Statistics! If you aren't into stats, you can probably skip this. I suppose I'm probably the last person on this board to discover this, but I just found www.82games.com, which has a ton of free up to date player and team stats. I can definitely see how people can get sucked into this.
Anyway, they have a nifty chart of the plus/minus for every five-man combination that the Suns have played this year. Throwing out combos that have played for less than 10 minutes total for the year so far, Coach D has used 8 combinations, for this many minutes, with this net plus/minus for each group:
1 Nash-Bell-Hill-Marion-Diaw | 66min | +21
2 Nash-Barbosa-Hill-Marion-Stoudemire | 49 min | +31
3 Nash-Bell-Hill-Marion-Stoudemire | 48 | +7
4 Nash-Barbosa-Hill-Marion-Diaw |38 | +30
5 Nash-Barbosa-Bell-Marion-Diaw | 37 | -3
6 Barbosa-Bell-Hill-Marion-Diaw | 16 | +4
7 Nash-Barbosa-Hill-Diaw-Stoudemire |13 | -2
8 Banks-Barbosa-Hill-Diaw-Stoudemire | 12 | +9
As you can see, combos 1, 2, and 4 are far and away the most successful. It's hard to spot any clear conclusions, but a few tentative observations:
(i) The "natural" starting linup (combo 3) is net positive, but is not nearly as strong as the variations. Switching Diaw in for Amare yields improvement; switching Barbosa in for Bell yields improvement, and switching both together yields improvement. The bottom line is that the team does not play as well (in terms of plus/minus) when both Bell and Amare play together, but then Bell and Amare have been injured, so I guess that isn't too surprising. I'll be curious to see if that's still true after another two dozen games.
Looking at some of the underlying stats, the "natural" starting lineup is a stronger defensive and rebounding group than the variations (no surprise because Bell and Amare are stronger defenders than LB and Diaw). Weirdly, the only stat category where they do clearly worse than the variations -- and so presumably the reason the variations do better overall -- is in percentage of "close" shots. LB clearly gets more "close" shots than Bell, but I can't think of any reason why Diaw would cause more "close" shots than Amare, unless perhaps he's better at setting up other players than Amare. Or it could be a fluke that will disappear as more games are played.
(ii) For all of the talk of Boris not playing well with Amare, it's interesting to note that Coach D has barely played them together this year. Had I copied over the rest of the chart, it would show a grand total of just 52 minutes with Diaw and Amare together in 10 games. No wonder they aren't yet on the same page. And for that matter, the team does decent (in terms of plus minus) with them together anyway. That could be a statistical mirage, but it could also be that our eyes are deceiving us a bit. It looks like Boris shrinks when Amare plays, but it's possible that there's something about him being on the floor that helps the team when Amare plays. Maybe he creates matchup problems for opposing teams that Amare exploits? (For example, teams have to play a taller player on Diaw, which creates a better match up for Amare? I don't know, just wild speculation here. . . .)
(iii) The real plus-minus poison for the team is Skinner. That's probably not really fair, since he typically plays with the second team, and only plays games against teams with big inside players where the Suns don't match up well anyway. Still, even comparing Skinner with the rest of the bench, he's far and away the worst plus-minus both on offense and defense. That doesn't mean Skinner isn't the best 8th-man option we have, but -- if the numbers stay true over the season -- it does suggest that there is a cost to playing him. (Or, if you like Skinner, maybe it means he should get more playing time to integrate better into the team. You can use statistics to prove anything
)
(iv) In terms of other individual plus-minus (per 48 minutes) among the top seven, Amare is the best at +12.6, followed by Nash and Hill at around + 10.8, then LB, Marion, and Diaw in that order, with Bell bringing up the rear at just +0.6. I guess none of that surprises me. Marion's will be little lower because he tends to play a lot of minutes with both first and second teams, as does Diaw. Nash and Amare *are* the first team. The truth is, I'm not sure you can learn that much from individual plus-minus scores on a D'Antoni team simply because so many players play so many minutes. There aren't enough "out of game" minutes to draw any firm conclusions. Still, it'll be interesting to see how some of these stats evolve as the team moves into the heart of their schedule.
Anyway, they have a nifty chart of the plus/minus for every five-man combination that the Suns have played this year. Throwing out combos that have played for less than 10 minutes total for the year so far, Coach D has used 8 combinations, for this many minutes, with this net plus/minus for each group:
1 Nash-Bell-Hill-Marion-Diaw | 66min | +21
2 Nash-Barbosa-Hill-Marion-Stoudemire | 49 min | +31
3 Nash-Bell-Hill-Marion-Stoudemire | 48 | +7
4 Nash-Barbosa-Hill-Marion-Diaw |38 | +30
5 Nash-Barbosa-Bell-Marion-Diaw | 37 | -3
6 Barbosa-Bell-Hill-Marion-Diaw | 16 | +4
7 Nash-Barbosa-Hill-Diaw-Stoudemire |13 | -2
8 Banks-Barbosa-Hill-Diaw-Stoudemire | 12 | +9
As you can see, combos 1, 2, and 4 are far and away the most successful. It's hard to spot any clear conclusions, but a few tentative observations:
(i) The "natural" starting linup (combo 3) is net positive, but is not nearly as strong as the variations. Switching Diaw in for Amare yields improvement; switching Barbosa in for Bell yields improvement, and switching both together yields improvement. The bottom line is that the team does not play as well (in terms of plus/minus) when both Bell and Amare play together, but then Bell and Amare have been injured, so I guess that isn't too surprising. I'll be curious to see if that's still true after another two dozen games.
Looking at some of the underlying stats, the "natural" starting lineup is a stronger defensive and rebounding group than the variations (no surprise because Bell and Amare are stronger defenders than LB and Diaw). Weirdly, the only stat category where they do clearly worse than the variations -- and so presumably the reason the variations do better overall -- is in percentage of "close" shots. LB clearly gets more "close" shots than Bell, but I can't think of any reason why Diaw would cause more "close" shots than Amare, unless perhaps he's better at setting up other players than Amare. Or it could be a fluke that will disappear as more games are played.
(ii) For all of the talk of Boris not playing well with Amare, it's interesting to note that Coach D has barely played them together this year. Had I copied over the rest of the chart, it would show a grand total of just 52 minutes with Diaw and Amare together in 10 games. No wonder they aren't yet on the same page. And for that matter, the team does decent (in terms of plus minus) with them together anyway. That could be a statistical mirage, but it could also be that our eyes are deceiving us a bit. It looks like Boris shrinks when Amare plays, but it's possible that there's something about him being on the floor that helps the team when Amare plays. Maybe he creates matchup problems for opposing teams that Amare exploits? (For example, teams have to play a taller player on Diaw, which creates a better match up for Amare? I don't know, just wild speculation here. . . .)
(iii) The real plus-minus poison for the team is Skinner. That's probably not really fair, since he typically plays with the second team, and only plays games against teams with big inside players where the Suns don't match up well anyway. Still, even comparing Skinner with the rest of the bench, he's far and away the worst plus-minus both on offense and defense. That doesn't mean Skinner isn't the best 8th-man option we have, but -- if the numbers stay true over the season -- it does suggest that there is a cost to playing him. (Or, if you like Skinner, maybe it means he should get more playing time to integrate better into the team. You can use statistics to prove anything
) (iv) In terms of other individual plus-minus (per 48 minutes) among the top seven, Amare is the best at +12.6, followed by Nash and Hill at around + 10.8, then LB, Marion, and Diaw in that order, with Bell bringing up the rear at just +0.6. I guess none of that surprises me. Marion's will be little lower because he tends to play a lot of minutes with both first and second teams, as does Diaw. Nash and Amare *are* the first team. The truth is, I'm not sure you can learn that much from individual plus-minus scores on a D'Antoni team simply because so many players play so many minutes. There aren't enough "out of game" minutes to draw any firm conclusions. Still, it'll be interesting to see how some of these stats evolve as the team moves into the heart of their schedule.
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