Donte DiVincenzo breaks embarrassing Knicks record in loss to Pacers

More on the plus/minus statistic

For those unfamiliar with the +/- stat, it basically reflects how a team performs when a player is on the floor. Let’s say the said player finishes with a +3 rating. This means that while on the court, his team outscored the opposing team by 3 points. It’s the same thing the other way around, as a -3 rating implies that the opponents outscored the player’s team by 3 points while that said player was seeing action.

This is calculated by subtracting the opponent’s points scored when the player is on the court from the points scored by the player’s team while he is on the court. The stat is mostly used to give insights on a player’s intangible value, or how he affects a team’s performance besides the traditional box score numbers.

In DiVincenzo’s defense…

To be fair, one cannot make a solid conclusion about a player based on this stat alone. While it does give possible theories on his contribution, there are too many factors that come into play.

One issue is that the metric is determined by multiple players. If, for example, player A gets a +10 plus/minus, the actions of his four other teammates and his five opponents on the floor also factor into the rating. Specifically, if one of his teammates goes on a Kobe-esque scoring run by himself while player A is on the floor, but is barely involved in the plays, then player A’s plus/minus will still rise significantly.

On defense, if player A completely stops his man from scoring but his teammate gives up tons of points while both are on the floor, this will negatively affect player A’s rating as well. In other words, one cannot entirely isolate player A’s contributions on both ends.

This is just one of the many in-game factors that come into play when making conclusions based on a baller’s plus/minus rating. In other words, one has to have an apt knowledge of these other in-game factors in order to make a correct analysis involving the statistic.

And as for Donte DiVincenzo, his past few games have been outstanding. While he did score just seven points on Sunday, the guard averaged 26.5 points in the first three games of the series. During Game 3, DiVincenzo sank seven threes en route to a 35-point outing.

Knowing what he’s capable of, it won’t be surprising if a bounce-back game occurs in the coming days.