Then why do you immediately go to that stat and that stat only when comparing individuals?
As opposed to what? We're all aware of the box score stats. +/- tells you what you're not seeing in the box score.
If you think +/- gives a better understanding of the individual than PER than you misunderstand these stats more than I previously thought.
Like I said, we're all well aware of the box score stats (from which PER is derived), but basketball isn't an individual game. I'm not interested in a player who's going to get me '30' if there isn't a way my team can actually win when he's on the floor.
When it's the last 5 minutes of a 30 point blowout, and I'm chilling on the court while my teammate goes on a 10-0 run by himself, giving me a +10, is that really looking at everything?
My teammate scores all the points, I stand around and do nothing, while the whole unit contributes on defense. +/- rates me the same as my teammate that scores the points. That is looking at everything to you? That is an accurate measure of me & my teammate - we are equals?
Yes, that's collecting everything the team did. Your work on defense was noted, and your wise choice to get out of the way of your teammate on offense was noted as well.
But again, remember I keep pointing to observation and lineups. If someone pointed out that the bulk of your plus minutes were during the garbage time of blow outs we'd have a reason to re-evaluate.
(and in trying to discredit my love for +/-, you actually brought up an interesting idea which could be applied to any stat - which is to be able to filter it by "meaningful minutes").
I get it, and there is certainly a place for +/-, particularly in trying to find individuals and units on a given team that play well together.
Where it is terrible is when it's used to compare how good individual players are. Actually, terrible isn't the right word, inapplicable is. On one hand it seems now that you understand this, but on the other hand you continue to compare how good individual players are this way.
So, what gives?
It's an analysis tool, not a ranking tool. And really, that's how all stats should be treated. Getting back to my PER example (and I realize there are a ton of other stats favored over PER these days) it does a decent job ranking players. We know this. It's what it was designed to do.
But drill down to an individual player.
PER can only do it's job correctly if the player we're looking at is roughly as good in areas that PER doesn't track as in the areas that PER does track. It's a reasonable assumption for a lot of players, sure, but what if the specific case we want to consider is an outlier?
How can you tell?
The problem here is you can't and what's even worse is you don't even know you should be looking.
So, Stephon Marbury leads his team to the lottery another season while Jason Kidd leads his team to the playoffs ... and all PER has to tell us about that is ... Huh?!?
Ok, but now we've got some better stats like WS, DWS, BPM and VORP. And why are they better? Well, because they introduce team performance in to the stat. The problem is they credit players based on their box score stats. A great defender might be a great rebounder ... or maybe he's not. The stat is telling us what we want to hear, not what we need to hear.
Or we can go with the latest super charged version of +/-. Is that RPM this week? Hey, cool, they automatically try to account for a player playing with better talent .vs. worse talent. Handy stuff as long as there's enough data to sort that all out... but again, what if it's wrong? How could we tell?
+/- otoh slams you right in the mouth, and if you disagree with what it's telling you, you'd better go look for an answer. Fortunately, we don't have to reverse engineer complex formulas or regressions, we just have to look at the 5-man units that fed the final numbers - and account for who are the players that drove the stats .vs. those who stood around and benefited.
Of course 82games is not just a site that publishes +/-, they also publish a ton of other useful stats going back to when Roland Beech started tracking all this stuff in 2002. I especially like the other on-court and off-court stats they track.
Enough?