THJ for the bench!

[DanSchwartzgan]

That looks good as a closing lineup: last 4 - 8 minutes in a close game. There is no reason you can't have that lineup closing, and a completely different lineup starting. 

For example, Kleber has shown historically that he does not perform well with large minutes in several consecutive games. He has to be held to 28 minutes or less to get consistent production on offense. If you are going to limit him to 28 minutes, and potentially play him the last 8 minutes of the game, he only has 20 minutes available to play in the first 40 minutes of the game. That is a good reason for him not to start.

Perhaps the Mavs should start another shooter instead. How about THJ?

Welcome Sonic!

Love the post, and I love the point. I am on board with your thinking.

However, I strongly object to the idea that Powell offers much when used without Luka.

I don't know a great way to do this.  If you screen two-man lineups with Powell you find plenty of good pairings:

Powell + THJ = 13.6
Powell + Maxi = 12.1
Powell + KP = 11.9
Powell + DFS = 10.2

But the functionality doesn't screen out lineups w/o Luka.  To get to your point, you have to screen 5 man lineups w/o Luka and w/Powell.  The sample sizes are pretty small.  In 18/19 Powell and Luka were only on the court for 687 minutes together or 41% of Powell's minutes together.  They were not good together.


If you go to 82games.com, 3 of the top 5 five-man 19/20 lineups Powell participated in have Luka with him.  The third most used Powell Lineup was:  

Brunson/THJ/DFS/Powell/KP at +20.0

The other was Brunson/Wright/THJ/Jackson/Powell, which was positive, but is largely meaningless now.  If you go to 18/19, there were all sorts of lineups that worked well without Luka.

Long way of saying you may be right (maybe even you are probably right).  But, we just haven't seen enough to know...especially since Brunson isn't the player he was two years ago.