Season Preview: The rotation

I have a different view on lineups and player value than is typical.  The easiest way to explain this is the concept of the offensive player whose teams are consistently strong defensively, and the best example I know of this is Allen Iverson

Iverson’s 3rd season was his first trip to the playoffs and the first time on a > 0.500 team, and he scored 26.8 ppg on 51% TS.  His defensive rating that year was 99, down from 106 the year before and down from 112 the year before that.  Had Iverson become a wildly better defender in those few years?  No, probably better, but not a huge leap better, what happened was the 76ers management found a way to use his greatest gift- that is the ability to score at volume without regard to the quality of his teammates.  So instead of surrounding him with other offensive all-stars they picked strong defenders with limited offensive games on the cheap.  Mutombo, Snow, Hill.  Low usage defenders.  Here are the Offensive and Defensive rankings for the 76ers during Iverson’s playoff runs with them.

Offensive  Defensive

23rd          5th

25th          4th

13th          5th

23rd          4th

11th          12th

24th          10th

Throw Iverson out there and he can lead the league in scoring (4 times on PPG) on huge minutes (7 times on MPG, twice on total mins) and you can make multiple playoff runs with 1 star and spare parts.  Add in a defensive star- Mutumbo for 1.5 seasons- and they landed a finals appearance and took the only playoff win from a stacked Lakers team that season.

Few teams figure this out, and they try and try to add offensive talent to their offensive star while their defense languishes and sometimes outright collapses.  In Dame’s time with Portland they have managed only two above average defenses (#8 and #10) and been 26th or worse 5 times.  The issue is not so much Dame and CJ it is the resources they suck up that prevents a solid defense from being fielded.  The season after they lost Al-Farouq Aminu their SF/PF position was Melo (35), Ariza (34), Bazemore (30).  They finally found a defensive prospect with a limited offensive game in Gary Trent Jr, and promptly traded him for a 6’3 guard with a nice shot who can score 16 ppg.  Juiced the hell out of their offense, finishing ‘20/’21 2nd in offensive rating, 29th in defensive rating.

When you have a one way star the right question is ‘what don’t we need to put resources into now so that we can maximize team success’.  There are some potential caveats or exceptions (obviously landing Durant when you already have Klay/Curry ‘violates’ this rule, but this is a heuristic for teams with limited means to get better, not with all time greats being offered to them at a steep discount).  So with that in mind we should be looking at rotations that maximize net ratings, not ‘fit’ around a players' skill sets to make them look their best, and we want overall team success not individual 5 man unit success.  Let’s start with Sexton

Collin Sexton fits that offensive star who can score with bad teammates, going for 24.3 ppg on 57% TS on a team that finished 28th in offensive rating.   Yes he has some off ball skills, yes he should work on developing them for peak value, but no the Cavs should not be focused on getting him in off ball actions with Garland so that Garland can boost his assist rates and Sexton can have a high 3pt% (unless they are trying to build his value up for a trade).  In an idealized model Sexton would be flanked by long defenders who excelled at steals and rebounding to maximize Sexton’s transition game and also take advantage of his low TO rate and convert his missed jumpers into second chance opportunities.  The Cavs don’t have that many of those players  (26th in steals per game last season) individually and their best defensive combination was Mobley+Allen and one of Lauri or Wade at the 3.  These are lineups where it might make sense to give Ochai some run at the 2 as he had acceptable steal numbers or size Stevens down to the 3.  Maybe even both with Ochai and one of Wade or Lauri spacing and then Allen and Stevens as the bulkier defenders, or Okoro/Wade/Lauri as your 2/3/4 combo.  One name for the back of your mind is Raul Neto.  He can play the 2nd ball handler and shot creator role, can catch and shoot and has a career 2.1% steal rate and useful looking defensive metrics.  He’s got some of Garland’s positive traits but at a light enough level that you are wasting them when Sexton is creating.

This one should be under a spoiler since it will induce vomiting in the spacing crowd, but Okoro+Stevens next to Sexton should be considered as well.  Those two together had monstrous transition numbers across their 413 possessions.  99th percentile for points added per 100, 88th percentile frequency, 99th percentile for ppp, 99th off steals, 76th frequency, 99th in ppp, 94th off live rebounds, 76th in frequency, 96th in ppp.  With switching and with most teams playing multiple guys on the wrong side of 30 having three or four guys who can run on any play can add a lot of value.  Okoro and Stevens have handling issues in the halfcourt, but they are good enough in transition and add in Sexton’s speed, and the passing they get out of their bigs off rebounds and…. Well you won’t see it after gouging your eyes after half a dozen halfcourt sets, but those points will be there in the end.  Especially since running suits Lauri, Allen and Mobley as well, and Love's outlet passing is top notch.

 

Digression time:  A lot of claims about Lauri at the 3 working because those two guys were back there, and obviously there is some truth to that, however that makes it sound like Lauri is a stop gap and we just need to find a different 3 to replace him.  The truth is that that lineup was working when the 3 was ‘big’ a forward/pf type and not just a SF type.  Defensive ratings for Mobley with Allen and then a player at the 3 with possessions in parenthesis

Lauri:  103.2 (1245)

Wade:  102.8 (429)

Stevens: 104.2 (19)

Okoro:  109.3 (87)

Love:  114.3 (43)

Osman: 116.3 (277)

Windler 125 (15)

Evan Lauri and Wade together were solid (109.6, 447) and that included time with Love, Fall and Davis).  End Digression.

Darius Garland fits with just about anyone.  In one way he’s easy to maximize and fans want to surround him with shooting for high level offensive output.  I would temper this and say the best team results might be to have him carry some of the more difficult fits on the Cavs roster who clash with their other players.  I’m looking at you Caris Levert.  I dislike (hate) the Levert acquisition but he can work with Darius because Darius is so damn versatile.  Of course he won’t work as well as Rubio did, or any other number of cheaper to acquire guards would be.  I’d be willing to bet that a starting lineup of Garland/Neto/Lauri/Mobley/Allen would spit out wins at a good rate.  

As a partner Jarrett Allen is pretty close to ideal with Darius.  I’d guess that joining those two at the hip would produce the best results, but you might be able to squeeze a tiny amount more if the other guards got to play with Allen as well.  That probably isn’t worth the effort though, and Garland will still be sharing the floor with them and Rubio/Garland/Allen was plus everything last year (+26.3) in 443 possessions.  

The 2 man pairings that didn’t work last season with Garland (those with a - net rating) were with

Sexton

Rondo

Goodwin

Fall

Brown

The last thing I would mention is that the best thing for the Cavs and Garland is probably to trim back his mpg this year.  He has been banged up for 4 years straight and this is the year the Cavs should definitely have the guard play to cover him, assuming Sexton returns and especially if Rubio makes it back this season.  

Jarrett Allen works pretty well with anyone on the roster.  OK Allen and Lopez frontcourts aren’t a good idea (but also might function in tiny doses in an emergency) and otherwise he is just good at what he does and is the one guy on the team who is a strong roll man.  Other than getting him lots of time with Garland and lots of time with the triple towers lineups you don’t have to think much with him.

Kevin Love is another argument for starting Caris Levert.  It is not at all surprising that those two didn’t mesh well last year at -12.3 (524).  Both are poor defenders which is putting you behind the 8 ball but Love is a skilled, vision based offensive player while Levert is a ‘what’s in front of me, feed it to the roll man sometimes’ offensive player.  He doesn’t maximize Love’s spacing and often forgets to look back on the PnP when Love is open.  This is a duo that I wouldn’t bother trying this year because the likely downside is high and the chances that both of them are with the Cavs long term are low.  Since Love is coming off the bench, starting Levert splits them up naturally and you just move on from there.  Other observations, Love+Allen was ~10/100 better than Love+Mobley, but not everyone can play all the time with Allen and Mobley should improve going into year 2.  Love + Osman was neutral at +0.1 (1708) which is notable because Osman had the worst +/- of rotation players by a good amount.  For guys who hit 500+ mins Osman was -8.6 and the next worst was Stevens at -4.0, so having a large sample with one player be neutral is of note.  Those numbers are driven by the +10 that comes with Garland and they were -6 without him, but still of note.  Love and Lauri together was not the disaster many predicted at +2.6 (1114) and was even fine defensively (47th percentile).  Rubio was doing a good job with those lineups, as you might expect with spacing and IQ like that.  Likewise Love+Wade was good at +4.3 (629).  A second big shooter with Love opens up his passing as well as forcing defenses to decide how to guard the perimeter against a guy who still can cause problems for smaller defenders in the post.  

Evan Mobley is a hard one since he should show the largest improvement this season, but with the starting lineup more or less set we don’t have to worry much about it.  He worked really well in the three bigs lineups, and was fine as long as one of Rubio or Garland were on the floor which isn’t at all a surprising split for a rookie. 

Caris Levert is one I would have expected to pair better with Jarrett Allen given their familiarity and solid play together (+3.1, 1425) in 19-20 with Brooklyn, but he was better with Mobley than Allen though we are talking pretty small sample sizes here and lots of injury confounders.  

Ochai Agbaji hasn’t gotten much attention from me in my thought process here.  Part of that is rookies taken in the teens don’t tend to get a lot of run on winning teams.  Sure Corty Kispert got 1,700 mins for a 35 win Wizards team last year but he only got to 20 mins in a game twice in their first 31 (with 5 DNPs) and got far more burn after they had given up on the season.  I also understand that lots of people look at the Cavs and think ‘shooting, they need shooting’ but I don’t.  They need that secondary ball handler a lot more which is why we should see a lot of Garland/Sexton/Levert and even some Neto in a pinch early on in the year.  If Wade is ready to go then they have three bigs who can space, and possibly 4 if one of Mobley/Stevens shows a lot of improvement there.  That leaves some 2 mins, with Okoro, either Stevens or Windler (with the other going to make roster space for Sexton), Osman and Neto competing for time with Ocahi.  That leaves the SF position where Lauri should definitely be the starter, with Wade getting time when he is ready and everyone else in the 2 group except for Neto getting tried out there.  If Ochai is good as a rookie he will carve out a role, if not he will get spot mins and the Cavs will have plenty of options unless there is a rash of injuries.  

Proposed lineups and rotations assuming Sexton returns, Windler loses the roster spot, Wade is healthy early in the season, and Rubio is out until the All-Star break at least.

Starters

Garland

Levert

Lauri

Mobley

Allen

None of these guys should start out at >32 mpg, Garland, Levert and Lauri especially should be kept on lower mins where it can be managed.  

First off the bench guard

Sexton

First off the bench wing

Okoro

First off the bench big

Love

Sexton replaces Garland, Okoro in for Levert and Love in for Allen.   Then we can rotate Wade in for Lauri, and Garland in for Okoro with Allen back for Mobley.  Injuries, fouls, opposing lineups allow for Neto, Stevens and Ochai to get their turns.  

Odd men out:

Windler

Osman

Lopez