Early Season Lineups Contain Few Surprises

So far this season, Conley has been picking apart defenses — and it shows in the early lineup data. (Game still)

Five games into the season, the Jazz have experienced the entire spectrum of basketball possibilities, from scorching the nets against the Blazers in the opener to a disappointing home loss to the pesky Timberwolves, and everything in between. At the moment, the Jazz seem to have partially righted the ship in a win against the Clippers, and currently share the fourth best record in the west with three other teams. To say there’s a long way to go would be an understatement.

With five games of basketball in the rearview mirror, it’s uncertain how much can be gleaned, but that doesn’t mean we won’t try. The standard early-season caveat certainly applies: these are small sample sizes.

Quin Snyder’s rotation has gone about as expected: an eight man rotation is seeing the vast majority of the action (1,151 minutes , or 95.9% of a possible 1,200), with some limited spot duty for ninth man Georges Niang. The deeper bench, including two second-year prospects, two rookies and newcomer Shaq Harrison, only played in the opener once it reached blowout proportions, and the two players on two-way contracts haven’t yet been active for a game.

With eight players dominating action, a large number of combinations is mathematically possible, but in this case, eight distinct lineups stand out. These lineups have seen action in all five games, played the most minutes together, and combined to play 74.6% of all possible minutes¹

Utah’s eight most common lineups so far, per NBA stats.

As I reviewed this table, a few broader topics jumped out at me. Let’s take a look:

Bojan Bogdanovic vs. his mirror lineups

Bogdanovic returned to the Jazz lineup after missing the bubble due to wrist surgery, but his on-court results have some wondering if he’s truly healthy. For his part, he says he’s not hurt, just rusty, but besides getting hot for half a game against the Thunder, he has struggled so far.

The problem for Bogdanovic is that if he’s not hitting shots, he doesn’t do much to help the team in other areas. He’s not a great defender or rebounder, his handle is questionable, especially in a crowd, and his passes are often errant. That doesn’t leave a whole lot he can contribute when he’s shooting 29.7% from the field and 30.3% from three, although in theory he still helps space the floor.

Not surprisingly, his on-off lineups are not looking good. Bogdanovic figures in three of the top eight lineups that also have a non-Bogey version of the same lineup also among the eight. I call them mirror lineups, because they are identical except for his presence.

The first set of mirror lineups are also the two most played in the rotation. The starters are playing well in 53 minutes so far this season, with an elite-level 115.6 OffRtg and an average 107.3 DefRtg combining for a 8.3 Net Rating. That’s good, but ideally a top team would probably like to gain a little more advantage from its five best players. It also pales in comparison to its mirror lineup, i.e. the same four players, but with Bogdanovic switched out for Joe Ingles. That lineup, the Jazz’ second most used at 24 minutes in five games, scores the ball to the tune of an even better 119.2 OffRtg, but adds a super stingy defense, with a DefRtg of 96.2. End result is a 23.0 Net Rtg.

The same thing happens with the Conley-Clarkson-Ingles-Bogdanovic-Gobert lineup and its mirror version, with Niang in Bogey’s place. Bojan’s version of the lineup has a terrible -21.7 NetRtg, while the same lineup featuring the often-maligned Niang² is a +9.3.

Bogey wins his third contest against a mirror lineup: Mitchell-Clarkson-Bogdanvich-O’Neale-Favors vs. the same group with Ingles in Bojan’s place. In this instance, the Bogdanovic version (14 minutes) has a -3.3 NetRtg, while the Ingles lineup (9 minutes) is even worse at -9.0 NetRtg.

Ultimately Bogey’s impact on the offense is a problem at present. It has worked well enough with the starters, but other lineups, which probably rely on him more for spacing if nothing else, have been limited to 74.0, 84.8, 103.2 and 93.3 OffRtgs. Past experience indicates that will probably change, but sooner rather than later would be nice.

Mitchell without Conley

Nobody wants to hear that the newly extended Donovan Mitchell is struggling, but he is, and he’s struggling most when he’s on the court and Mike Conley is off. Mitchell’s four lineups that match these criteria have NetRtgs of -33.8, -28.1, -3.3 and -9.0. Just in case you missed it, those are all negative.

It’s not a good indicator for the Donovan-as-future point-guard strategy, but it’s also not the only thing going on in those lineups. Mitchell has clearly been up and down to start the season, shooting 35.4% from the field and 29.8% from three, and has been prone to curious defensive lapses, but three of the four lineups in question also include the struggling Bogdanovic, and only one includes Gobert. That means that for most of these minutes, Mitchell is playing without the two players – Gobert and Conley – who have been playing best in the early season, and with the other player – Bogdanovic – who has been struggling the most.

Eventually, Mitchell or Bogdanovic will bust their slumps, and the other will likely follow as defenses have to react quickly. Right now, with Mitchell and Bogdanovic shooting poorly, and Ingles and O’Neale often reluctant to shoot³, teams are somewhat able to defend as if the Jazz only have one (current) outside threat: Mike Conley.

Gobert and Favors

Before the Jazz faced the Clippers, the lead stat for this section was the fact that Derrick Favors was playing less than 15 minutes per game, which begs two questions: does that amount of playing time justify Favors’ signing as an effective use of the Mid-Level Exception, and will Favors be happy long term if his jersey number is greater than his minutes played?

Then on Friday night, he was needed for 24 minutes against the Clippers due to Gobert’s foul trouble, raising his average to 16.5 minutes per game, so that changed the numbers slightly, while also making Jazz fans thank the basketball gods that Favors was back.

Going into the season, conventional wisdom was that Favors would likely play 14-16 minutes in relief of Gobert, plus some quantity of minutes with Gobert. While the two did play limited minutes together in the preseason, it hasn’t happened at all in the regular season except for a one-second stint when both were in the game to rebound a free throw.

As far as the lineups go, Favors is part of the worst of the eight most common lineups: the Mitchell-Ingles-Bogdanovic-O’Neale-Favors clunker, which posts an anemic 74.0 OffRtg, an average 107.8 DefRtg, and a catastrophic -33.8 NetRtg in 24 total minutes over 5 games, so that’s not good. That said, the next two worst ratings both include Gobert, so I tend to not blame Favors or Gobert as much as the players around them, whether that’s right or not.

The Mitchell-Clarkson-Bogdanovic-O’Neale-Favors group also happens to have a mirror lineup with Rudy in Derrick’s place, and it has been overwhelmingly in Favors’ favor. While Team Derrick has been slightly net negative at a -3.3 NetRtg, Team Rudy has been terrible at -28.1.

To be honest, all these three issues may be related. If the wing play improves – and that mostly means Mitchell and Bogdanovic busting their respective slumps – Snyder may feel like he can risk playing Gobert and Favors together for two to four minutes per half. Right now, with the paint clogged already, it probably isn’t something he’s interested in trying. It will be interesting to see if he eventually gets more than 15-17 minutes out of Favors.

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What does all this mean this early in the season? Sadly, not much, again due to those pesky small sample sizes.

There will be those who are ready to grab their pitchforks and light their torches on social media suggesting that Bogdanovic should be sent packing. Others might prematurely conclude that Mitchell as point guard is a failed experiment. And still others may lament unceasingly that the Jazz spent the Mid-Level on Favors.

Calls to trade or release or release a player or to quit playing Mitchell at point guard at this stage of the season are reactionary at best. That would be like a business opening its doors for calendar year 2021, and deciding by the end of the fifth business day to revamp the strategy. If your strategy was well thought out and nothing else has changed, you owe it to yourself to let things settle for a while before pulling any plugs. This is still true even though there was an expectation that the team’s continuity would allow them to hit the ground running in a new season⁴.

I’ll continue to watch these lineups throughout the season, as well as others that may become significant from time to time due to injury or rotation changes.