Last post, I mentioned that Kevin Durant was the UARPM100 MVP, and I gave a top 10 list of players in Wins Above Replacement as well. After looking through the numbers, something that occurred to me was that the number of total wins under those numbers didn’t sum up to team level wins. That was primarily an effect of including raw per minute plus-minus numbers as part of the UARPM formulation. Basically, good teams had too many wins, and poor teams had too few wins. So I decided to correct that. I adjusted the UARPM100 numbers using a per minute adjustment for each player on the team so that total team plus-minus was equal to team SRS (basically point differential adjusted for strength of schedule) via Basketball-Reference. The final numbers are posted on the UARPM100 page.
The top 10 is basically the same, with Carmelo Anthony jumping into the 8th spot, and DeAndre Jordan sliding to 10th. The total number of wins are reduced across the board, and they are no longer set to above replacement, because I decided it’d be more interesting to just have total wins contributed. You can easily turn wins into Wins per 48 minutes by dividing by minutes played and multiplying by 48. Durant and LeBron were nearly exactly the same in per possession impact by UARPM100, with Durant’s heavier minutes load giving him the edge in wins. Chris Paul also remains the best per-possession player in the league, even after the team adjustment.
Here’s the updated top 20:
RankPlayersMINUARPM100Wins1Kevin Durant31226.720.02LeBron James29026.718.63Kevin Love27966.417.64Stephen Curry28466.117.35Blake Griffin28635.215.86Chris Paul21717.214.77Joakim Noah28204.614.38Carmelo Anthony29824.114.39James Harden27774.514.110DeAndre Jordan28704.213.911Paul George28984.113.912DeMarcus Cousins22985.913.713John Wall29803.513.114LaMarcus Aldridge24994.713.015Kyle Lowry28623.512.616Dwight Howard23964.612.217Goran Dragic26683.611.918Anthony Davis23584.411.719Al Jefferson25533.811.720Serge Ibaka26663.411.6
All in all, this seems like a pretty credible list. For what it’s worth, Rookie of the Year award winner, Michael Carter-Williams produced 6.1 wins under UARPM100, well ahead of runner-up Victor Oladipo who clocked in at 4.7 wins. The voters appear to be doing a pretty good job.
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