PAT 2024 – A Season in Review

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As far as “pet metrics developed in the warmth of one’s own imaginative ignorance” go, PAT is one I’m relatively proud of. 

PAT – or, if you prefer its Christian name, Player Plus-Minus per Minute above Team Plus-Minus per Minute – is my own attempt at quantifying a player’s contribution towards winning. A high PAT means your Plus-Minus is relatively high compared to that of your team. A low PAT means – well, the opposite; es no bueno. 

I “discovered” PAT much in the same Columbus “discovered” the Caribbean: to the delight of my own self-importance, to the dismay of the giants and their shoulders, who I am sure eye such a troglodyte calculation with the same mix of pathos and paternalism that I reserve for my dog when I watch her trying to crack open the treat cabinet from my surreptitious Eye in the Sky. How cute. 

All this to say: I know PAT is not perfect. I know there are a ton of superior methods out there, involving possession-level data, and enlisting the help of advanced artificial intelligence models like ChatGPT (whom I have taken to calling Comrade, as he is my ally in the struggle against the bourgeois elite). 
But possession-level data is eXXXpen$$ive, and I have Comrade Chat enlisted in … other matters … so for the moment, PAT is my son, and I am proud of you PAT. 

So … on with the Revolution! We’ve closed the books on 2023, and what does PAT have to say about the Association’s best and brightest?

(The data is filtered for players who have qualified based on “Superstar” or “Star” level minutes.) 

For the 4^th consecutive year, Jokic reigns as Župan of the NBA.  

Owing to his quantum entanglement with Jokic, Braun clocks in at number 2, which demonstrates the deficiency of relying on PAT without any context. Even so, good for the young lad. 

His praises oft-unsung, the Zoo-Bot takes the bronze spot, achieving career-bests in virtually every category. The 9-year bump is real. 

Then the remainder of the 2024 MVP triumvirate conversation: Shai and Giannis, both Top 20 finishers in PAT last year. 

Franz! He’s back, ever the analytics darling. 3 of his 4 seasons, Franz has finished with a PAT above .06. 
Siakam, too, has long been a consistent Value-Add player, and maybe the most unheralded star / superstar-adjacent player in the league. 

This is a fundamentally positive forum, but we’d be remiss, absolutely bereft of journalistic integrity, if we did not also present the PAT knuckleheads and nincompoops. 

The Kooooz. This is year 4 of 5 Kuzma has finished in Bottom 10 PAT. And while I have a mandatory court order to stay within 500 feet of any claim such as “oracle” or “soothsayer”, I could have advised John Horst and Old Man Rivers that trading for Kuzma was an expressway to a first round exit. 

At least with respect to volume metrics, Grimes improved with his midseason move to Philadelphia, but from a perspective of efficiency, PAT remains unconvinced. 

Further down the list, we find an old, familiar friend. Westbrook suffers in part from the inverse of the “Jokic Minutes” Effect, but to call a spade a spade – he’s also just Russell Westbrook, permanent resident of Negative PAT for all years since 2019.  

And, while perhaps it is anathema to the very Spirit of the Game, to bring the mumblings and petitions of the peasant class before The King, here they are: Lebron had a cumulative Plus-Minus of –54 over the course of the regular season. Remarkable longevity, unbelievable ambassador of the game, unprecedented numbers for his age for any age, boilerplate compliments. But Lebron had a PAT of -.06.   

So: we now address the Christian Braun Conundrum (or what in previous years has been the Aaron Gordon Conundrum, or the Caldwell-Pope Phenomenon). How do we disentangle the Plus-Minus of a star (*vigorous Eastern European bubonic cough, Jokic, phlegherm*) from that of his orbital asteroid also-rans? 

There are actual solutions, proposed by real grown-ups: Adjusted Plus-Minus, Regularized Adjusted Plus-Minus, With-or-Without-You (my personal favorite, as far as naming goes) Analysis, and the like. But as an irresponsible statistician, I have my own homeopathic hangover cure: plot that sucker PAT against % of PRA (that is, the piece of the pie of a team’s Points + Rebounds + Assists that a player is responsible for), and see what comes out at the other end. 

The mental algorithm: 

• Further up means more efficient (higher PAT) 

• Further to the right means more volume (higher of % of Team PRA) 

• Bigger Bubble = Better Plus-Minus 

Putting those two facts together: 

• Up and to the right is the double-rainbow of Efficient and Voluminous (oh my) 

• Down and to the right are the workhorses who kind-of maybe don’t help their teams too much as far Plus-Minus is concerned 

• Up and to the left are some of those star players who contribute to winning basketball, but are not necessarily the catalysts of it 

• Down and to the left… we won’t concern ourselves with that shadowy place. We must never go there 

Setting up shop where you would normally put your name and today’s date (at least that’s the way central Texas public education reared me) are the usual suspects: the Joker, Shai, and Johnny Buck. Rightly considered the best players in the NBA. 

Zubac and Braun operate on increasingly on the “high efficiency but non-elite production” knife’s edge of the chart. Franz and Siakam whiff around their territory, as does Jamal Murray.  

KAT and Sengun are both of the “skilled, productive Big Fellas who are the engines of their fringe elite teams” vintage. Both duly deserve pounding of firsts on tables for secondary and tertiary All-NBA ballots. And Sabonis, if you think playoffs are kind of overrated. 

I get the sense Trae Young is summarily dismissed in the minds of most (myself included) from Club Superstar, but his balanced performance this year warrants praise. While the Hawks mostly drew dead (net margin of about –1 per game), the Maestro had a positive Plus-Minus, and accounted for about 20% of his team’s total offensive output. 

Guys like Tatum, Harden, Cade, and Herro deserve plaudits for shouldering a high degree of their team’s output, and doing so with positive PAT. Tatum in particular is unfairly penalized, given how good the Celtics are (i.e., how hard it would be for him to finesse an elite PAT). 

I have two other half-baked, nitrogen-chilled ways to evaluate players on a mixed basis of player efficiency (some version of PAT) and player volume (some version of PRA). And they are: 

MANTRAP 

SANTRAP 

Whoa Nelson!! What the hell are those!!?? 

I’ll give you their full lineage, and perhaps you can Sherlock Holmes how I arrived at those silly acronyms (initialisms? At this point, I’m not certain). 

MAN-TRAP 

Multiplied Average of Minutes-Normalized PAT Percentile and Position PRA Percentile 

MA – MN PAT Perc – P PRA Perc  

MAN – M AT P – P RAP 

MAN – T – RAP 

MANTRAP 

SAN-TRAP 

Summed Average of Minutes-Normalized PAT Percentile and Position PRA Percentile 

SA – MN PAT Perc – P PRA Perc  

SAN – M AT P – P RAP 

SAN – T – RAP 

SANTRAP 

There you go. The silent rush whooshing beside you are the 30 seconds of your life you’ll never get back. Perhaps more if you persist in reading this article. 

So what are these unwieldy behemoths? Fundamentally, they are a way of balancing PAT and PRA into one number, taking into account a) the fact that PAT can be high for players that only play garbage time minutes, and b) PRA looks different for different position groups.  

With these irrevocable facts of life … let’s look at rankings along both dimensions! 

Egads!! The familiar troika. (Jokshiannis, since I’m still in a letter-mashing mood.) 

Curry wasn’t discussed in the first section, and he just missed the superstar minutes cutoff due to injury in the previous section, but this is your friendly reminder he is still awesome, ranking in the Top 5 in both charts.  

Wagner and Zubac! Again! Those continental boffins of basketball.  

By virtue of the perpetual horribleness of the Hornets, Bridges consistently gets high marks in PAT, and volumetrically ranks as top dozen forward. Triple J and Mobley are both good young, centers as second-ish / third-ish options on good teams.  

The final spots in the dirty dozen take us back to the heady days of 2021, when the wildfires of the Luka-Trae debate tore through our hearts and minds, with a sad and forlorn DeAndre Ayton standing by himself in a corner. We’ve talked about the sneaky not-too-shabbiness of Young. Because of his injury and re-integration into a new team, Luka did not put up the volume we are used to from Agent Double 7; but, evidently at the expense of his buddy Lebron, his efficiency is improving for the better. 

(So with those considerations, a would-be MVP ballot, if anyone asked. Which they didn’t. Or anyone cared. Which they don’t. 

1. Jokic 

2. Shai 

3. Giannis  

4. KAT 

5. Taytum 

6. Sengun 

7. Curry 

8. Cade 

9. Trae 

10.  Zubac 

11.  Siakam 

12.  Sabonis 

) 

And now shouting out the young guns!! How did rookies fare under the relentless microscope of PAT, MANTRAP, SANTRAP, and that whole incestuous family?? 

Again, fundamentally positive forum, but I’ll state the surgeon general warning: a torrent of Wembanyama challengers, there are not. 

Even so, with Edey, Clingan, and Ware, we have 3 young centers who could develop into solidly average NBA big men. Edey got all the press for his efforts in the play-in and in being broomed by the Thunder round 1 (and, more likely, because of his university fame, and being the NBA’s currently most vertical human), but Clingan came on strong near the end of the year. Either of the two would be worthy candidates for ROTY, though the recipient of the Indian Flatbread, one Stephon Castle, was less impressive by estimation of the von TRAPs. 

ROTY Ballot: 

1. Edey 

2. The Klingon 

3. Kel’el Ware