LIneup trends around the league

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Castle Vassell Barnes Wembanyama was the least strong Wemby quad in 10 most used. Fox Wemby was negative in brief test.

Put them together and is that the starting lineup? For what results? For how long?

His best pairs include Barnes, Champagnie and Sochan. If they play 3 guards and / or Olynyk or Kornet, will these guys maximize their time with Wemby or likely not and well short?

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2 different players at every position- 64 lineup combinations possible. If you understand player combinations, some will look and be better than others and not all 64 may really need testing.

3×3×3×3×3= 243 lineups. Use 4 players everywhere = 1024. Several NBA coaches got around 850. One nearly reached 1000. All used more than 243. Using more than 64 or 243 is searching, using inferior players and generally getting inferior results. Finch is low at 312, followed by Thibodeau.

Both could / should have been more selective. That was like using every combination of 3×3×4×3×3. It also makes the mean use of a lineup under 14 minutes for season and more than 2/3rds under 5 minutes. Unjudgeable. Finch had 9 over 100 minutes but only 3 over 160. The average team had a little over 3 lineups over the still pretty scant / not reliable 100 minutes. An average of 1 over 200 minutes.

Less than 1 in 4 tested anything over 400 minutes. All but 1 of the 7 were playoff teams, 5 made 2nd round, 3 made conference finals. An increasingly more common practice by those moving up the ladder. Thunder not in that group.

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Thought experiment with changing Timberwolves lineup management some at the top:

https://x.com/bballstrategy/status/1957757674172600786

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Blazers had some decent sub-lineup results with combinations of Henderson Sharpe Avdija Camara Clingan but all 5 together was horrible in a too brief 74 minute test.

Test it 200-300 minutes early and assess and change as appropriate.

Henderson - Clingan pair was bad overall. Will look for others. Sharpe - Camara was weak as was Henderson - Avdija. Should probably try to be more precise with the with / without details.

With Grant was a disaster with too many.

Avdija negative with everyone in main rotation but Clingan and barely Camara.

Henderson Sharpe was barely positive and the best main rotation pair but the rest are negative. I see no reason to design around that... other than to try it some more to probably get to the point of trading one or both. But deeper study is warranted.

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First draft core lineup rotation designed for Blazers based on last season's best sub-lineup performances. 9 lineups, 10 players, realistic / desirable minute allocations.

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2% of playoff lineups played 50+ minutes. Fairly tough but possible for 1st round outs, easier for the other half. 14 playoff teams had at least one but not the two teams who were 1st round sweeps. On average, teams had 1.5. TWolves and Thunder had 4, Knicks 3. About 65% were positive. TWolves, Knicks and Lakers had the worst performers. 8 double digits pts / 100p positive performers. Thunder with the best but 2nd least used. TWolves only one close, 15th most used. Thunder barely did enough to win. TWolves lost some ground using a great lineup too little and a bad one too much... and lost. 3 stunk from 3 pt range, 2 did well anyways including Thunder, Magic did not.

In regular season, teams had an average of a bit less than 9. The max was 14. Less than 10% of such regular season lineups repeated this fairly modest feat in playoffs.

70% of playoff lineups were used 5 minutes or less total. Almost 50 per team on average. Only about 35% were positive. Less than 25% shot better than average from 3. 40% had elevated TO rate.

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Markannen - Filipowski - Kessler was used, albeit for only 49 minutes. The trio was far better than any other with / without combination of the three and the tiniest bit positive, a feat for a bad team.

I'd like to see more testing of that trio. Preferably with Clayton. Perhaps with Bailey.

Why not go big, biggest of anybody (?) and see what happens? What looks more promising?

Try others with the trio, mainly with 4 of those 5.

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I'd try Fox Barnes Sochan Wemby Kornet and variations with 4 of them.

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I'd try Russell Flagg Washington Davis Lively and variations with 4.

Many teams should try going bigger, in general and especially aimed at Thunder.


VanVleet Thompson Durant Sengun Adams is probably too light on shooting but 4 of them and Smith is better. And why not try all 5 and see what happens?

Murray Braun Johnson Gordon Jokic with get a lot of run. But I'd also like to see Holmes in there for somebody other than Jokic.

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Every Nuggets playoff lineup over 10 minutes with 2 or more bench players was negative and most of the smaller ones too.

That is the main task for the team to change.

Probably should try to maximize minutes with 0-1 bench even more; but if they find 2 bench player lineups that are positive, give them minutes and shut off as many of the bad minute lineups as possible. Come playoff time, shouldn't be playing many or any bad small discretionary dinks. Trade if they need to, but the new bench has some probably bright spots.

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The 3 teams in west closest to but not top 8 seeded all had 2 strong lineups in 5 most used, 2 marginal positives and 1 bad negative. Not enough somewhere.

All lower than 11th had 2-4 negatives in their 5 most used.

Of the west's top 8 seeds, the 2 conference finalists had no negatives in 5 most used lineups, 5 had one and the 8th seed had 2.