You are going way out on a ledge with this one. Simple counting stats like points per game et al are not just for casual fans -- they also decide All-Star spots, All-NBA teams, MVP and Rookie of the Year awards, and player contracts. Lebron James doesn't make $30 million a year because GMs are impressed with his Regularized Adjusted Plus Minus -- it's because he's the best player in the league and it's no coincidence that he also fills up a standard box score more impressively than any of his peers.
And there's no surprise that his RAPM is always one of the highest in the league year after year...
We've had this argument before, but your attitude appears to be that any stat which hasn't been developed in the past 5 years to take advantage of computer assisted player tracking technology is beneath you and irrelevant to "enlightened" analysis. You may think this puts you in a class with only the most cutting edge and well-respected analysts but actually it puts you in a very small minority of analytics devotees who (1) actually understand how this data is calculated and how to apply it intelligently and (2) believe that the results it produces are superior to all conventional methods. That's not intended as an insult, I just don't think you realize how small that group is. By your definition at least 95% of the people watching, coaching, managing, or playing professional basketball are ... for lack of a better word... wrong. You really have to produce the goods if you're going to make that kind of an assertion and the jury is still out on the long-term effectiveness of a lot of this information.
It's not so much that nothing else is considered, but understanding what stats are better than others when judging a players value should be a necessity for anyone who is making decisions in a FO in this day and age. I've been on record saying that I'm not as impressed as others with Boogie's "historic" offensive season last year. A lot of people look at the 27 PPG and go crazy over it. Cousins didn't help us very much on offense last year. That's not to say that I think Cousins isn't uber talented on that side of the floor. It's just a matter of putting those impressive skills together and playing smart basketball. Cousins has been most impressive to me defensively. Malone did wonders with him, and he's a very intelligent player who can definitely anchor a defense without having to be an athletic freak.
It just so happens that a lot of these same stats jive with that analysis. Cousins was 116th in ORAPM, 45th in ORPM, and had an Offensive On/Off of only 2.8 points per 100 possessions last year. These stats do a good job at seeing through the "flashiness" of some of these "simple stats" and get down to how much did that player contribute. Are there going to be mistakes or errors? Of course. Standard error is common in data of this nature, but more often than not, it's going to be correct.
Even using Dean Oliver's Off/Def Rating jives with this same conclusion (a stat I know you personally like). Cousins Offensive Rating was 10th on the team last year while his Defensive Rating was 1st.
Also, there are ways to measure defensive potential besides DRPM, DRAPM, and the unreliable but not totally useless eye test. I've already explained why I like the
Defensive Rating stat developed by Dean Oliver in 2004 (not the 80s and 90s) -- it can be calculated based on information we have that dates back 40 years so there's a much bigger sample of data to compare it to (and thereby judge it's effectiveness) and it routinely produces results which align with common sense (which is often not true of ESPN's Real Plus Minus, for example). And Dean Oliver's Defensive Rating has actually ranked Dragic as a slightly below-average defensive player for most of his career. You have to go all the way back to the 2011-2012 season in Houston to find a year where he even rated as above average within the context of
his own team not to mention the rest of the league.
Being below average on your team doesn't necessarily make you a poor defender. Defensive rating needs to keep the context of the teammates. If you're playing with guys like Wade, Cole, Chalmers, Johnson, Bledsoe, etc. it's going to make it harder for that said player to rank as high considering his teammates may be of equal or better caliber on that side of the floor. This is one of the drawbacks with ONLY looking at Defensive and/or Offensive rating. You need to have the context of who else plays the position on the team.
That being said, all three metrics I mentioned (including the one that does the best job for normalizing for teammates and varying lineups) has him at an average (-0.5 Def On/Off) to above average (0.7 DRPM) to good (1.89 DRAPM) defender.
I also think you're revealing your bias by dismissing the Udrih comparison so completely. Particularly in the
2010-2011 season, Sacramento Udrih was a well above-average player in the league. Was he elite? No. Was he an All-Star? No. But he was a very respectable starting PG who basically held his own on defense and produced a good number of points very efficiently. I think you could apply a similar description to The Dragon. Dragic has never been an All-Star though he has won a single All-NBA third team ranking. That single season was exceptional, no doubt about that, but he hasn't been able to sustain .600+ TS% before or since. If you want to ignore 7 seasons of data and focus on 1 than sure, Udrih isn't in the same class of player as Dragic. But if you look at the big picture? He's not that much better than Beno's career peak which coincided with his last two seasons in Sacramento.
The comparison was to the player Dragic is today vs. what Udrih was during his time in Sac. Looking at seven seasons worth of stats isn't necessarily the best way to go about comparing the two. It's difficult to know Udrih's impact with a lot of these metrics being created recently, but going off what I saw (which is completely an opinion and totally fine with those who disagree), I did not see a player who impacted the game as much as Dragic has done. Could Udrih have put up a 2.91 RAPM? Maybe, but I doubt it.
We also need to keep in mind the quality of teams. Weaker teammates are going to make your on/off and off/def rating look better than those who have quality teammates. Udrih had a negative net rating during his first season with the Kings while Bibby was still here, but it got a lot better after Bibby was gone and he had guys like a 35 year old Jackson & Rodriguez replacing him. That's really not that all surprising to me. Dragic, on the other hand, was consistently having to share minutes with the likes of Lowry, Bledsoe, Knight, Thomas, Wade, Chalmers, K. Martin, etc.
By the way, welcome back, hrdboild! I always enjoy our discussions and look forward to more this season.