But he is playing the 5 guys in the starting lineup who it appears the GM picked for those roles.

Harden might be the biggest test case. Right now I assume Presti and Brooks agree on starting Thabo. If either changed their view eventually, what would happen?

Think about the best teams in the west or the league and how many Thunder starters other than Durant would bump the other team’s starters if they had that choice or for it to even be truly considered a toss-up. Not many. I’d think 1 or none most places. I can’t think of any top team who would change out 2 or even think much about it.

I imagine the conversations to go something like this:

Stat Guy: The data says to use White more often when we need offense.
Brooks: I don’t think DJ is ready for more minutes yet. I need to see more defensive improvement in practice before I use him in crunch times.

Stat Guy: The data says to use Green off the bench.
Brooks: I don’t like the message that sends to my team. Jeff is a leader, he works very hard, he sets an example, the team looks up to him, he’s a calming influence on the young guys and he does everything I ask him to do as well as he can. I can trust him with this role, and I’m going to stick with him for now.

etc.

I know the team has stat guys. I just think they defer to coach Brooks. Maybe their role increases in the future. It will be interesting to see.

The choice for the start of next season will either be stay the course or a guess because there isn’t a strong enough data basis to feel very confident in anything else. But I’d still guess that there is something better and there are at least 10 options with the current list of guys and would be others if they acquire any players who will actually significantly crack that 9 man rotation.

I don’t know if there is an answer to that question. The Thunder keep their own advanced stats, but we don’t know what they are, and we don’t know how they influence decisions.

I am assuming the staff makes their decisions based on instinct and coaching priorities because that’s the way it looks and sounds to me, based on what I see happening, and what I hear Brooks say.

I assume a player gets to start based on some qualitative priorities such as leadership, experience, hard working practice player, ability to listen to the coach and respond to his requests, etc… You know, coaching stuff. Brook’s rotation is set at 9, and he would rather go with 8 than 10. He seems like the kind of coach who will not bench an uninjured player unless that player is causing trouble. He doesn’t alter his lineups due to matchups. Krstic starts, even though his minutes decrease.

I would imagine that Brooks will re-evaluate his starters next season, and that we’ll see that lineup a majority of the time barring injury or trade. He just comes across as old-school, choosing to give his guys a chance rather than change things up. You still see Thabo inbounding the ball for a late game offensive set, even this late in the season, though Harden is usually on the bench.

I have seen Brooks decrease Jeff’s and Russell’s minutes during slumps. I’ve seen him bring Ibaka on slowly but steadily, giving him more and more minutes as the season goes on. I have seen him play small ball or go big depending on what the other team is doing. So he does react and respond and adapt, but it is based on coaching moves and not data analysis.

There was an article on TrueHoop earlier in the year where the King’s players expressed discontent at coach Westphal for constantly yanking the lineups around. They didn’t feel secure or confident, not knowing what to expect, and it effected their preparation. So there is a limit to experimenting with lineups, and that limit is probably very different from team to team. The coach is ultimately the person responsible for defining that limit for his own team. Maybe Brooks has done that already, and the team isn’t ready to see a lot of change. Maybe their youth necessitates that things remain stable so that their confidence is not shaken.

So I guess what I’m getting at is that there is a lot of gray area when it comes to roster decisions and experimentation. If Brooks used data analysis and changed the lineups too often, it may breed inconsistency and malcontent rather than maximize adjusted +/-. Those things are only something that can be known inside the organization.

Presti has a army of video guys and a couple of stat guys.

If either or both of Presti and Brooks wanted more in depth lineup experimentation to produce larger data samples and then make better decisions they could do it.

They haven’t. If they starting lineup was great it would be easier to explain but the best you can say it is that is stable and ok, overall. But as I noted before it is far weaker against strong teams than the east or lottery teams in general. Either they know this last point and ignore it or don’t know it. Their show to run.

I’ll be interested in seeing how much they play the starting lineup in the playoffs and what it does. And what the other 11 lineups at Winston’s site I mentioned and largely prefer do.