Plusminus

The “plusminus” stat is the least known, but one of the most revealing stats in pro basketball. When it was originally employed in the 2006/07 season, it was called the “Lenovo +/- stat,” after the computer company that compiled the numbers and wrested the “Official NBA Computer" title from Dell. When the NBA reached a new deal with HP this season, Autotrader.com took over sponsorship of the stat.

The meaning of the stat is pretty simple. The number represents the amount of points a player’s team scored while he was in the game minus the amount of points the opposing team scored. A positive number means his team gained ground while he was in the game; a negative number means they lost ground. It was designed to show which combinations of players played the best together, but the stat is even more telling as to which individual players really benefit their team. For instance, Shane Battier is often besmirched for not piling up the big scoring, rebounding and assist numbers. The plusminus stat, however, reveals that the Rockets have scored 168 points more than their opponents this season while he was in the games. On a per-minute basis, that is second only to Yao Ming on the Rockets and 34th in the league overall, despite missing 22 games early in the season due to injury.

The stat has its weaknesses. It does not take into account the rest of the team on the court at the time. On a really bad team, even the good players may have bad plusminus numbers. Like most stats, it is also not very valuable for short periods of time, but over the course of a season, when comparing apples to apples (factoring in the team around him, for instance), it is a very interesting indicator of which players help their team to win and which don’t. Mostly, the best players on the best teams have the biggest numbers. That is as it should be, since the best players make their teams better.

Check it out at http://www.nba.com/statistics/plusminus/plusminus.jsp.