Player ratings - K-State (Jalen Explodes, Christian implodes)

Christian Braun has been fliting with having a bad game for the last 7 games. He finally succeeded. But Jalen Wilson had his best game of the season with a total player rating of 21.7. That is good for the 10th best player rating on the team for the entire season. Really all of the other starters plus Mitch Lightfoot had great games save for Christian. As I said, Christian has been struggling since the George Mason game. Well, struggling is probably a strong word. More accurately, Christian has been contributing significantly but has not been fully on his "A" game since George Mason. This was by far his worst game of the season. But kudos especially to Jalen Wilson, but also to Ochai, DaJaun, David and Mitch. Jalen's 21.6 was 27% of KU's total. Only Ochai against Iowa St. (29.3%) and Christian against Dayton (36.3%) were a higher percentage of the total team rating. A great game by Jalen.

Yes Mr. Wilson did so many good things for this game. That was a very mentally tough team to come back and earn the win.

I have to wonder about a metric that considers an 11 point, 5 assist performance as "bad."

I was going to say bad is a relative term. For Mr. Braun and what The Hawks need from Mr. Braun this was sub par. But we are expecting great things and as you point out 11 points and 5 assists is not really bad.

Yes, bad is probably a poor choice of words. Hairy is correct, bad is applicable only relatively. 11 points and 5 assists is a nice stat line if it stopped there. But you cannot cite only his positive contributions and ignore his negative stats if you are rating his overall performance. As HE points out.

1. He missed 6 shots, 4 3-pointers and and 2 2-pointers. That statistically is equivalent to 4.4 turnovers.
2. He had 3 TO's.
3. He had 2 rebounds in 35 minutes for a 2.3 rebound per 40 minute rate. That is considerably statistically below expectation
4. His +/- was 1 (or 1.14 per 40) while the team average was 3. This is more significant than you might think. Not terrible but compared to Wilson (+/- of 12 or 15.5 per 40) whose +/- per 40 is 13 times better. From a +/- standpoint the Jayhawks were better when Braun was on the bench.

So when you account for all of the meaningful stats his performance did not meet the expectation for a player who is on the floor for 36 minutes. Now to be fair, interpreting the Player Rating is nuanced. If you put Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, John Stockton and Joe Schmoe from Schenectady on the court, Joe will likely have a poor player rating simply because the other four guys do all the heavy lifting. That does not necessarily mean Joe had a "bad" game, but it does decidedly mean that Joe contributed far less to the success of the team. The analogy is that yesterday, Braun may not have had a "bad" game depending on your definition of bad (which definition is usually simply a biased assessment) but he contributed less to the overall success of the team than his teammates who had higher player ratings. The player rating uses 3 disconnected and separate metrics, both individual and team related, to attempt to cover all germane aspects of a players ability to affect the outcome of the game in terms of scoring and keeping the opponent from scoring. You are free to discount it to your hearts content, but criticizing or discounting something you do not remotely comprehend seems a little unwise.

Agree: "bad" is a poor choice of words, especially when it is not statistically defined. .

"...criticizing or discounting something you do not remotely comprehend seems a little unwise." Really? You think you player rating metric is so mathematically complex that I can't understand it? You don't have any idea what I do or do not comprehend, sport. I'm guilty of a poor choice of words also. There's nothing wrong per se with the "metric." My problem is with its application and interpretation.