I was curious to see which players have good on/off numbers, and what the starting lineup might look like if we take on/off numbers into account. Here are the raw on/off numbers for the season, from best to worst: Armoni Brooks: +42.1 Usman Garuba: +40.4 Josh Christopher: +29.9 ————————————————- KJ Martin: +11.5 Eric Gordon: +5.9 Kevin Porter Jr: +4.0 Jae’Sean Tate: +2.9 Christian Wood: -0.1 David Nwaba: -0.6 Alperen Sengun: -0.8 ————————————————- Danuel House: -7.3 Daniel Theis: -16.0 DJ Augustin: -20.1 Jalen Green: -25.8 I separated the roster into 3 sections. The first with Brooks, Christopher, and Garuba shouldn’t be taken seriously because they’ve played so few minutes. The second section are the players with acceptable on/off numbers. And the third section are the players with bad on/off numbers. Based on these numbers, it looks like the starting lineup should be: KPJ Gordon Tate Wood Sengun I went to NBA.com and looked at their lineup finder, and lo and behold, this lineup was the 3rd best of any Rockets lineup that has played at least 5 minutes together, with a +38.9 net rating. Also, Gordon and Sengun are in all 3 of the top lineups, and Tate is in 2 of the 3. If winning is the goal (and it’s not), Green, Nwaba, House, Thies, and Martin should be coming off the bench, and Martin deserves more minutes.
For sure winning is not a consideration. When it comes to the worst players, they are playing Green and Theis so they don't have to admit they made a mistake in the off-season bringing them in.....kind of a sunk cost fallacy When it comes to House, they were hoping he could rehab some kind of trade value so they could get something, anything, back for him....unfortunately he's terrible, so they'll just have to cut him eventually. KJ Martin not getting more time is an absolute crime.
Ummm Kenyon has the greater +/- over Tate but you say Tate over Kenyon "based on these numbers"? Can you explain?
He’s played much fewer minutes overall and more scrub time minutes which has inflated his on/off numbers. Tate is a proven starter and has solid on/off numbers. I wouldn’t replace him with KJ unless KJ just plays spectacularly with a larger role.
The bias is that the end of the bench players are playing in garbage time, also we lose every game so the starters will always be a negative in plus minus! But of course +/- is pretty much one of the main ways (in some shape or form) that starting lineups and all lineups are decided
Good post. Should've titled it "The starting lineup experiment is over". Green is a baby deer right now. All legs, no brains. We got all these guys that can jump through the roof and no one to set up lob passes.
Start Al-p, bench Green. Explain it to Green that it is more about letting him thrive and explore his game rather than a demotion because I really think he'd play better with the 2nd unit. Him and KPJ don't mesh right now. I say right now because I think they could, theory wise, there is no reason they shouldn't...but if both are being passive, passing the ball to the other...not looking for shots, not collapsing the defense...it doesn't work. It might work if Green wasn't being used as an ISO guard all the time...Green seems like he'd be a monster cutting to the rim but we don't even try that. Tried it once and it was an easy bucket then never did it again.
