Article:http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/post/_/id/12040/plusminus-is-not-the-devil

I love it when somebody else proves my point for me.
This is a great reason why I'm simply not sold onAndre Millerfor this team.

Excerpt:

On Tuesday night Portland, a slow team, played super fast Memphis. Portland's starting point guard is Andre "not as fast as I used to be" Miller. Was Miller going to get back and stopO.J. MayoandMike Conleyon the break? Not so much, it turned out. Instead, he abandoned that task much of the game to crash the offensive boards like the center Portland doesn't have. Heroically, one of the smallest players on the floor, who prefers not to jump, grabbed a whopping ten rebounds, five at the offensive end.

But as Miller was seeking offensive rebounds, he was busynot减缓Grizzlies在公开法庭。

Was that a shrewd move on Miller's part? Were the rebounds more valuable than getting back on defense? I don't know. Blazer fans certainly cheered his grit.

But CoachNate McMillanacted less impressed. He benched Miller for almost the entire fourth quarter, only inserting him whenJuwan Howardfouled out with eight seconds left. (That also could have been because Miller is one of the team's elder statesmen who had been playing really hard for two straight nights.)

So, was Miller helping the team or hurting it with his Rodmanesque ways? Would the Blazers have been better off with Miller running the team or Jerryd "fresh legs to get back on D" Bayless who played instead?

It's an honest and important basketball question, and one that's very hard to answer. But as smart people mull that, wouldn't they like to see a simple record of how the team fared with each guard running the show? If one of them was plus-three and the other was minus-one then maybe it wouldn't really move the conversation along. But what if one of them was plus-18 and the other was minus-20? Why would you not want to know that, at least as a point to investigate further? Again, not that it works as a ranking of player quality, but it's a clue about what's working.

As it happens, in this game Miller was minus-11, and Bayless was plus-seven. If you're one of those Blazer fans livid at McMillan for benching Miller in the fourth, that ought not be the final word in proving McMillan was right. Remember, this is a tiny sample size, that may well mean nothing.Couldbe random noise. But it ought to at least open your mind to the idea that he might have seen something. It ought to open your mind to digging in further before forming any emphatic view, or arguing too loudly that the team was blatantly better with Miller in the game.