Just how talented is the Portland Trail Blazers starting lineup? Last season it appeared that the Blazers’ starters could outplay their counterparts on the opposing team, or at a minimum play them even. Once the bench got involved, the situation became dicier, but that’s a conversation for later.
I started pondering this topic the other day, when I saw this infographic of the top 50 players in the league ranked by Win Shares from last season. Win Shares is a statistic developed by Basketball-Reference that attempts to credit individual players with how many wins they contributed to their team throughout a season. While it is certainly one of the more esoteric “advanced” stats, like any measure of production, it is merely one piece that can be used to help tell a team’s story.
It immediately stood out that all five of the Trail Blazers starters were represented in the top 50. Even more narrowly, and impressively, all five of them were in the top 40. Considering that there are 30 teams in the league, if everything was equal, you could expect about one and a third starters per team among the top 40. This gives one snapshot of how well the Blazers starters played last season.
Some caveats are in order, though. Players on teams with more wins will obviously be able to accrue more wins, but rather than a criticism, this appears to be simply reflecting a fact of life, since they contributed to those wins. Additionally, players who do not miss time for injury will be able to to get credit for more wins, but again, if a player is not on the court, they are not helping their team win.
More conventional statistics still comfortably back up the idea that the starters as a whole performed at an elite level. The Trail Blazers starters played the second most minutes of any five man unit in the league. During these 1,373 minutes together, they racked up a positive differential of 211 points, good for fourth in the league.
This is all well and good, but what exactly does it mean? The first and biggest takeaway is that the Trail Blazers starters experienced great health. Four of them (everyone but LaMarcus Aldridge) started 82 games. They were able to play 69 games together, tied for second most games played together of any five man unit in the 2013-14 NBA season.
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This simple ability to stay healthy and play together is a huge part of why the starters earned so many Win Shares, logged so many minutes together, and had such a positive plus/minus. Other than that, I think it is fair to say that the Trail Blazers starters are simply, well, good. That’s a simple adjective for a complex subject, but also likely the most appropriate.
Damian Lillard and Aldridge were both All-Stars last year, in addition to being selected to an All-NBA team. Nicolas Batum added a bit of everything, and while he won’t touch the talent level of the superstar small forwards, he’s probably only a tier and a half below. Robin Lopez was an elite offensive rebounder and rim protector, who did what the team needed without demanding touches. Wesley Matthews rounds out the starting five, and with his combination of tenacious defense and deadly three-point shooting, he’s no slouch either.
There are no real weaknesses here – this starting lineup is extremely talented. The results bore it out last year as well, as a second round berth meant the Blazers were one of the last eight teams standing, made all the more impressive by the fact they did it in the Western Conference.
The ultimate goal for an NBA team is to win a championship, but that does not happen overnight. Usually a few deep playoff runs are necessary first, and, in the playoffs, the quality of a team’s starters goes a long way toward determining how they will fare. While no one is saying that the Trail Blazers are instantly championship contenders, the quality of the starting lineup indicates that they could be ready to build on their second round berth and make some even greater strides this year.