re: AD is averaging 27.6 ppg per 36 minutes with LAL

Ja has the “wow” factor because of his size and style, but Zion has been significantly better.

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Ja has the “wow” factor because of his size and style, but Zion has been significantly better.

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While Zion having more impact seemed correct, I was curious if this was true and to what extent, knowing that his small sample size does make it harder to estimate.

And as a stat nerd, I particularly enjoy the various advanced +/- metrics of impact, especially since there are more ways to measure impact (on-off data, box-score data, tracking data, play-by-play data, combinations of these data) and different ways to model the data. So for the past couple years, I’ve been trying to find all the metrics available, to compare the results and aggregate them to ideally find the best estimate with the lowest error.

As of now, I’ve identified 10 broad metrics, but 2 have adjustments to increase accuracy (e.g., luck adjustment) so I use the adjusted ones, which leave 8 total. But due to the sample size, only 7 are available Zion.

Based on 8 +/- metrics Ja and 7 for Zion, the average +/- point impact per 100 possessions is +1.36 for Zion and +0.25 for Ja, which is a 1.11 advantage for Zion. A larger sample size will eventually allow for a more confident comparison, but based on the current data, Zion does a have a clear advantage, it’s not as significant as one might expect. And when you consider that Ja has played considerably more (> 1100 minutes), and probably will have 1000-1200 more minutes by the end of year, there is a good chance Ja’s OVERALL positive impact will be greater.