all young and presumably improving players, so it pretty much doesn't matter much whose primary fault it was for the negative +/-, especially since all three started with Brandon Bass, who is now gone.

This season Turner has a great +/-, but it's a tiny sample size so far, and it's in a Completely different role, off the bench. So there's little/no comparison between his +/- last year and this year.

If there's any significance at all, it's limited/tiny evidence that Turner may be more effective for the team in a bench role rather than starting.

As far as Olynyk, I'm not even sure he'd have a positive +/- as a starter. All I know is he has thrived and impacted winning off the bench for 2+ years.

And with a great bench, we don't even need our starters to have a positive +/-, and we might not even have the players to do it.

+/- will be better for players on winning teams. That correlation is a simple fact - it just is. +/- would be great for analyzing individuals within a constant group playing pick-up ball, where teams are constantly changing and on average, any one player spends an equal amount of time with all other players. Of course, I'm assuming teams change each game - if the winning team holds court, as is custom, then +/- has the same old problems.

That being, just because something is not perfect, doesn't mean it has NO usefullness. It's another metric coaches, GMs, players, and fans can use to evaluate players. The thing that really bugs me is when writers select small periods of time to calculate a stat, and then write about it. The writer in the article above does this to a certain extent by ignoring last year (injuries are part of the game - you can't ignore them for any particular player). Forseberg also does this all  the time. He usually qualifies it with something along the lines of "allowing for a small sample size..blah, blah, blah." It's total nonsense, is misleading, and is just the wrong way to use stats.

I'm nominating a ban on all discussions that include the +/- stat..

I'm so sick of it.. I have been to a live game or two and can usually pick out each teams best and worst players all the while only seeing one set of numbers - each teams scores.

It's that only stat that matters.

+/- IS the score, the score while a player is on the court.

Very useful with a large sample size, as long as the player isn't playing with exactly the same guys every time.

Take Big Al, just watching him play you'd think he was one of the better players in the league, until you look at the score, aka +/- while he's on the court, taking into account who he's playing with and how good the team is, over a season or at least a large sample size.

I'll stick by my claim that it is a useless stat. And like bob says : "So imagine if I were in the NBA, and I was always on the court at the exact same time with Steph Curry and Klay Thompson. I could stand in the corner and do nothing on offense while Curry and Thompson lit it up from behind the three point arc, giving us all the same +/- stat of lets say +30. In a span of ten minutes, lets say Curry, Thompson and I never substituted out, and we only gave up 15 points on the defensive end. Once we subbed out, our +/- value would be +15, including myself even though I did nothing but stand still on offense and defense." Exactly. Precisely. Who you are on the floor with, and against, makes a HUGE difference in your +/-".
Its all about who your playing with and who your playing against. It a very flawed stat.

swish

I miss Sam every time I log onto this board, but never more than on the Game On thread and when we are talking stats. He'd settle this fast. I'm just a hack by comparison.


bob


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People generally use individual +/- three ways:

-- For a player they like who has a good +/-

-- Against a player they don't like who has a bad +/-

-- Dismiss it as a flawed stat when it doesn't fit their preferred narrative

Five-man unit +/- is a somewhat useful stat, given enough of a sample size. We used to have 82games.com to track that, but it's a dead site now. You can use basketball-reference.com to get five-man unit stats. Here's what it shows for the Celtics so far this season:

http://bkref.com/tiny/xQ3yi

I think you need 20 games or more for this to be useful. I don't think anyone would've pick Jerebko, Lee, Olynyk, Rozier, and Turner as the Celtics' most effective lineup, but that's what it shows so far.

Here's the info for last season:

http://bkref.com/tiny/vsPp5

Make of that what you will. I'd say that you need to look at the MP (minutes played) and PTS columns together, then drill down into the other info, if you like.

Maybe you think this is as useless as individual +/-, which is fine, but I'd say it's more useful than individual +/- and less likely to fit preconceived narratives.

Perhaps the moderators could creat three stickies for the forum.

1. All discussions or posts related to +\-

2. All discussions or posts related to how good Kelly Olynyk is

3. All discussions or posts related to how bad Kelly Olynyk is.

I understand some people understand and are interested in advanced stats, and I mean no offense to anyone, but I agree with Matty. I am beginning to tune out some of this Forum because it is too predictable and repetitious.

I watched part of the below game the other night.

 http://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/201511080POR.html

Check out the +/- for the Pistons. Perfect example of Misleading +/- stats.
Tolliver played the entire 4th quarter and had a +/- of +19 as Detroit outscored Portland by 30 points. He had 6 points and 0 rebounds in the Quarter.
Jackson played the last 9 + minutes and had a +/- of + 22 while scoring 26 points.
Drummond played the last 8 minutes and had a +/- of + 17 while scoring 3 points and pulling down 9 rebounds.
I'm sure that Tolliver made a nice contribution to that scoring margin. That's what role players do. But he's no Jackson or Drummond.

swish

People dismiss +/- in two ways

- taking a one game sample size, even though nobody says it's valuable in a one game sample

- creating a hypothetical situation in which +/- would not be valuable. "what if player x played every single minute with michael jordan?"


It's like saying that flipping a coin won't tell you how many different sides of the coin there are if you only flip it once or twice.

Or proposing a hypothetical that you could flip it 100 times and it could all be the same result, thus flipping a coin to determine how many sides it has is worthless.

rambone

You made it meaningful in a 4 game context.

swish

bobc33 wrote:I understand some people understand and are interested in advanced stats, and I mean no offense to anyone, but I agree with Matty. I am beginning to tune out some of this Forum because it is too predictable and repetitious.

Enough said. I'm done with it.

swish wrote:rambone

You made it meaningful in a 4 game context.

swish

Yeah, but I backed it up with two whole seasons showing the same thing, not just above average but elite +/-.

rambone

Do the charts that you have been using take into consideration who Olnynk has been playing with as a group and who he has been playing against as a group ?

swish

For all NBA players with more than 20 total minutes played, this is the +/- per 36 leaderboard

Olynyk #1 in the NBA
RJ Hunter #2
Evan Turner #5
Jonas Jerebko #10

http://stats.nba.com/league/player/?ls=iref:nba:gnav#!/?sort=PLUS_MINUS&dir=1&Season=2015-16&SeasonType=Regular%20Season&PerMode=Per36&CF=GP*GE*3%7CMIN*GE*20

At the very least, we know that that bench unit is playing very well together.

Our bench was the best bench in the NBA from Feb on last year, and it's great to see it continuing to be the best despite not having IT4 alongside them.

All we need is our starters to keep the game close, preferably without opening the game with a quick 10 point deficit.

Before tonight Olynyk was 6th in +/- behind a bunch of GS Warriors.

Still a tiny sample size, but remember that Olynyk was T-32nd in the entire NBA in Real (adjusted for teammates and opponents) Plus Minus last year
http://espn.go.com/nba/statistics/rpm/_/year/2015/sort/RPM

And Jerebko's +/- while in Boston might have been better per 36.
I'd be thrilled if Olynyk could even duplicate that 32nd finish again this year, but there's a good chance he'll finish even higher.

And Turner's earning himself money so far this year. He might be a super-sub for the next 5-8 years if he keeps this up.

Unless of course RJ takes his job. Nice team results in very low minutes so far for RJ.

You noticed how his long wingspan and busy hands affect the game in ways that Bradley simply can't.

Opponents are shooting crazy high % from 3 against Bradley, because he doesn't have the reach to really challenge and affect the shots. I think RJ and his borderline-PF standing reach will make a really big difference in opponent 3 pt % throughout his career.

Olynyk's defensive rating barely moved after tonight. Still league best by a long shot for anybody with more than a handful of minutes:
http://stats.nba.com/league/player/#!/advanced/?sort=DEF_RATING&dir=-1

Jerebko 6th and Turner 9th.

David Lee a surprising 18th, Smart 20th, RJ Hunter 22nd.

All of those rankings will drop (plummet?) of course, except for perhaps Smart's, but pretty cool to see if only for a day or three.

Stats are for Losers- Red Auerbach

Crowder tied for 2nd in NBA in steals with 19.