The Indiana Pacers have gotten off to a solid start this season, but teams always strive for more efficiency. Here’s a look at how the club is currently managing their playing rotation.
The Indiana Pacers are a team that few would have pegged to have a winning record (12-11) this far into the 2017-18 season. Clearly, the club’s management, coaching staff and players are doing a lot of things right.
One area that can be examined to see what has gone well and what could possibly be improved is with regards to playing time. Sometimes even successful NBA teams have flaws in their playing rotation in terms of not giving the most minutes to the most productive players.
First we will take a look at the plus/minus numbers for the Pacers’ rotation players (all statistics courtesy of NBA.com). Then, we’ll glimpse into the team’s individual offensive and defensive ratings to see how things stack up.
In terms of the starting lineup, all of Indiana’s starting five are posting positive plus/minus values except for small forward Bojan Bogdanovic. Bogey’s plus/minus is -1.0 after 23 contests, which is just below the league average of zero.
Lance Stephenson has been backing up Bogdanovic at small forward, but Stephenson’s plus/minus value is lower than his, so it wouldn’t make sense to insert Born Ready into the starting lineup based on this metric.
Domantas Sabonis is getting the most playing time of anyone on the Pacers’ bench (25.2 minutes per game), and he’s tallying a very solid +0.8 plus/minus figure.
The other two primary reserves for Indiana — Stephenson and point guard Cory Joseph — have plus/minus numbers of -1.0 and -2.2, respectively. Those stats are actually decent for second unit players (-2.0 is considered “replacement level” by NBA statisticians).
Another helpful player evaluation metric is net rating, which takes a player’s offensive and defensive ratings into account to form an estimate of his overall impact on the team.
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When looking at the starters, we see the same pattern emerge: Everyone has a positive net rating other than Bojan Bogdanovic. Bogey currently has a net rating of -0.2, while his potential replacement (Lance Stephenson) once again trails him in this category (-3.2).
The second unit looks much the same as well, with Domantas Sabonis leading the way with a +2.6 net rating. Joseph (-0.1) and Stephenson are in the negative range, but they are the best reserve performers other than Sabonis.
Quite often when these metrics are analyzed for NBA teams, there are glaring anomalies — either underperforming players getting major minutes, or lower-rotation players who are performing far better than the men they are playing behind.
Nate deserves a lot of credit for riding the hot hands and not being tied to rotation... lot of coaches wouldn't
— Zach Ahonen (@zahonen) November 18, 2017
As far as what’s going on with the Pacers, they appear to be doing things right in terms of their use of the roster.
Four of the five starters are leading the team in plus/minus and net rating. Bojan Bogdanovic is the lone holdout, but he’s still performing at a higher level than his backup with regard to these metrics.
Domas Sabonis is the club’s best bench player according to plus/minus and net rating, and he’s receiving the most playing time among the reserves. The remainder of the rotation is also being utilized in a way that is in line with their statistical performance.
Based on this criteria, Indiana is doing a very good job of splitting up playing time among the starting unit and reserves so their most effective players are on the floor as much as possible.
Next: 2017-18 Week 7 NBA Power Rankings
It certainly appears that efficient use of the talent they have is one of the reasons the Pacers are among the surprise teams in the Eastern Conference so far this season.