Plus-minus stats show Wolves players' impact

MINNEAPOLIS – There's no way to quantify what the Timberwolves lost when Ricky Rubio went down with a season-ending ACL injury on Friday. Sure, they lost his 10.6 points and 8.6 assists per game, but Rubio is one of those players who's a lot more than his stats indicate.

In fact, in the stretch before Rubio's injury when the Timberwolves went 5-2, the rookie averaged just 6.14 points and 6.86 assists. It looked like a mini-slump, but even without the numbers, he still played an integral part in his team's record in those games.

Rubio is the kind of player who starts things on the floor, who sparks an offense. He's clutch, the player coach Rick Adelman wants in the game when it matters. That's where plus-minus comes in. Plus-minus, originally an ice hockey statistic that's become popular in basketball in recent years, measures how well the team does when an individual player is on the court. A positive plus-minus means the team scores more than its opponent when he's in the game, and a negative means the team is outscored.

On the season, Rubio has the fourth-highest plus-minus of any Timberwolves player: +51. That's worse than just Kevin Love (+92), J.J. Barea (+63) and Nikola Pekovic (+59). Those numbers make sense. Love is the best player on the team without a doubt, and Pekovic has emerged as one of the league's better centers this year. Barea, though he's criticized for his shooting at times, continues to see minutes when he's healthy, and it's at least in part due to his plus-minus, the intangible spark he brings to the offense.

Looking at the list of Timberwolves' plus-minus numbers yields few surprises. Barea's number might be higher than expected, but the biggest shock on the list is Luke Ridnour, who has a plus-minus of -38. That's better than only Darko Milicic (-44) and Wes Johnson (-75), and worse than Anthony Randolph (-20).

So yes, losing the player with the fourth-best plus minus on your team hurts. But it could be worse. Despite his poor plus-minus and small size, Ridnour has become a scoring threat and a solid defender, and Barea's plus-minus is better even than Rubio's. In fact, when ranking the best five-player combinations in terms of plus-minus, Rubio isn't even a part of the team's most effective lineup. The combination of Ridnour, Love, Pekovic, Wayne Ellington and Johnson, though it's played just 23:28 together, has a +22 mark, good for the best combination on the team.

In fact, of the team's five best plus-minus combinations, Rubio appears in just one. Granted, these aren't the most common lineups – the starting lineup that included Rubio has logged 267 minutes, while these combinations have logged anywhere from 16 to 33 on the season – but it's a good sign that these Rubio-free combinations can be effective. It will take time to see just how effective in the long-term, though.

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