Plus/Minus
The point differential while a player is on the court. If your team outscores the opponent by 8 during your 28 minutes, your plus/minus is +8. If they outscore you by 3, it's -3.
Every other basic stat measures what a player does with the ball. Plus/minus measures what happens to the game when they're playing — regardless of whether they touch the ball. It's the box score's only attempt to capture total impact rather than individual actions.
Benchmarks
- Around zero: average contributor
- +4 to +7: meaningful positive impact
- +8 and above: elite differential
- Negative: team plays worse with player on court
Season totals matter more than single-game numbers — plus/minus is volatile game to game.
In 2025–26, Olympiacos dominates the plus/minus leaderboard with four players in the top eight: Thomas Walkup leads the league at +6.2, followed by Tyson Ward at +5.9, Sasha Vezenkov at +5.3, and Tyler Dorsey at +4.7. This clustering reflects the Reds' league-best +10.6 net rating — when the system works this well, everyone's numbers rise together. Meanwhile, Carlik Jones of Partizan posts +4.9 despite his team's losing record (16–22), illustrating how one player can swim against the tide even when the roster around him struggles.
Tensions
A role player who shares the court exclusively with stars will post positive numbers almost automatically. A star player surrounded by poor supporting cast may post negative numbers despite playing well. The metric reflects lineup quality as much as individual contribution.
A player can post -15 because a teammate had a catastrophic stretch while they were on the court, or +18 because they happened to be playing during a hot shooting run. Season and multi-season plus/minus are far more meaningful than any individual game number.
Formula
+/- = points scored by team while player is on court − points scored by opponent while player is on court
Tracked live from substitution rotations. Season plus/minus is the sum of all game differentials.
+/-: Plus/Minus / NET RTG: Net Rating
