MAVS NEWS: Luka Is Hurt, But is Trudging On | DLive's Mom Passes Away| Maxi OUT

[mvossman]

I am not really sure what is the conclusion here. A lot of data missing (who are the other three players mainly playing with the listed guys?)

Three man lineup of Kyrie-Luka has a defensive rating of 121,9 for the season, which is very bad. Mavs are building around Luka and we all agree he is usually not a very good defender (he can be when he wants to). Next in line is Kyrie. The other guys should fit next to those two. I don't think you can make a case THJ is an above average defender.

Defensive on/off:
Luka: -4.2
Kyrie: -1.2
THJ: -8.3

If the argument is that we should probably not be playing Timmy with Luka and Kyrie from a defensive perspective, I would agree.  When everyone is healthy there are roughly 30 minutes a game of court time for Timmy to play while one of them is off, so there is no real need to play them together.  

Tim is not a particularly good defender, but I think some of that number above is due to our undersized second unit.  There has been discussion on another thread regarding using Timmy to get a bigger power forward that we can start, pushing DJJ to the second unit to replace Timmy.  Unfortunately most of the options are primarily offensive, meaning that you are making the starting unit even better offensively, but worse defensively.  I'm not sure having 3 non plus defenders in the starting lineup is a viable long term solution.