In hoops, plus-minus is a zero

A while back, someone decided the plus-minus category that long has been a part of hockey statistics should be applied to basketball as well.

I don’t closely follow hockey, but I’ve always assumed plus-minus is of value there, where it originated.

In basketball, in my humble opinion, plus-minus is as useful as a fork in a soup kitchen.

The concept is so simple that, on its face, it would seem to make sense. It measures how a team does when a particular player is in the game. A plus number means a team outscored the opposition when that player was on the court; a minus number means the opposite. 

In practice, plus-minus simply doesn’t compute. 

Example: the New Mexico Lobos’ 82-70 victory over Central Arkansas on Sunday afternoon at Dreamstyle Arena in Albuquerque.

The final statistics show UNM senior guard Anthony Mathis with a team-best plus-16. They show Lobos junior forward/post Carlton Bragg with a team-worst minus-4. 

Those numbers are virtually meaningless. 

The real numbers are these:

Bragg, a 6-foot-10 transfer who was playing his first game for UNM, finished with 16 points on 7-of-12 shooting and seven rebounds in 22 minutes of playing time. Regarding his plus-minus, it’s not as if he was a sieve on defense or committed a bunch of turnovers. It’s just that there were nine other players on the court at all times, doing good things and bad.

Mathis scored 15 points but was 4-of-15 on 3-pointers — his specialty; he’s one of the best in the nation from beyond the arc. Mathis hit two 3-pointers late that helped the Lobos put the game away, but at one point he had missed six 3s in a row. 

Ultimately, both players made positive contributions to the Lobos’ victory. But who had the better game? Plus-minus numbers aside, I’d go with Bragg. 

Having gone through the official play-by-play and having watched and re-watched the telecast of the game on AT&T Sports Net, here’s what I found:

Mathis started the game and played the first 5 minutes, 2 seconds, during which New Mexico grabbed an 11-6 lead. He did not score during that stretch, missing the one 3-pointer he took, though he did have an assist and two rebounds. In any case, that’s plus-five for Mathis — though it was a pair of 3s from sophomore forward Makuach Maluach (a game-high 22 points in 29 minutes on 8-of-11 shooting, plus-11) that did most of the damage for the Lobos.

In the second half, during a span of 4:57, the Lobos outscored the Bears  17-11 to take a 63-50 lead. Mathis, who was in the game that entire stretch, did not score and missed four 3-pointers. Maluach, Karim Ezzeddine, Vance Jackson, Keith McGee and Bragg accounted for the 17 points. 

Is not not possible that, even if he’s not scoring and missing his 3-point attempts, Mathis is contributing in other ways — as a steadying influence, perhaps? Sure, it’s possible.

Then, playing the final game’s final 4:17, Mathis hit back-to-back 3-pointers within a span of 30 seconds. Sandwiched around a Central Arkansas layup, Mathis’ 3s gave the Lobos a 10-point lead that wasn’t threatened the rest of the way. 

Mathis was plus-five in those final minutes. By my calculations he was plus-18 for the game, not 16. But I’ll defer to the official stats.

Bragg, meanwhile, made his first appearance as a Lobo with 14:58 left in the first half. He hit a pair of free throws during that brief (1:45) stint, but the Lobos were outscored by a point.

He re-entered the game with 11:15 left in the half and did not score before coming out with 8:30 left. Again, the Lobos lost one point of their lead.

The Lobos broke even during Bragg’s next stint, a 4:08 stretch during which he did not score but had two defensive rebounds and a steal. Then, back in the game for the final 1:02 of the half, he hit a layup with 13 seconds left to give UNM a 40-32 lead. He was plus-two for that final 1:02.

Bragg started the second half and was minus-1 before coming out with 17:27 left. He scored on a layup for the Lobos’ first points of the half.

He did his best work of the day during his second appearance of the second half, scoring eight of his 16 points during a 4 minute, 41-second stretch. But no other Lobo scored during that span, and therefore Bragg was minus-1. As if it was his fault.

Bragg scored his final two points of the day during a stretch from 7:10-4:17, but other Lobos committed four turnovers, two of them in attempts to get the ball to Bragg in the paint. As noted by Journal men’s basketball beat writer Geoff Grammer in his postgame coverage, that happened several times during the game — negatively affecting Bragg’s plus-minus through no fault of his own. He was minus-3 for that stretch.

Back in the game for the final 1:02, Bragg was plus-2 — thanks to four points from Maluach and a Drue Drinnon free throw. 

Again, I differed slightly from the official stats. I had Bragg finishing at minus-3, not minus-4.

Well, OK, I hear you say; for one game, plus-minus can be misleading. But wouldn’t plus-minus be a valid statistic over a longer span of time?

I don’t think so. In the NBA, season plus-minus leaders virtually always turn out to be the better players on the better teams who play a bunch of minutes. Duh.

So, it says here, forget plus-minus. Give me points, shooting percentages, rebounds, assists-to-turnover ratio … you know, the real numbers.