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I realize it's only been 10 games -- small sample size theatre and all that -- but one thing that's been sticking out to me is our slow first quarter starts. We have a tendency to dig ourselves into big holes after the first quarter thus relying on our bench to claw our way back to give us a chance to win the game.

Looking at the numbers:

We won the first quarter 6 times this year and are 5-1 in those games. The one loss was the dreaded Toronto game where we coughed up that big lead at home. (Still hurts thinking about that game). All of our losses however where games that we also lost the first quarter; substantially...

The first seven games we have avg 25 pts after the first qtr which is bottom 10 in the league. Opponents have also outscored us by 12 pts during this span. The next two games however -- with Kuz starting -- our first quarter scoring increased to 28.5 pts which catapulted us to top 5 in the league. We've also outscored opponents by 4 pts during this span which resulted in a 2 game winning streak. This was one of the reasons why I've been screaming to get Kuz in the starting lineup as we desperately need his shooting and energy to get off to a good start.

It's been working up until tonight where we unfortunately fell back into bad habits and put up only 16 pts in the first to their 33 (-17 ouch!). Kuz and Brook had bad games which hurt us.

With that said it seems apparent thus far that if we win the first quarter we win the game. It's too much to ask of our second unit to come into the game and continue to bail us out of big leads we give up. There's a lot of details we can dive into to focus on: free throws, turnovers, shooting, free throws, Lonzo agressiveness, free throws.... and free throws!!?! Either way, Luke needs to find a way to make sure our starters are ready from the tip off to get after it. Our energy is always there for the last three quarters, just need to do it in the beginning and dare I say we could be sniffing playoffs??!

I would like to go with a starting lineup/bench that looks like the following:

PG Lonzo Ball/Tyler Ennis/Alex Caruso
SG Jordan Clarkson/Vander Blue/Josh Hart
SF Kentavious-Caldwell Pope/Corey Brewer
PF Kyle Kuzma/Brandon Ingram
C Brook Lopez/Julius Randle/Andrew Bogut

Yeah, our starting lineup just hasn't been terribly good this season. We're winning games or keeping them close off the bench, even when guys like Lopez have monumental games.

Lonzo is the key... Ty's said this before, but we're going to live and die by how Ball plays... When his shot's falling and he can be aggressive, we have a good shot against anyone but maybe the Warriors...
When it's not, we're going to have to hope our Bench can get us back in it...

It's tough, because we clearly have a ton of talent at all positions... But Ball, Ingram, and to a lesser extent Kuzma haven't figured out how to put it together all at the same time yet... Much less, night in and night out.

I'd really like to see:
Ball
Clarkson
Kuz
Randle
Lopez

But I guess they've decided Randle and Lopez doesn't work... So I don't really know what the answer is. I guess it's just get the bench on the floor earlier and leave them on longer until Ingram or Ball can be more of an offensive threat night in and night out.

Great topic op and good research. Will hope to read some good insight on this thread (which already some included).
Please more threads like this.

Good post. It's a mindset thing.

Kilroy wrote:
I'd really like to see:
Ball
Clarkson
Kuz
Randle
Lopez
.

Sorry to disagree with you here ... But Randle Is no longer a starter at least for for our team ... He is better suited as that hustle energy guy off the bench and to be honest I think it suits him best with that role.

I like the Idea of moving KCP to SF

Ball
JC
KCP
Kuzma
Lopez