*Note - a few names shifted slightly away from their bubbles. Lamb is actually in the upper right quadrant, directly to the left and below Kaminsky (Kaminsky is the bubble between "Kaminsky" and "Delly").
I was going to drop this on Kaminsky's thread but it has more to do with Lamb (and Lin's future), IMO. I sorted all players with > 300 FGA, (25) 25-29ft FGA, 25 Drives FGA, and > 30% from 25-29 ft. For this exercise I was interested in player usage/tendencies instead of volume or performance so I expressed FGA's as ratios instead of total volume. Had I sorted this differently, say with total Drives instead of Drive FGA, the chart would look considerably different.
X-axis = ratio of Drives FGA to total FGA.
Y-axis = ratio of 25-29ft FGA to total FGA.
Bottom Left Quadrant: Players who can space the floor and drive but predominantly 3/4/5's with usage elsewhere.
Top Left Quadrant: Predominately C&S floor spacers (or Pullups) who drive relatively little. Batum is an oddity because he rarely drives, otherwise he has little in common with these players.
Bottom Right Quadrant: With few exceptions, these are the guys you don't want to play with. Let's move on.
Top Right Quadrant: Generally PG's who can space the floor but also attack. Oh, and Frank Kaminsky and Jeremy Lamb. Had I sorted using total drives instead of drives fga Frank and Jeremy would shift a little closer to Gallo or left of him.
So about Lamb. IMO he fell out of the rotation almost entirely for offensive reasons and lineup construction. Overall, Lamb's not a good team defender but combined with Kaminsky's mobility in defending PNR and Lin's strength, Lamb's challenges getting over screens was marginalized while his length on switches and shot clock closeouts was maximized. Thus, on that unit he was a plus defender. Defensive rebounding was another bonus creating grab-n-go cross matches on the other end.
Offensively, combinations of Lamb + Kemba + Frank + Lin were a stilted mess of 4 guys with attacking tendencies. Hawes + Marvin (Top Left Quadrant) helped make it work overall. Almost everyone’s TS% dipped with Lamb “ON” but not Hawes - Lamb and Hawes were good for each other.
When the December injuries hit, Marvin remained at PF almost exclusively which altered the dynamics. Al's February return forced Clifford to find the right combination of floor spacing, defensive perfume for Al's 1 man zone, and lower usage attackers who didn't need Al’s space to contribute. Thus, Lamb's role and Kaminsky's usage changed dramatically.
