RealGM

http://stats.nba.com/league/lineups/#!/advanced/?CF=MIN*GE*50&Season=2016-17&SeasonType=Regular%20Season&sort=NET_RATING&dir=1

Offensive rating of 109.8 and more surprisingly a defensive rating of 81.7 pts per 100 possessions, which is second best in the league.

If it keeps up and we keep playing like we are - 4th - 5th seed and face the clippers ??? 1st round or am I jumping the gun here? Let's wait for the allstar for that shall we

You have to keep in mind that the huge positive is largely attributed to them playing against second units (which also in large parts explains the good defensive ratings). The benches we've faced have for the most part been utterly atrocious. It is still very impressive but when you consider they have two legit sixth men of the year candidate on it, it does explain a lot.

Yeah, I think playing against second units definitely has something to do with it. A few of our second unit guys could be starters too. It's also unusual for a team to play an entire second unit of pure bench players. Most teams will have at least 1 or 2 starters in the game at all times. Good to see tho. Glad our guys are playing so well.

Also, I think all our second unit guys deserve credit because all of them have played really well at different times, but I want to give a shout out to both Lou Will and Larry Nance. They've both been amazing for us to start the season. Offensively for Lou, and defensively for Larry.

The good thing is that I wouldn't expect much regression outside of Lou Williams. And any regression from him should be at least partly negated by gradual improvement from Ingram.

The Prodigy wrote:The good thing is that I wouldn't expect much regression outside of Lou Williams. And any regression from him should be at least partly negated by gradual improvement from Ingram.

Actually that's the one guy I don't expect a regression from. Lou's offensive BPM over the past 3 seasons has been +4, +3 and +5 so far this year. He's been right in that same zone for a while now.

With Clarkson and Williams scoring at will from the bench, and if the mins distribution remains somewhat similar(unlikely)...we might have a small chance of having 5 guys scoring at least 15 ppg, obviously Randle needs to step up a bit and reach this plateau, he's the one most likely to end up just below.

Either way, this would be an extremely rare feat, I can't remember many teams doing this the past 15 yrs, only the 04-05 Suns.

And when you look up at the mins played, every single guy who did that on that team(Nash/Stoudemire/Marion/J.Johnson/Q-Rich),
played at least 34 mpg, which will make our feat waaaaay more impressive.

Slava wrote:

The Prodigy wrote:The good thing is that I wouldn't expect much regression outside of Lou Williams. And any regression from him should be at least partly negated by gradual improvement from Ingram.

Actually that's the one guy I don't expect a regression from. Lou's offensive BPM over the past 3 seasons has been +4, +3 and +5 so far this year. He's been right in that same zone for a while now.

It's actually closer to 6 this year, which is a 50% jump, plus his defensive BPM has improved by about 100%. Some of that improvement may be sustainable due to better coaching but I don't expect him to post/match career highs in both at age 30. Of course, I hope I'm wrong.

The real bench mob

crazy to think just last year who are these scrubs?? luke got everyone to buy in with limited bench talent and now all of a sudden the bench is deep?? when i hear deep i think of a talented big names lined up.

JC? d league
nance?? rookie
ingram ??rookie
tarik? fresh off d league
lou? plays no defense
thomas robinson?? whos that
calderon non factor
heutes non factor
zu ?? rookie
metta?? bench and locker presence?

Luke Walton and the coaching staff have really tapped into these young players.

If you look at it, half of the Laker's young core isn't even playing that great. The Laker's are just playing overall better team basketball on both sides of the court. They have a lot of players that are playing well: Lou Williams, Nick Young, Julius Randle, Jordan Clarkson, Larry Nance Jr., Timofey Mozgov and Tarik Black. But Brandon Ingram, D'Angelo Russell and Luol Deng are struggling (to a lesser extent Russell).

Breakdown on why the bench is playing so well:

lake_show wrote:Breakdown on why the bench is playing so well:

Watch on YouTube

Probably his best video yet. He improved his production value a ton and the content in this one is on par with b-ball breakdown if not better.

That Clarkson/Lou backcourt is just ballin out of control.

How can this unit be our best when Clarkson is so selfish?

This unit actually is very well balanced. Nance, Black and Ingram all don't need shots to keep their head in the games... they all are self motivated to do whatever it takes. This meshes very well with the shoot first mentalities of Clarkson and Williams. I would also assume that the perceived selfishness we are seeing in those two is a coached thing.... they are the only ones in that group that can get their own shots. The rest of that group is a great hustle, energy and effort unit that cleans up misses, runs/scores in transition and can finish an easy look at the rim.