Despite their recent troubles, I believe the Magic have the best chance to make it out of the East this year. They have many excellent lineups (listed below). For example lineup 4A shown below with Nelson at the point plays 55 points per game better than an average NBA lineup.
The Magic have a big problem when Dwight Howard is out. They play 11 points better per 48 minutes than average when Howard is in and 8 points worse than average when he is out.
The Magic need to realize that Jason Williams needs to play the point when Howard is out. When Williams is at the point and Howard is out the Magic play only 1 point worse than average. When Nelson or Johnson is at the point and Howard is out the Magic are 17 points worse than average. Even better Williams, Redick, Pietrus, Gortat or Bass and Anderson or Lewis plays 24 points better than average!!
Good Magic Lineups
ACTUAL THEORY TIME SIMPLE
ORL 9.54 ( 12.62 4.30 -8.31 22.45 1.30 8.64) 273.74 minutes 82 appearances 1 A 3.68 21 $
Carter Howard Lewis Pietrus Williams 29.88 years 10824_ORL_2010
ORL
ORL 16.76 ( 2.77 -7.57 -10.35 -5.51 0.05 8.41) 65.83 minutes 30 appearances 3 A 17.50 24 $
Carter Howard Lewis Nelson Pietrus 28.64 years 3656_ORL_2010
ORL 55.39 ( 18.47 10.78 -7.69 53.65 2.35 5.74) 63.29 minutes 26 appearances 4 A 55.36 73 $
Anderson Barnes Howard Nelson Redick 25.79 years 5187_ORL_2010
ORL 36.62 ( 20.63 15.68 -4.95 48.68 2.38 7.69) 41.00 minutes 22 appearances 7 A 25.75 22 $
Barnes Carter Howard Lewis Williams 30.26 years 8778_ORL_2010
ORL 26.50 ( -1.74 -2.62 -0.88 -12.98 -0.41 6.96) 34.93 minutes 21 appearances 2 B 32.98 24 $
Anderson Gortat Pietrus Redick Williams 27.01 years 14369_ORL_2010
ORL 28.01 ( 20.30 11.28 -9.02 55.38 2.52 6.56) 34.52 minutes 24 appearances 3 B 25.03 18 $
Anderson Howard Pietrus Redick Williams 26.65 years 14401_RL_2010
ORL 12.12 ( 20.72 14.95 -5.76 83.36 3.10 5.19) 31.77 minutes 19 appearances 7 B 16.62 11 $
Anderson Barnes Howard A. Johnson Redick 27.26 years 4291_ORL_2010
ORL 21.74 ( 13.04 7.98 -5.06 50.44 1.88 7.67) 28.99 minutes 21 appearances 8 B 18.21 11 $
Barnes Carter Howard A. Johnson Lewis 30.49 years 714_ORL_2010
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ORL 14.48 ( 14.56 2.67 -11.89 25.89 1.50 6.80) 23.33 minutes 10 appearances 1 C 14.40 7 $
Barnes Carter Howard Nelson Pietrus 28.52 years 3146_ORL_2010
ORL 19.27 ( 9.50 5.25 -4.25 53.24 1.71 7.73) 23.15 minutes 16 appearances 2 C 18.66 9 $
Carter Howard A. Johnson Lewis Redick 29.63 years 4808_ORL_2010
ORL 20.79 ( 14.70 12.30 -2.40 41.65 1.84 7.81) 22.05 minutes 20 appearances 4 C 17.41 8 $
Barnes Howard Lewis Redick Williams 28.78 years 12866_ORL_2010
Hi Wayne
Love your posts, any chance you can align the headers and put borders on your tables? Also perhaps a link to a page explaining each column? The html tables come out quite badly.
Whilst calculating your data, how do you compensate for the possibility that some line-ups are more prone to play against the 2nd unit of the opposition and thus have a higher chance of having a positive impact?
Comment by John — January 17, 2010 @ 4:07 am
Thx. I will work on lineups looking better. We do adjust for strength of opponent, so it is harder to get a good rating against bad opponents.
Comment by wwinston — January 17, 2010 @ 9:21 am
Just looking at the old primitive stats for Orlando it’s hard not to notice that their worst shooter percentage-wise is also taking most of their shots. What’s your adjusted plus/minus for Carter? Maybe it’s as simple as he is not a good person for their offense to be running through, and the Jason Williams line-ups are the best non-Howard line-ups because those line-ups are the least likely to result in Carter taking shots?
Comment by Will — January 18, 2010 @ 12:39 pm
Carter has +5.7 adjusted+/, so he has been ok.
Comment by wwinston — January 18, 2010 @ 2:02 pm