Real plus minus usage at ESPN and with teams

[Crow]

ESPN brought real plus minus to its site about 10 years after Dan Rosenbaum's first article about it at 82 games.

Since the unveiling a search at ESPN http://search.espn.go.com/results?searchString=real plus minus&start=null&dims=0 shows 10 articles there (not 14 to my eyes) that referred to it in the first 10 days but none since. 43 days has passed since it was referenced in an ESPN article, at least according to its own search engine. I guess it is the playoffs now and that may explain it (though I'd still refer to regular season RPM for playoff analysis in the absence of multi-year playoff RPM, which might be worth a try), but I sure hope the usage resumes in off-season and next season.




I can think of only 3-4 owners / GMs that I have heard make more than a one sentence or paragraph passing acknowledgment of it. I can't recall an active coach or player citing a specific estimate and never really saying anything significant about their awareness or use of it. I am told that lots of folks "have it" but have never had much basis for knowing / guessing how much anyone actually uses it. I know they may be reticent to talk about it even if they do use it but have I missed a recent meaningful discussion of this topic by one or more of these groups?

I was a bit tempted to post an anonymous poll aimed at just those who have worked inside teams to ask what the level of awareness & usage actually is inside teams (or the part they know) but I assume most or all would decline to participate because of current or past confidentiality agreements.

[Kevin Pelton]

I referenced it twice last week:
http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/story/_/ ... -value-nba
http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/story/_/ ... a-playoffs

[Crow]

That is good and you were likely to be the exception. Perhaps your 2 articles were among the 4 not displaying yet of the 14 total. Still, if there 4 more, they came at a rate of 1 per 10 days which is pretty low for a new feature. In first 10 years of public awareness of APM, ESPN had 1 mention a year. In first 10 days of onsite RPM it went to about 1 per day but then fell back to 1 in 10. I brought this up mainly to watch what happens from here. I'd guess we might see 50-100 mentions per year, mostly at about 4 times of year. That would be far more than the past but still probably way less than for PER and only in a tiny tiny silver of total articles.

Will this forum stay far and away the public place where RPM is most discussed and used? Probably in short run. Maybe in long run too, if this place lasts.

[mystic]

Will this forum stay far and away the public place where RPM is most discussed and used? Probably in short run. Maybe in long run too, if this place lasts.

Well, it was probably similar heavily discussed at the beginning on RealGM and I tried to reference that as the best public available "all-in-one" metric. But it is tough to get people used to it, also because a proper discription is still lacking. Well, I can imagine that it is tough to explain the metric and its usefulness to the common audience ...

[Kevin Pelton]

I think that ESPN search might be selling the references to Real Plus-Minus short. I'd imagine I've brought it up a few times in the interim. But I also suspect we'll see an increase in discussion as we move from the playoffs into the offseason, since there's a greater focus on player evaluation. I certainly see RPM playing a major role in my analysis of the free-agent market.

[Crow]

Yeah the search engine might be short selling. It doesn't do well searching for player efficiency rating either. Folks will probably be able to get a sense by feel if it is being used regularly or not, a lot or not.



Searching the internet on google for exactly real plus minus, it shows 165 references and then there were at least 300 more omitted entries. It is out there at least mildly.


Will it make it to ESPN team or player pages?

[Crow]

J.E. have you ever run RAPM / RPM for players by estimated position played that possession (and all of them)? I wonder for the guys with major time division between positions who revealing that might be.