The Rise of Plus Minus Stat in Basketball Analytics
Transcript
00:00 (upbeat music)
00:03 - Talk about the column today about Plus Minus
00:05 because I read it right before you came on.
00:08 You came out today on the Sporting News.
00:10 It's a stat that is still around everywhere.
00:13 You see it obviously in college basketball, NBA,
00:16 it's on all the stat sheets every night.
00:18 Tell me a little bit about the column today
00:20 about Plus Minus.
00:22 - Yeah, I've known Andy Hill who played for UCLA
00:25 in the early 1970s for about 20 years or so.
00:30 And Andy was, well, he played, but he didn't play a ton.
00:33 And that was always a sort of a issue for him
00:38 with coach John Wooden.
00:40 He went into coaching for a while
00:43 and was a assistant coach at Santa Monica Community College
00:47 and had a guy that he thought could do more
00:49 to help the team other than score points and rebound.
00:52 And then he had another guy that he thought
00:55 was doing a lot to help the team,
00:56 but happened to be five foot three
00:58 and wasn't getting the credit from the head coach.
01:01 And so he came up with this idea that what you're doing
01:05 on the floor to help the team win may be more important
01:09 than maybe how many points or rebounds you produce.
01:12 And so he came up with the Plus Minus.
01:14 Now he does not say that he invented the concept
01:19 because hockey had been doing it,
01:21 but he did this unaware that hockey had been doing it
01:24 'cause he lived in Southern California
01:25 and hockey was barely there.
01:27 And so he also could never swear
01:31 that there weren't individual teams charting it.
01:33 But when he took it to John Wooden,
01:35 he figured if John Wooden hadn't heard of this,
01:37 then probably it wasn't common.
01:40 And John thought it was a great idea
01:43 and that he was not aware of it.
01:45 So Andy wrote an article for Scholastic Coach Magazine
01:50 and put it out there.
01:52 And it continually has grown.
01:55 It wasn't on NBA box scores until the late 2000s,
01:58 the 00s decade.
02:01 It became, one of the things that I found most fascinating
02:04 in my research was the fact that Darryl Morey,
02:08 who is known as an analytics guru as a GM,
02:11 but in Houston and Philly was really into Plus Minus,
02:16 especially when he had Shane Battier
02:17 as a key player for the Rockets.
02:19 I thought, it's supposed to be one of those stats
02:22 that's not modern maybe,
02:25 'cause it was introduced about 50 years ago,
02:27 but there was Morey really endorsing it in an article
02:30 that was in the New York Times Magazine about 15 years ago.
02:34 So I think it was kind of fascinating.
02:37 And I talked to a lot of people
02:38 who are into modern analytics.
02:40 And one of the interesting things that I also discovered
02:42 was there's a site called CBB Analytics
02:45 for college basketball,
02:47 where they've kind of taken Plus Minus to a whole new level.
02:50 And they can tell you just about everything
02:52 that happens on the floor,
02:53 including how much popcorn is sold
02:55 when a player is on or off the floor.
02:59 - Well, that's the world that we live in now, Mike,
03:01 the charts and graphs world,
03:02 where we can get numbers on pretty much anything
03:05 in every single sport at any time.
03:08 All right, to the brackets,
03:10 actually there's like kind of a side thing with this,
03:12 'cause one of your last four teams in,
03:15 that would be in one of the playing games right now,
03:17 is Wake Forest.
03:19 Off of the back, of course, of that Saturday win over Duke,
03:22 which has caused obviously some controversy
03:25 about the court storming afterwards.
03:28 This isn't even the first time this season, Mike,
03:30 that me and you have talked about court storming,
03:33 because we had the Caitlin Clark incident
03:35 about a month and a half ago, whenever that was.
03:38 Again, Mike, I don't know how you solve this problem.
03:41 I've seen all the talking heads give all their ideas
03:44 over the last couple of days.
03:47 It's a very tough thing to do,
03:48 but there's gotta be something done,
03:50 'cause Filipowski gets hurt
03:51 in the process of it happening on Saturday.
03:54 Yeah, I'm really happy that Kyle's not hurt badly.
03:57 And obviously, look what we would have missed
03:59 over the last month if Caitlin had been injured.
04:01 We would have missed her breaking
04:03 the career women's NCAA scoring record.
04:06 We would have missed her chasing Lynette Woodard
04:09 for the all-time major conference women's scoring record.
04:12 We would have missed her taking a shot
04:14 at another NCAA tournament in Final Four, et cetera.
04:18 And so, when I see, I always remember Kenyon Martin
04:23 and how innocuous the collision he had
04:26 in the 2000 Conference USA tournament was
04:30 with an opponent from St. Louis,
04:32 and it turned out he broke his leg in two places.
04:35 And so, either one of these instances
04:37 could have produced something like that.
04:39 And we're fortunate, blessed, honestly,
04:42 that it didn't turn out that way.
04:45 So, I think the thing to do
04:47 is you don't allow it to happen.
04:49 And it's not that hard to solve it.
04:52 In reality, they haven't been trying.
04:54 Even the fines are now, in the places where it is fined,
04:58 especially the SEC has a very high standard
05:03 for fines relative to court or field storming.
05:06 Even that is looked at as basically a marketing expense.
05:10 Hey, look how cool this place is when we win a big game.
05:14 So, I think the way to stop it is that
05:18 if you storm the court, there are serious consequences,
05:22 whether to the stormers or to the team,
05:24 and then it'll stop.
05:26 And my point always has been,
05:29 I'm huge on having fun at sporting events.
05:32 I do it myself.
05:33 I don't just cover them.
05:34 I am a fan of particular teams,
05:36 and I go to their games and I enjoy them.
05:39 But I don't need to be on the floor to enjoy them.
05:42 The fans at Allen Fieldhouse never storm,
05:45 and they have the best time.
05:46 Mackey Arena, same thing.
05:48 So, you can get away without storming the floor
05:52 and still have a fabulous night
05:53 when Wake Forest beats Duke,
05:55 or Ohio State women beat Kaitlyn Clark and Iowa women,
05:59 and on down the line.
06:00 - You certainly can.
06:02 And me and Pharrell were talking about it yesterday.
06:04 It's like, in the pros, you go to an NBA game,
06:08 you're on the court, you go to jail.
06:11 You run out on a Major League Baseball field,
06:13 you go to jail.
06:14 That's one or two people running at once,
06:17 but still, there's gotta be some consequences
06:20 when this stuff does go on.
06:21 All right, your last four in, as I mentioned.
06:23 Wake Forest, Texas A&M, Virginia, Ole Miss,
06:27 and I guess then the two right in front of them,
06:30 the Big East teams, Seton Hall and Providence.
06:34 Obviously, Mike, all these teams
06:36 still have a lot of work to do,
06:38 as we've got the last two weeks of the regular season,
06:40 and then the conference tournaments to go.
06:42 Who else do you have right on that cusp,
06:46 your first four out, right after that group of six?
06:49 - On the outside of it?
06:51 Yeah, I think you're looking at teams like Pitt,
06:55 which, honestly, it's interesting.
06:57 Pitt's a great example.
06:58 (upbeat music)
07:01 (upbeat music)