dckingsfan wrote:prime1time wrote:doclinkin wrote:
That something miraculous happened and he had a basketball transplant? The ghost of somebody with basketball skill has possessed his body?
Nate's point shows that even playing next to Beal or ANYbody on court, Rui has a negative effect on the team's +/-. Rui is not in the negative solely because he is playing with the bench. But the bench is at least partly in the negative because they are playing with Rui.
For example, Deni is noted as a +/- king on this team. We knock him a bit because he defers to other players to set them up to score. But even without him shooting much, or well, the team benefits with him on the court. Put him next to anybody bench or starter, and he has a positive +/-.
Well not quite anybody. Scroll down to the 2-man line-ups.
https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/a/avdijde01/lineups/2023
Pick a bench player, any of them, and even those that have been struggling the most have some player who they have a positive +/- next to. (Deni usually, but generally one other as well). Gafford plays well next to Morris. Gill played in the positive with any starter, and even Davis. But not Rui. Bad effect next to anybody. Small sample sizes of course, but at least he is consistent.
Delon Wright is an interesting case. He played in the negative with everybody but Deni. So much for his defense making all the difference. Not sure what to make of it, except that his reluctance to take a shot means teams can ignore him on that end, and concentrate on others. The bench will look better when Kispert comes back and adds a floor spacer, back door lane attacker. Hopefully his willingness to shoot will force teams to chase outside.
Delon Wright going down makes me think Deni will pick up slack playmaking in the 2nd unit. Will Barton can't carry all the ballhandling duties, some starter or another is going to have to play minutes with the bench at all times.
Let's remove Rui from the conversation and insert generic role-player A. Are you arguing that the right role player could turn the Wizards into a championship contender?
I thought this was the line-ups, rotation, analysis thread? I think that the last question is kind of a false dilemma vs. the spectrum of possibilities with this current team and possible line-ups.
I think the questions should be: with Rui out of the lineup, would we see an improvement?
Also, doc seems to have touched on another really interesting factoid: Wright and Deni. You would think those two playing together would be a disaster, but not so much.
The reason why I asked if replacing Hachimura with a generic role player would turn us into a championship contender, was because what I understand implicitly is that wide swings in on/off are led by elite players. Utilizing on/off to argue for removing someone from the lineup is a non-sequitor due to all the confounding variables that are inherent in the dataset. From a purely logical point of view, the argument itself becomes a Rorschach test of the poster's own pre-conceived opinions. Hachimura sucks so I'm going go and find some dataset that reinforces what I believe and build an argument around it. As of right now Rui is shooting 50/42.9/100 from the field. He is the only Wizards player shooting 50/40/90. Obviously, we should bench him. In addition we should point out that Todd and Davis both have higher on/off than Beal. So obviously they should get more playing time. All this really comes down to is the continued hate of Hachimura.
