You should definitely tell Udoka about this net rating thing you discovered; he’s probably never heard about it. What a find! Jalen's net rating is 12th on the team; Udoka must not have ever known this. In fact, why are we even letting him play as part of the rotation? We should just push him out of the rotation completely—look at those lineups you posted! These nine players have a higher net rating. Here they are ranked in order of the best players we have based on your revolutionary findings: McVeigh >> our net rating MVP!!! Shame on Ime for not giving him more shots!!! Sengun Adams Tari FVV Jabari Holiday Amen Brooks Gosh, a bigger discovery emerges. Amen is only our 8th best player? Gasp! As much as it pains me to say this, I think you're onto something here. We should trade Amen before it becomes obvious to the world that he’s a lesser player than Aaron Holiday. How much can he possibly improve from here? To the 3rd best player on this roster? The net rating gods have spoken. Let's "Nico Harrison" this team with our brilliant secret findings. Jalen and Amen need to be out of here while the league is under the illusion that their value is higher. It’s going to be hard to convince the Magic, but I've found some candidates for us to acquire. I used your brilliant filter of a minimum of 40 minutes for lineups, so don’t worry. Goga Bitadze is in 5 of the top 6 Magic lineups, and they barely even play him. He’s 5th on the team in net rating—obviously after Mac McClung, Franz, Corey Joseph, and Gary Harris, a.k.a. the Untouchables. If we're lucky, they might take Jalen for Bitadze, and we will have saved ourselves. But if they play hardball, we pull out the big guns. We trade Amen and Jalen for Bitadze and a protected 1st. They will never know what hit them. In one year, when Bitadze, Sengun, and Mcveigh are dominating people in the frontcourt, and Amen and Jalen show their true colors, we will have the last laugh. Please send this to Stone and let him know that Ime is not looking at net ratings and lineups as a professional head coach. Curse that man.
I was specifically responding to a post about Amen with the starting lineup not having a good rating. Try not to drip over your dick about it champ.
I know and I was making fun of the way you analyzed that data, champ. Try not to think about my dick, I know it's hard. (pun intended)
Yeah you built up and beat down 12 straw men unrelated to anything I said. Pat yourself on the back smarty pants.
If you really want to know, I posted that 5 man lineup, then I read that guys post afterwards, and thought "wow that's interesting let me look", proceeded to look up the lineups ratings, I noticed that trend, I edited my comment about 3 minutes after it was posted and added that bit about the ratings. I literally didn't know that lineups net ratings before posting it. So, Imagine how I see you and your 5 paragraph response right now. I would respond sure sure and dance it off If I were you too probably.
It depends of performance of Tari & Bari. If they continue their avgs Amen would start. FVV JG Brooks Amen Alperen
I understand this entire post is meant to mock the idea of someone looking at a stat that says "we score less points than the other team, that seems bad", and write it off as some useless analytic. So maybe you can help me out here and explain it to someone as dumb as me. Why doesn't that matter? Why does this starting lineup (FVV, Amen, Dillon, Jalen, Sengun) play so poorly together, why do they get outscored in nearly every game, and why shouldn't I care about it?
You're not dumb dude, you're one of my favorite and most intelligent posters. Nothing wrong with wondering or researching anything, what's wrong is that neither the founders of those formulas nor the GM's and HC's of the league draw conclusions that strong from them. Only fans seem to do that. Which should lead you down the rabbit hole of: if I know this, why don't most coaches act on this? If Jalen is so atrocious at net rating and not a part of most winning lineups, is Udoka crazy to start him? The reason is quite obvious: some scientific fields are still in their infancy, and the best work done in those areas can seem quite naive compared to what it will be in the future (like psychology). There are other sciences that have been studied extensively, where most practices are highly reliable (like math). Due to the numerical nature of basketball statistics and metrics, people sometimes confuse it with the latter. The reality is that these formulas are known to be flawed and should be treated as our best guess rather than definitive answers for making decisions. They are still in their early stages, and their reliability tends to increase significantly only when you exceed a standard sample size. Around the 3 to 5-year mark, many of these metrics begin to make more sense, but we rarely reach that point with lineups, for example. In the example you mentioned regarding that lineup, the numbers can indicate something is wrong, but it will take a real tactician to explain it. Even then, each coach has their subjective perspective. At this stage though (the Why), it’s no longer an objective exercise, but it often gets treated as one. My best guess, which is filled with assumptions, is that it’s common for lineups with two negative shooters to struggle offensively because you’re caught between swapping 3s for 2s or, as we currently do, taking a volume of 3s that exceed nearly everyone’s capacity. I define a negative shooter as someone who is so poor at 3-point shooting and better at 2-point shooting that it would be foolish for their defender not to sag off. It's way too easy and logical to pack the paint against that lineup. Like historically easy. You can see a lot of parallels between us and the Magic. I've never seen the paint packed in 90% of a season, have you? It's a first for me. We were one of the worst spacing teams in the league, and then, based on the misguided notion that "Amen is better than X player so it shouldn't matter,” we voluntarily worsened our spacing, thus further suffocating Green and, to a lesser extent, Sengun. Not good for Amen either. Because net rating is not like a lego set, there are non-statistically represented domino effects. Adding a higher net rating player to a lineup doesn't necessarily improve that lineup if the fit is wrong, because the fit alone can drag others down via pace or space for example. There's no one else, these are our scorers so we're not carving out an advantage for anyone. Usually you do things like this because it's suiting someone, not because you're just throwing your best players out there. There's got to be a vision. The only way this would work is if spacing didn’t exist or had a negligible effect on the game. Teams can just double Sengun and that doesn't open anything for Amen and it keeps drives closed for Jalen, it hurts Amen and Green indirectly and simultaneously. Further, we must have the shortest average wingspan in the NBA with that lineup, and that can turn defense into a lot more work that it needs to be (meaning less energy for offense). Positional defense is exhausting compared to a mix of that and deflections/shotblocking. Sengun, Green, FVV and PF-Brooks can all be beaten at their position without skills, just strength or height would suffice. OTOH it seems like it could be a solid defensive lineup. I wonder if that's one of our best defensive lineups. Having said that I don't think they've played much together and it's possible that they will improve at this thing with some repetition.
Is there any data to back this up? I haven't seen any actually. Im not trying to be confrontational. https://x.com/i/grok/share/KY4BhmhI7zRWyB2fYLaOEHJ5N
Curry is the only other player besides Jalen to be top 10 in both. And ya I understand this has more to do with Amen and Sengun not being outside threats. And it matches the eye test. Jalen is face guarded off ball all the time and when he does have the ball multiple defenders are trying to block his potential driving lanes.
