Alabama Basketball - Ideal Lineup Construction Moving Forward

I noted in the basketball thread that the following 2 lineups have been our only +/+ lineups (off/def) this season. Using the ShotQuality site I tried to dive into why these lineups work to see if there was a specific rhyme or reason that could tell us whether we could expect them to keep working moving forward.

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The answer is yes.


Here are each players national percentile ranking in various areas of play (100th percentile being the best of the best compared to the rest of the country, 1st percentile being the worst of the worst compared to the rest of the country).

As you look at these, think about how our offense operates and where these various skillsets would mesh together as a whole. There aren't a lot of individual defensive figures, but as the defensive efficiency numbers above show - these are by far our best Non-Bediako defensive lineups.




So how do we score in our offense? Good spacing, good passing, efficient shots, offensive rebounds off of 3s.

- These lineups have 3 very good to elite passers. JD, for his issues, has been an excellent passer this year. Elite of the elite. Shack and Ellis are also very good passers.

- Having good passers matters, because this lineup also features 3 guys who are very, very efficient at scoring off of passes - Gurley and Ellis in the 80th+ percentile, Miles in the 72nd percentile. In addition, not noted here, Gary is in the 79th percentile as an efficient cutter. So you have 3 guys who are excellent at catch and shoot 3s, 3 very good passers, and 1 very good cutter and finisher. It creates a whole lot to deal with as a defense.

- While not everyone in this lineup is great at spacing, the SG/F are all very good at it. Shack, Ellis and Miles - the main spacers - are 92nd, 96th and 78th in spacing. They are good at moving and finding open areas to operate. That also leads to..........

- This line up has 3 very good efficient 3PT shooters - Ellis 95th, Miles 90th and Shack 80th, with Gurley also being solidly "good" at 73rd.

- All of the "bigs" (Ellis, Miles, Gurley, Gary) are above average to very good offensive rebounders, which matters when you shoot a ton of 3s.

It is not a coincidence that 15 of our 17 highest PPP plays this season have been by one of these 6 guys, with the 2 exceptions being Bediako dunks off screens (which are very efficient the few times they happen, but not not worth the times they don't).





Bottom line, all the numbers show that Bediako's presence on the floor just completely collapses our offense. He obviously has to play some, and there will be opponents with bigs that he will have to play (Kentucky for example), but in general we just can't play him a whole lot. He does have a positive effect on defensive production, but his weight on the offensive side is much worse than his positive on defense. Some combination of Gary/Gurley/Miles at the 4 and 5 has worked defensively and is light years better than anything else on the offensive end. And, while they aren't great defensive rebounders, none of our lineups are, so the dropoff there is slim anyway.

Finally, Keon Ellis just has to do more. He's great at everything. That isn't an exaggeration, here are his percentile ranks in various things. He's excellent at all of them. He has to be our #1 guy on offense. He has to have the ball in his hands looking to score double the amount he is right now.