Plus/minus stats not adjusted, not weighted and from a small sample (less than a couple of seasons) are "kind of useless" at best and "extremely misleading" at worst - and even more with role-players that play lots of garbage time. Even adjusted +/- for lots of seasons are more of a descriptive stat that can be extremely misleading.
People just try to read too much on them. By those metrics, Perkins is a better offensive player than Pierce and Matt Bonner a better defensive player than Tim Duncan.
There is no metric that measures spacing. THere are lots of stuff in basketball that can't be measured in a quantitative way. One of the good things about european basketball is that one can have lengthy discussions about a player without anyone even mentioning a single stat. I mean, the Euroleague MVP didn't lead his team in a single statistical category. Would that ever happen in the NBA? I don't think so. And still, he was clearly the best player for everyone watching the games, completely consensual choice.
Basketball players produce externalities that are not measurable.
- Scal is the 4the best 3pt shooter in the team and the second in the bench. Of course he provides spacing, just watch the games.
- Scal doesn't produce turnovers. That's important for this team.
But, above all, people should try to be consistent:
-If Scal's spacing produces a tangible variation in scoring, we should see it in +/- ratings, right?
I'm honestly just trying to figure out, when Scal is making a positive contribution, where it will show up in the data.
In terms of 48 minute averages, only Ray Allen is a worse rebounder than Scal. That's right -- Rondo and Eddie House are both more efficient rebounders.
And yet, we're a better rebounding team when Scal is on the floor! What failed there?
p.s. - And I'm of the opinion that Scal should be out of the regular rotation ASAP (although not yet), in spite of having said that Doc should put him in the rotation well before that happened - and I'm not surprised by the results so far.