Riding the high of last night, paired with something I read in the power rankings on r/NBA yesterday, I decided to look at our 4 man lineup offensive ratings again this morning:
LaMelo Ball, Kon Knueppel, Brandon Miller, and Miles Bridges have an offensive rating of 130.4 and defensive rating of 116.6 (Net Rating: 13.8).
For reference on offensive rating, this is the 8th best in the league for a 4 man lineup that has played a minimum of 150 minutes together.
For reference on net rating, this is the 17th best in the league for a 4 man lineup that has played a minimum of 150 minutes together.
Jokić is littered all over the top offensive rating and net rating board. If you were to remove him from the data set, we move to 3rd in offensive rating and 11th in net rating. Obviously, you can't just remove a player from a data set but he's such a cheat code (and removing him helps us look better in comparison so who cares!?).
Happy bonking Tuesday!
2 comments
With how well these 4 do together, it actually becomes an interesting conversation of the 5th man.
Diabate, in my opinion, fits best since his role on offense (cleaning up offensive boards, strong roll man with good hands, able to play in the dunker position to get out of driving lanes) and defense (allows for a lot of switching on the perimeter) meshes with the other four well.
5 man lineup…
With Diabate: 139.2 ORating and 103.9 DRating (35.3 NET).
With Kalkbrenner: 121.9 ORating and 117.6 DRating (4.4 NET).
With Sion: 115.8 ORating and 111.9 DRating (3.9 NET).
Now, these are all incredibly small sample sizes. You’d want to be in the 400-600 range for notable results where all of the above are in the 60s so take it all with a grain of salt.
It’s clear that Diabate just meshes well with that group. It’s a fast paced, high volume shot group. 3’s, transition, lots of slashers, alley oops! You have to have a mobile 5 with that group. I think Kalk is good when we play a bruiser team. But broadly, especially regular season, Diabate just works better.