And as a rather large surprise, I have to say that maybe Hennigan has been somewhat vindicated for his decision to move Harris for basically just rentals and cap space.
Here’s NBA.com’s breakdown of our top 5 man lineups in 2016, limited to lineups with more than 20 minutes together. As you can see, that’s only 11 different lineups.
The most effective of these is the Oladipo/Hezonja/Harris/Gordon/Vucevic lineup – at a whopping +22.8 Net RTG, but that has only 32 minutes together. Obviously, would have loved to see some more of that lineup to really get the measure of it, but oh well.
Now, the bottom SIX lineups have a combined 350ish minutes together, and are all -2.2 Net RTG or lower (on down to -36.3…) What do all these have in common? Vooch and Harris. Harris however is in only one of the top 5 lineups, while Vooch is in three of them.
Not saying that Harris isn’t better than he showed in 2016, but that maybe for whatever reason, the fit just wasn’t really working with the rest of the roster.
Now, on the more interesting part: Hezonja. Obviously, in that list above he’s only featured in 4 lineups, but he’s in 4 of the top 5. Digging deeper, in 2016 Hezonja has been pretty much the one player on the roster who’s been a + whenever he’s on the floor. Hezonja is in 6 of the top 10 2 man pairings we’ve put on the floor in 2016.
If Skiles/Hennigan are serious about being "all-in" for the 2016 playoffs, it actually makes sense to give the Croatian some more floor time.
Additionally, Jennings/Watson/Oladipo should probably eat up the majority of Elfrid’s minutes at this point. He’s simply a Net Negative in most every lineup, and while the new starting lineup hasn’t been "bad" per se (-0.2 Net Rtg), it is clearly not going to take us to the playoffs with the production we’re getting/not getting from Elfrid.
As painful as it sounds to say, most of our best lineups this year have had Oladipo playing the point with Elfrid riding the pine.
He was a pretty big Net Negative before the New Year, and while most of our other players have regressed in 2016, he’s vastly improved to the point where he’s not a liability, but actually maybe the biggest plus for the team on the floor.
[uredio taura - 23. veljače 2016. u 22:01]