Measuring impact in basketball | Plus minus & RAPM

Have we found the Holy Grail of basketball stats? In Part 5 of the Thinking Basketball stats series, we dive into the entire world of plus-minus as a way to determine impact or value. Is single-game plus-minus any good? Full season vs. on/off data? How do we account for teammates? And if we make the right adjustments, do we have an ideal one-number stat for ranking NBA players?

Stats series:

Additional resources:

Rob Antle summarizing RAPM:

Daniel Myers on APMs:

Joe Sill's paper using Ridge Regression:

Justin Jacobs series on Adjusted Plus-Minus (RAPM)




WOWYR primer:

Support at Patreon:
Book:
Podcast: (available on iTunes, Spotify, etc.)
Website:
Twitter: @elgee35

Ben Taylor is the author of Thinking Basketball, a Nylon Calculus contributor, creator of the Backpicks Top 40 series & host of the Thinking Basketball podcast.

Stats courtesy:
@bballport




Player art by @CrumpledJumper
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Music: Music by Jordan Ciurcovich (Forest) & The Way Forward, 80s Hairlight (Instrumental)

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