Suns Squared: Defensive Lineups
After covering the best offensive lineups last week. This week I’m going to break down the Phoenix Suns’ best and worst defensive lineups.
As as I did with the offensive lineups, to break down the defensive units, I looked at lineups that have played in a minimum of 10 games and at least 5 minutes played in order to get lineups with multiple uses. Lineups with P.J. Tucker are included even though he is freshly traded. There is no doubt that his defensive presence will certainly be missed by the Suns.
A big thing to look for, as mentioned last week is the dichotomy between lineups with Tyson Chandler and lineups with Alex Len.
The Suns’ defensive rating on the year is 112.1 in order to add context to the following numbers.
Lineup |
Minutes
Defensive Rating
Net Rating
Bledsoe-Chandler-Knight-Tucker-Warren
13
74.3
-3.3
Bledsoe-Booker-Len-Tucker-Warren
26
86.4
14.1
Bledsoe-Booker-Chriss-Len-Ticker
30
100.5
-8.2
Worst:
Bledsoe-Booker-Knight-Len-Tucker
36
134.5
-26.8
Bledsoe-Knight-Len-Tucker-Warren
19
126.9
-42.7
Booker-Dudley-Knight-Len-Tucker
28
118.7
-22.9
All of the top defensive lineups feature both Bledsoe and Tucker, however, all but one of the worst defensive lineups also feature both Bledsoe and Tucker so it is hard to place their exact impact. Surprisingly, Len is featured in two of the top-three defensive lineups. I would have expected Chandler to be in all of the better defensive lineups. However, Len is also present in all of the worst three defensive lineups, along with Knight, indicating their defensive weaknesses.
Two of the Suns’ most used lineups, Bledsoe-Booker-Chandler-Chriss-Tucker and Bledsoe-Booker-Chandler-Chriss-Warren, are close to the top defensively and have posted 108.7 and 110.4 defensive ratings which are below the Suns’ overall team number.
Lineup |
Minutes
Opp EFG%
OPP TOV%
Bledsoe-Chandler-Knight-Tucker-Warren
13
33.3%
18.5
Bledsoe-Booker-Dudley-Len-Tucker
23
40.9%
7.5
Booker-Chandler-Knight-Tucker-Warren
21
44.1%
13.7
Worst:
Bledsoe-Knight-Len-Tucker-Warren
19
67.1%
8.6
Bledsoe-Booker-Knight-Len-Tucker
36
64.0%
11.8
Barbosa-Dudley-Knight-Len-Tucker
57
61.8%
18.4
Again when looking at lineups by how well they defend shooting, it is hard to take a ton away because of some many similarities between the top lineups and the worst lineups. Although there is one main difference, the Len/Chandler switch. The best defensive lineup and the worst defensive lineup have only a one player difference which is very indicative of the differences between Len and Chandler. Although the sample sizes aren’t huge, it is very worrying that Len makes such a difference, and not in a good way, for the Suns both offensively and defensively.
One key thing to mention is that it is much harder to measure defense with statistics and so it is
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okay to put some faith in the defensive numbers. It should just be kept in mind that they aren’t the end all be all. It is important to take it with a grain of salt when going over defensive statistics, especially given the small-ish sample sizes as well.
However, there are broad take-a-ways like the Chandler/Len difference. The impact of taking Tucker out of the equation will have some big impacts considering how often Tucker shows up in all these stats.
A final thing to linking to the trade deadline is that the numbers coming out of this do make me wonder why the Suns weren’t more aggressive at the deadline, given the low price that both Demarcus Cousins and Nerlens Noel were dealt for. Noel is a player that could have fit with the timeline for Booker and other young Suns’ players, and provide defensive help that the Suns need.