The Wood Shop: Looking At The Best Cleveland Lineups To Date with Plus-Minus Data

It’s that time of year again. The time when I look at all the five-man lineup data available for the Cavs and definitively say which Cavs are the best ever when grouped together and which ones should be traded – or at least gossiped about behind their backs. It’s the time when I may start touting some obscure lineup of guys that’re simply performing better than they should be.

HOW IT’S DONE
The process of comparing five-man groups is simple. To start, I found the lineup information, specifically plus-minus data, and then converted it to a per 48 minute rate, or actual plus-minus per 48 (pm/48). I looked at the ten units with the most minutes played for this piece. And, before someone even says it, I obviously know lineups aren’t going to put up per 48 numbers because their production would decrease as they grew tired throughout a game. The rate just makes it possible to compare lineups that have all played different amounts of minutes throughout the season.

The next step to figure out which lineups are really working deals with figuring out what a lineup should be doing plus-minus wise if the players are looked at as individuals who just come together without chemistry or other on the court stuff factoring in. This number is called expected pm/48. To figure this number out, I looked up all the players involved in the lineups and calculated their pm/48. Then I added the pm/48 of each player in a lineup and divided it by five to figure out the expected pm/48 of a unit.

Once I got the actual and expected pm/48 numbers, I compared them. If a unit’s actual numbers were better than their expected numbers, then the unit was making basketball magic. If a unit’s actual numbers were lower than the expected ones, the unit was underperforming. We’ll look at the results a little later.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

• The numbers are rather comforting for Cavs fans. The Cavs play their best two units the most. The LeBron James, Kyrie Irving, J.R. Smith, Kevin Love, and Tristan Thompson group has played 300 minutes to date, and the second most used group, which switches out DeAndre Liggins for Smith, has played 151 minutes. Those two groups had real 11.4/48 and 33.7/48 ratings, respectively.
• The Cavs third most played group just swaps out the shooting guard in the first two for Iman Shumpert. This group has played 88 minutes, but has the Cavs’ worst rating of -18.1/48. It’s hard to blame Lue for playing them though; on paper they should at least be a respectable 7.76/48.
• All of the Cavs units with an actual negative rating feature Iman Shumpert.

THE RESULTS

• The unit that most out performs expectations is Love, LeBron, Irving, Liggins, and Thompson. They’re 25.34/48 better than they should be. This unit is the second most used one and has the best actual numbers. That’s a win for Cleveland. This has pretty much been the starting group since J.R. Smith went down. Hopefully, it still gets run when he’s back.
• The unit that under performs the most is the same as the best one except it features Shumpert instead of Liggins. They’re -25.56/48 worse than they should be. The craziest way to look at that is to think that when you pair Liggins with the starters instead of Shumpert, he’s essentially worth +50.9/48. I vote Iman never starts again and Liggins gets the team to start talking of a Big Four.
• All of the talk in the media about the Cavs being unguardable when they play two bigs who can shoot is wrong. The Love, Frye, Irving, James, and Shumpert unit is -17.57/48 worse than they should be. Their actual plus minus isn’t too hot either, -12.7/48. It’s the second worse group of the units looked at today.
• There’s more evidence here that Irving is actually really good. All of the units that out perform expectations feature him. They also feature the King.

THE SHUMPENING

Remember the M. Night Shyamalan movie The Happening? It was a great idea on paper: plants think people are ruining the planet and they release some poison that makes people kill themselves. That’s interesting, but making a movie just going on and on about this idea didn’t work. There was no movement in the story, the dialogue was poor, and the main characters had nothing to do with the ultimate conclusion to the movie. The premise was almost too strong and nothing supporting it did it justice.

The Shumpening is Iman Shumpert’s movie and it gets Happening esque ratings from me. The basic idea is simple: A 3 and D guard helps a Cavs team that needs 3-point shooting and defense. I’d watch that movie every day. The issue with this movie, though, is that Iman playing defense and making 3s almost always involves him dribbling too much and jacking mid-range jumpers. Yea, he may reach his ultimate destiny of hitting 3s and playing defense, but you have to sit through an awful lot of other stuff, making Iman’s movie unwatchable.

Coincidentally, the other stuff is probably contributing to these awful lineup numbers. To understand this better, let’s see what Shumpert’s doing differently than Liggins. To start, he takes 21.1% of his shots from mid-range. Liggins takes 13.6% of his shots from that area and 26% of his 3s come from the corners, whereas just 18.8% of Shumpert’s 3s come from the corner. Spacing anyone?

Iman just takes more shots than Liggins too. He takes 5.8 a night, while Liggins takes 2.9. As far as 3-point percentage goes Iman is hitting 38.3%. Liggins hits 38.9%, although he attempts two fewer per game. The pair both dribble about the same amount according to tracking data, but I can’t kick the Vines of Shump dribbling for seven seconds and then throwing up a random shot. Liggins just doesn’t do that.

The ultimate reason that Liggins works so much better with the starters than Shumpert is because he doesn’t try to do anything extra. He runs to the corners, plays defense, and waits for the ball to come to him. That’s a sound strategy because the Big Three all average over 20 points a night. If they are getting the ball, there’s a pretty good chance they’ll get buckets. Why take any shots away from them? Liggins usage rate is 10.7% while Shumpert’s is 14.1%. It’s not a huge difference, but the plus-minus numbers suggest that it is a factor, along with all those other things I mentioned above.

LEAGUE WIDE LINEUP DATA

• What fun is an article like this if we can’t take a look around the league at the five best units, excluding the Cavs’ one. Look: Russell Westbrook is the owner of some more crazy numbers, besides his possible triple-double season. The above mentioned OKC unit is beating expectations by 54.12/48. That’s number one in the league.
• Of all the teams in the league that should never play any lineups aside from their best one, Washington is number one. They’re best unit puts up 32.5/48. They’re sitting at 22-19, which is 5th in the East. Imagine if they just used their terror squad every night, all night. That group is no fluke. They’ve played 106 minutes to date. That’s the most of the five best non Cavs units in the league.
• The Warriors still have nothing on the Cavs. They may have beat Cleveland pretty badly on MLK day, but their best/their only unit in the top five for plus-minus/48, features JaVale McGee. JaVale has bounced back, but he’s still a complete joke until he makes it through a whole season without being on Shaqtin a fool. Their best lineup isn’t the death lineup this season, which has to mean something too.
• It’s also comforting to know that the Cavs best performing lineup ranks right below Golden State’s. The Cavs’ group puts up 33.7/48 while the Warriors pump out 36.4/48. The big asterisk though is that the Cleveland unit has played twice as much as Golden State’s.

The season is halfway over, and the Cavs are in a great position to keep succeeding. This exercise didn’t show any particularly surprising groups succeeding, but the Cavs haven’t faced very much adversity to date this year. It’s great if it stays that way and their regular starting group, sans J.R. Smith, can continue to be their best group and in the league’s top five. Nonetheless, it’ll be interesting to see if the best 5-man group for the Wine & Gold is still the same come playoff time.