An MVP-level player is being valued as "seventh best" — because a number can't see what it can't count

Sports 3 min 80 sources

A Boston Celtics forward who finished sixth in MVP voting is being talked down in trade talks by analytics that rate him far lower. The fight is really about a deeper question every sport now faces — what happens when the measure and the thing it measures disagree.

Key takeaways

An NBA player who finished sixth in MVP voting is being valued as low as "seventh best on a team" by an analytics number — because that number can't separate one player from the four teammates on court with him.
Every valuation in sport, from net rating to an £85m transfer fee, squeezes a whole career into a single figure and hopes it's right; the danger is treating that figure as a verdict rather than a guess.
The week's under-covered thread: ESPN both broadcasts the Premier Lacrosse League and now owns a growing stake in it — the scorekeeper with money on the score.

The player the numbers don’t like

This week Jaylen Brown, a Boston Celtics forward, became the biggest name on the NBA trade market — and the argument over his worth spilled into the open. [28]

Brown finished sixth in MVP voting this season, averaging 28.7 points, 6.9 rebounds and 5.6 assists while carrying Boston’s offence for long stretches without his injured co-star. [28] By the eye test, he is a top-tier player.

The analytics tell a colder story. On SiriusXM NBA radio, ESPN front-office analyst Bobby Marks relayed what data-driven executives are saying: “The analytics of Jaylen Brown is not good.” He pointed to a negative net rating over four years, and minus-10.6 when Brown was on court this year. One analytics executive told Marks his team views Brown “as the seventh best player on a team.” [28]

Brown fought back on social media the same weekend. “Analytics have / are ruining the game we playing AI hoops,” he wrote, and told Marks to name his source. [28]

Net rating, and what it can’t see

The number at the centre of this is net rating — a team’s points scored minus points allowed per 100 possessions, measured only while a given player is on the floor. [28]

Here is the catch. Net rating credits or blames a player for everything the team does while he plays — the other four players, the opponents on court, who’s injured, the score at the time. It can’t separate one man’s contribution from the five-on-five soup around him. A great player on a struggling, injury-hit team posts an ugly net rating; the number sees the team, not the man.

That’s why Brown’s minus-10.6 and his MVP-level scoring can both be true. Boston played much of the year without its other star, so the lineups Brown anchored lost ground — and the number logged it against him.

What’s actually in motion

Nothing is settled, but the machinery is turning. Boston dangled Brown in talks for Giannis Antetokounmpo, then that deal went to Miami, leaving the Celtics deciding what to do with a title-winning forward they now seem ready to move. [28]

His trade value — what other teams will give up for him — now sits between two readings of the same player. Front offices that trust the eye test see a franchise piece; front offices that trust the model see a well-paid role player. That gap is real money and real players changing hands. [28] [10]

A different way to put a price on a player

Football priced its stars this week with no models needed — just cash. Tottenham signed midfielder Mateus Fernandes from West Ham for a club-record £85m. [2] Manchester City moved to break the British transfer record for a midfielder to sign Elliot Anderson from Nottingham Forest. [16] Spurs also agreed a deal worth up to £100m for Newcastle’s Sandro Tonali. [8] [17]

These fees are a valuation too — a market’s guess, in one number, at what a player is worth. Like net rating, a transfer fee compresses a whole human career into a figure and hopes it’s right. The difference is football admits it’s a bet; the analytics number can feel like a verdict.

The under-covered one: when the scorekeeper owns a stake

The Premier Lacrosse League — a young US league founded in 2018 — raised $100m this week, with ESPN adding to the minority stake it took last year alongside its media-rights deal running through 2030. [24]

It’s worth a pause. ESPN both covers the sport and now owns a slice of it. The network says it has done this before with other leagues. [24] The measure and the measurer, again — this time it’s the broadcaster who tells you how a league is doing also holding equity in it doing well.

02 · Lesson · why it matters

When the number can't see what it can't count

Every measure quietly redraws the thing it measures — crediting what it can see, blind to what it can't, and slowly turning into the truth it was only supposed to describe.

Two people are looking at the same player

One watches Jaylen Brown play and sees a top-six player in the league — a man who carried a team’s offence when its other star went down.

The other reads a number — net rating, minus-10.6 — and sees the seventh-best player on a good team.

They are not disagreeing about the facts. Brown really did score at an MVP level. His teams really did lose ground while he was on the floor. Both numbers are correct. The argument isn’t about what happened. It’s about what a number is allowed to mean.

Net rating is measuring the ocean and blaming the fish

Here’s the mechanism, in plain terms. Net rating tracks how a team does while a given player is on court — points scored minus points allowed. It sounds like a measure of the player. It isn’t. It’s a measure of the five-on-five situation the player happens to be standing in.

The teammates, the opponents, who’s injured, the score at that moment — all of it lands on the one name the stat is attached to. A strong player on a thin, injured team posts an ugly number, and the number can’t tell you why. It sees the whole lineup and writes the result under one man’s name.

So the measure isn’t lying. It’s answering a different question than the one people think they’re asking. They want to know “how good is he?” The number can only tell them “how did his team do while he was out there?” — and then everyone treats the second answer as the first.

What you count becomes what you chase

This is the quiet part. A measure never just sits there describing. It starts to pull.

Once net rating became the number executives trust, players learned to protect it. Take the safe shot the model likes. Avoid the risky, generous pass that might not land. Sit the tough matchup that would dent your figure. Brown’s real complaint — “we playing AI hoops” — isn’t that the math is wrong. It’s that the game is bending itself to look good to the math.

You’ve felt this everywhere a number took over. The school that teaches to the test. The worker judged on hours logged, not work done. The measure was supposed to follow the thing. Instead the thing starts following the measure, because the measure is what gets you paid, traded, kept.

The map quietly becomes the territory

A transfer fee does the same trick in a different currency. Tottenham paying £85m for a midfielder, Manchester City breaking a record for another — those figures compress an entire career, a whole human being’s worth to a team, into one line on a balance sheet. Football at least admits the fee is a bet. The danger is when a number stops feeling like a guess and starts feeling like a fact — a verdict handed down, not an estimate offered up.

And notice who holds the pen. The analytics executive rating Brown “seventh best” is not neutral — he is on the other side of a trade, and a lower number is a lower price. The person who owns the measure often has a reason to want it to read a certain way. This week a US lacrosse league took more money from ESPN — the same network that broadcasts it and tells you how it’s doing. The scorekeeper with a stake in the score.

We are all being read by numbers we didn’t write

It’s easy to side with Brown and decide analytics are the villain. That’s the clever reading, and it’s too small. The eye test has its own blindness — memory, hype, the story we already believe about a player. A number was invented precisely because human judgement drifts. Neither the model nor the eye is the truth; each sees what the other misses.

The humbling part is that none of us stands outside this. You are a net rating to your bank, a score to an algorithm, a figure in someone’s model — and those numbers, built from what’s easy to count, quietly shape what’s offered to you, what’s withheld, what you learn to chase. The person reading you can’t see most of who you are, any more than net rating can see Brown’s season. Hold the number loosely. It’s a shadow of the thing, cast by whatever light happened to be on — and it was never the thing itself.

03 · Lab · your turn

Value the Player

Rehearse choosing which measure to trust, and feel how each lens sees one truth while staying blind to another.

04 · Hope · carry this

No number ever captured the whole of a person, and that is the quiet good news — the part of you that can't be counted is exactly the part no model gets to price.