GAME 7: UTA (6-3) @ DAL (4-3) | 103-100 win

[DanSchwartzgan]

Powell is a good regular season player against second units.  I feel like he would have been less useless in the playoffs if he was played that way.  So far (small sample) we know that Maxi/Wood has worked really well, and Powell has worked really well as single big.  There is nothing to go on yet regarding Powell/Wood as they have hardly ever played together.  My guess is we will see some of that, but I think Maxi is a better fit with Wood both offensively and defensively and his defense is more valuable against starting units, while Powell's rim running is more valuable against second units.

NBA.com has the Wood/Maxi net rating at 12.5.  It is the 7th most used two man lineup.

All of the Powell combos are ridiculously good on the basis of net rating (in 3 games), so it is difficult to distinguish what works best (same applies to Green BTW).  We are just starting to see some Powell/Wood and some Powell/Maxi minutes.  In extremely small samples, both combos are fantastic.  In theory, any two man combo between Wood, Maxi and Powell should work.  I suspect you are correct that there are times in the game (against subs) where Powell as the solo-big would work.  I personally wouldn't start Powell as a solo big, but don't mind him doing it against subs if he has some defensive help.  The emergence of Green would help here as you could play any combo of DFS/Green or DFS/Bullock with Powell and a PG and probably steal some positive minutes.  Again, the Green net rating numbers are just ridiculous with everyone right now, so it is hard to know what would work best.

The thing I would point out to those who say Powell can only do this in the regular season we don't know that he can't do it in the playoffs if paired with a big like Wood or Maxi.  We were so thin up front that we didn't have the luxury last year of playing Powell with Maxi in the playoffs.  The year before, both the playoff Powell/KP and Powell/Maxi minutes were nicely positive.  Putting him with Wood or Maxi is just a dramatically different dynamic than asking him to hold down the paint by himself against playoff starters.  It would be nice if McGee would come down with a mysterious yet minor injury for a few weeks so Kidd could spend the next 10 game sample trying out some Wood/Maxi, Wood/Powell, Powell/Maxi and Powell/DFS lineups at various points in the game.