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NBA 5-Man Plus Minus Holiday Deep Dive
For those who follow this blog, you already know my favorite NBA stat is Five Man Plus Minus per Minute (FMPMpM). Here are a few reason why:
It accounts for 5 players playing together.
It accounts for what happens on offense and defense.
It is per minute, so it can measured with granularity or easily extrapolated to a quarter (12 minutes), game (48 minutes), etc.
As far as I can tell, this blog is the only place you can find FMPMpM. Five man lineups are typically measured per game or per 100 possessions. Per game can be misleading for lineups that play minimal minutes. Per 100 possessions is fine, but less granular, plus basketball is played by minutes, not possessions, so why not use minutes???
So, with the NBA season approaching the halfway mark (data as of December 22, 2018), it's a good time to take a deep dive into FMPMpM and see what we can learn about the teams and the lineups they are using more/less. In this post, we'll look the following:
A summary of minute distribution through the league
Big minute lineups that are performing well
Big minute lineups that aren't
Small minute lineups that should be considered for more minutes
Minute Distribution
Somewhat surprisingly, the vast majority of lineups do not play many minutes together at all. Teams have played around 40% of their games and 95% of the almost 7,000 different lineups have played fewer than 23 minutes together. That's less than a half of basketball. Here are a few more summary statistics that give an idea as to how lineups are being used across the league.
Average Lineup Minutes: 6.8
Median Lineup Minutes: 2.6
Highest Lineup Minutes: 392.8 (Charolette's Cody Zeller, Jeremy Lamb, Kemba Walker, Marvin Williams, and Nicolas Batum)
Lineups with 48+ minutes (= 1 game): 137
Lineups with 240+ minutes (= 5 games): 8
The best lineups getting big minutes
Utah: Mitchell, Crowder, Ingles, Rubio, and Golbert
Toronto: Green, Leonard, Lowry, Slakam, and Ibaka
Memphis: Temple, Jackson Jr., Anderson, Gasol, and Conley
Charlotte: Zeller, Lamb, Walker, Williams, and Batum
Indiana: Bogdanovic, Collison, Turner, Young, and Oladipo
Milwaukee: Lopez, Bledso, Antetokoumpo, Middleton, and Brogdon
Portland: Aminu, McCollum, Lillard, Layman, and Nurkic
Sacramento: Hield, Fox, Shumpert, Bjelica, and Cauley-Stein
All 8 lineups that are getting more than 240 minutes together are outperforming their opponents. Utah's Mitchel, Crowder, Ingles, Rubio, Gober lineup is beating opponents by more than .25 points per minute. That's 12 points a game (48 minutes). Interestingly, there is not a team in the league that is playing their most productive lineup the most minutes. Toronto's big minute lineup is only their 7th best lineup (minimum of 24 minutes together). Their best lineup is Green, VanVleet, Leonard, Lowry, and Ibaka; which is the best 24+ minute lineup in the league, beating teams by over 1 point per minute.
The worst lineups getting big minutes
Given that the vast majority of lineups are getting fewer than 23 minutes together, it should be expected that if a lineup is getting big minutes and not productive, it is because the team doesn't have a better option. Dallas, Chicago, Houston, and LAL all are playing negative lineups more than any other lineup... even those producing positive results.
Dallas: Jordan, Smith Jr., Barnes, Doncic, Matthews (their 10th best lineup)
Chicago: Parker, Holiday, Lopez, Arcidiacono, LaVine (their 3rd best lineup)
Houston: Paul, Capela, Gordon, Harden, Tucker (their 7th best lineup)
LAL: Ingram, McGee, Kuzma, James, Ball (their 6th best lineup)
These are the worst examples, but most teams are not playing their best lineups the most. I'm sure in some cases, there are good reasons for this. A team with a great bench might have 2nd/3rd lineup options that are significantly better than their opponents' 2nd/3rd lineups, but starting lineups that aren't as dominant against other starting lineups. That said, I'm sure there are plenty of cases where teams either ignore or aren't using the data... or just have coaches that do a bad job of managing lineups. With that here are some lineups that have outperformed the minutes they are getting.
Put me in coach
The following lineups have played at least 24 minutes together (in the top 5%), have a FMPMpM of over 0.5 (that's a 24+pt win in 48 minutes), and not in their team's top 5 lineups in terms of minutes.
Boston: Horford, Hayward, Tatum, Irving, Morris (8th in minutes)
Brooklyn: Russel, Allen, Harris, Kurucus, Hollis-Jefferson (6th in minutes)
Dallas: Jordan, Barnes, Barea, Doncic, Matthews (tied 10th in minutes)
Dallas: Powell, Barea, Brunson, Kleber, Matthews (tied 10th in minutes)
Denver: Harris, Beasley, Plumlee, Morris, Lyles (11th in minutes)
Denver: Harris, Murray, Jokic, Millsap, Barton (8th in minutes)
Detroit: Brown, Smith, Gallloway, Johnson, Pachullia (6th in minutes)
Detroit: Drummond, Griffin, Smith, Galloway, Bullock (10th in minutes)
Houston: Capela, Gordon, Clark, Harden, Tucker (6th in minutes)
LAC: Gallinari, Williams, Harrell, Beverly, Harris (13th in minutes)
LAC: Bradley, Gallinari, Williams, Harrell, Harris (12th in minutes)
LAC: Williams, Scott, Harrell, Beverly, Harris (14th in minutes)
Miami: Adebayo, Wade, Richardson, Winslow, McGruder (10th in minutes)
Minnesota: Saric, Dieng, Okogie, Covington, Jones (12th in minutes)
New Orleans: Davis, Moore, Holiday, Randle, Mirotic (7th in minutes... Mirotic has been injured)
New York: Tier, Mudlay, Kanter, Vonleh, Hardaway Jr. (6th in minutes)
Philly: Simmons, Korkmaz, Redick, Embid, Chandler (9th in minutes)
Portland: Aminu, McCollum, Lillard, Nurkic, Curry (8th in minutes)
Toronto: Green, VanVleet, Leonard, Lowry, Ibaka (8th in minutes)
Toronto: Green VanVleet, Valanciunas, Lowry, Slakam (10th in minutes)
Washington: Beal, Green, Wall, Morris, Porter Jr. (6th in minutes - Wall is now out)
DIY FMPMpM Stats
For anyone interested in taking a deeper dive into these stats, I've created an online dashboard where you can filter by team, minimum games, and minimum minutes. I have to push updates to the system, so make note of the "As of" date in the subtitle. I typically update the data once or twice a week. Here is the link: https://stepwisedigressions.shinyapps.io/fmpmpm/