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Real Plus-Minus

ESPN's Real Plus-Minus

Today I read an article on ESPN that introduce a new version of the +/- metric system. In my past posting/blogging experience, I have treated almost all sabermetrics like the red headed step child that I never wanted. I never ever felt sports fans should concentrate too hard on one sabermetrics category. When I read the title of the article I was like, oh here we go again. Another metric that I will have to hear about on CH and completely disregard every post about it. But I actually took the time to read the article and liked most of what I read.

The new Plus-Minus metric has three different measurements right now. They said more were to be released very soon. But right now we have the RPM= Real Plus-Minus, ORPM= Offensive Real Plus-Minus, DRPM= Defensive Real Plus-Minus. If you have not guessed it by now, you ORPM + DRPM = RPM. Genius, pure genius!

My favorite part of this new Real Plus-Minus metric is there is now a way better way to measure defense! Oh boy do I love defense! A while back I posted about a potential "Fire Sale" for the Chicago Bulls. My main objective was to show how much I wanted the Timberwolves to get Taj Gibson. Todays article compared the 6th man contenders of Taj Gibson and Jamal Crawford. Crawford is extremely good at putting the ball in the basket. The DRPM shows that Crawford is worse on defense than he is good on offense. Thus having a negative RPM. I was shocked because I thought Crawford was a magician on offense. I knew Crawford didn't give much effort on defense, but I didn't think he played Olay D. I guess he does. Taj's impact on defense is why he is so good, thus giving him an incredible rating on DRPM and giving him a higher RPM then Crawford.

For all the breakaway steals and chase down blocks that LeBron gets, his DRPM is not very good. LeBron has been called out by the media plenty of times this season for coasting. But LeBron is not coasting on offense, he is taking a break on defense. Oh he turns it up in the 4th quarter. But this season Lebron has given an inconsistent effort in the first three quarters. When LeBron gets one of his TOP 10 highlight dunks and then pounds his chest and points into the crowd. The other team is already back on the attack. Sorry LeBron but this new metric has officially exposed your effort this season.

Now in my opinion this new metric is not perfect and I believe no metric for measuring how good basketball players are is perfect. Looking at one metric is not the answer or even combining multiples. All systems are flawed because they can never truly take out the team chemistry in metrics or statistics. Every player is a product of his teammates and this will always inflate or deflate a players numbers. I really just like this new metric because of the defense rating.

Has anyone else read the article and if so, what do you think? As soon as I read this I new I was going to post it to CH. Why, because I hate the comments and the people that come with those comments on ESPN!

ESPN's Real Plus-Minus