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 meanin...