Finding the right lineup is imperative early in the season. Players can have unlimited skill, but if they are not skilled together, the lineup will struggle. Using pbpstats.com, I was able to find the most (and least) dominant five-man lineups in the month of January. I measured the lineup dominance by their total plus/minus for the month while the five-man unit was on the court. Below are the top 10 lineups for the month of January.
Take Note indeed. It's no surprise with how the 15-4 Utah Jazz are playing that they actually have two lineups in the top 10. Even more impressive is that their starting unit has been 35 points better than second place, the Clippers starters. The "Take Note Lineup" has outscored opponents 449-357 in 13 games from January 1-26, totaling 184 minutes. This translates to a 117-93 win when scaled down to one NBA game and a 79-3 record when scaled up to a full NBA season. Their offense scores 13 points per 100 possessions more than the NBA average and their defense gives up 11 less points than average.
They're getting it done with their shooting and rebounding, shooting 75/166 (45%) from deep, 8% better than league average on insane volume. The average NBA lineup shoots about 40% of their shots from behind the arc while this lineup shoots 49% of their attempts from three point range fueled by Conley, Mitchell, O'Neale, and Bogdanovic all shooting above average from range on the season. Their defense is fueled by 2x Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert, posting a career high in blocks (2.7) and rebounds (14.1). The lineup collects 57 rebounds per 48 minutes, 12 better than league average.
Looking at their lineup minutes allocation on the season, we can see that head coach Quin Snyder has an obvious plan and that the lineup has had fortunate injury luck. The Take Note lineup plays the most important minutes of the game, the first 6 minutes, but interestingly doesn't finish games together. They average 14 minutes together per game, making up 29% of Utah's playing time. Their best night of the season came against the awful Warriors lineup (see below) where they outscored the Dubs by 28 points in 16 minutes. Their worst outing came against a Nets lineup of Irving, Brown, Prince, Green, Allen where they were -17 in 10 minutes. They are +1 in 30 minutes of play against other top 10 lineups -- in games against the Clippers, Knicks. and Nuggets.
Worst Lineups of the Month
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