Forget about the efficiency differential thing… That’s completely attributable to schedule strength.

But I thought there were a couple interesting things to note, though, as win score does sometimes pick up on when a player’s value (or lack thereof) is way off from his perceived value:
    -Even though his traditional stats haven’t improved, LMA is finally becoming a productive player by the win score metric
    -Trout is one of the least productive players on the team
    -Rudy is one of the most productive players on the team

It will be interesting to see how Travis’s absence and Rudy’s additional minutes affects the team’s performance. Essentially Berri’s early stats indicate the Blazers should generate .2 additional wins for every 48 minutes Rudy is playing instead of Travis.

Also, the team is playing well in the early going even though Roy is performing worse. If Roy picks things back up, Miller returns to being above average, and LMA maintains his level of play, win score would suggest the Blazers will have a dominant team.

if a player is scoring well in multiple metrics, you can usually bet that they are a valuable and contributing player.

I am happy that we are doing well in differential, PER, and WoW.

Some combination weighting win score, PER, and 82games.com’s “simple rating” (the average of PER differential vs. opposing players and on court/off court differential per 100 possessions) would seem to be the perfect metric, if the goal is to boil everything down to one number. PER tends to overrate some high volume scorers, win score overrates low usage rebounders, and simple rating has a lot of noise involved. But those three stats combined generally give a pretty good impression of value.

By all three of those metrics, by the way, Oden has been dominant so far this season. He has an insane PER differential over 12, the Blazers have been over 12 points better per 100 possessions with him on the court (elite level), and his PER is over 20. And it doesn’t even seem like he’s really played all that consistently well yet – compared to the flashes of domination he’s shown. In any event, all signs point to the big guy continuing his natural progression into utter beastliness.