In the spirit of the Louis CK skit: 

"Of course": the +/- is a valuable metric that measures a player's contribution to the team when he is on the floor with others and is used by basketball cognos far smarter tha me. "Of course".

 "Of course."

"But maybe" the +/- is an absurd stat thought up by those with CTE that distorts player contributions out of all recognition as a mirror of reality. "I mean, the doubt is there."

I can't escape it, I've tried. But it's always there in the box score. So rather than take the individual players' numbers as some magic number that unlocks secrets I notice gross patterns.  I recognize the patterns: the losing team's players, even in a close L such as tonight, have almost all -'s; the winning players almost all +'s. My "but maybe" rules that reality is that Bam Adebayo was not a net - for his team tonight, but that is beside the point. I look at the numbers that just are so disconnant with the patterns I have seen night after night, game after game, and I recognize that this pattern blares like an alarm and strobes like an emergency light as HIGHLY unusual:

And I want Erik Spoelstra to start Duncan Robinson and Haywood Highsmith or if not, to provide a conclusive explanation for why they don't start.