Portland, Indiana, and the Skewed Perception of Supporting Casts

Even after both teams lost last night, the Pacers and Blazers have two of the four best records in the league. ESPN's forecast gave Indiana a modest improvement to 54 wins from 49 last season, while the forecast also saw a five game improvement for Portland but that still landed them at only 38 wins. Yet the Pacers have destroyed their competition this season with Miami needing a few iffy calls and foul trouble for Hibbert to pull out a slim victory at home, and Portland is almost on pace to double their wins from last season. What happened? What was missed?

Legends are often compared to each other by their team success relative to their supporting casts -- Olajuwon won without another star while David Robinson had to wait for Duncan. Unfortunately, this is a messy and inaccurate method. If we can't judge how valuable the legends are and have to resort to a weird team success method, how can we be able to judge an entire supporting cast of six to nine rotation players? Not only that, but playing style and coaching can drastically alter a team's course.

Looking at Portland's additions, there's nothing to suggest a +20 win improvement. They added Robin Lopez, Mo Williams, Dorell Wright, Thomas Robinson, and CJ McCollum, who hasn't even played. Given the massive change in the effectiveness of the team, one would think Robin Lopez is the next Shaquille O'Neal. But the origin here for how teams improve (the starting point: who the new guys replace) is not the same in every case. The Blazers bench was one of the worst of all-time. For instance, ESPN writer Kevin Pelton ranked them second worst ever in terms of how many wins the bench (defined as everyone except the five most common starters) produced using his WARP metric behind only the 1999 Bulls. They shot under 40% and scored the third fewest points in the last 15 years -- and it's not like they were out there for their defense.

When working relative to that point, just adding league average players can make a large difference. Though there's another factor with the Blazers: they used JJ Hickson as the starting center, and it was a disaster on the interior defense. Hickson is barely big enough for a power forward, much less a center. He's also probably the most overrated player by his box score stats. It's been years including multiple teams and sets of teammates, and advanced forms of adjusted plus/minus continue to find as a Hickson a net negative player. So you have a player with empty double doubles playing out of position with the next best option being the disappointing rookie Meyers Leonard -- how were we supposed to know how effective the Lillard-Matthews-Batum-Aldridge core was without a competent center?

In fact, going by scoring margin, the disparity between the starters and the rest of the team last season wasn't as large as one would think. Using NBAWOWY.com, the net rating of the starters was a mediocre -0.9, while all other lineups were -4.5. However, this is largely due to Hickson. Looking at all lineups with only Lillard, Wesley Matthews, Batum, and Aldridge, the team was +1.8, while all other lineups were -6.5. In replacing players who dragged the team down along with the sort of natural improvement you'd assume from a young core including a rookie point guard, it's not entirely shocking the Blazers are a good team. It was just so hard to see that with one of the worst sets of benches and centers ever.

Season	Team	Players.......................................	Net rating	Net rating (all other lineups)	+Difference
2013	POR	Lillard-Wes-Batum-LA-Hickson	-0.9	-4.5	3.6
2013	POR	Lillard-Wes-Batum-LA	1.8	-6.5	8.3
2014	POR	Lillard-Wes-Batum-LA-Lopez	9.1	6.4	2.7

The Pacers, meanwhile, held onto their starters while shuffling their bench. Again, their additions are not world-changing: Luis Scola, CJ Watson, Orlando Johnson, Solomon Hill, and Chris Copeland. What's remarkable is that Danny Granger has not played, and he was the driving reason for most of the improvement seen in the projection of the team's season. A reasonable person would not say those players are good enough to turn a good team into an elite one, but that's exactly what's happening. It's not just the improvement of Hibbert and Paul George (one counter is David West has actually been worse this season); the bench is vastly more effective. Last season, the difference between the starters and all other lineups was enormous: roughly the same difference between the '96 Bulls and the '96 Timberwolves. Their starting lineup is as good as any lineup for a contender, and with a decent bench that pushes them into the NBA's stratosphere.

Season	Team	Players........................................	Net rating	Net rating (all other lineups)	+Difference
2013	IND	Hill-Lance St.-George-West-Roy	13.8	-4.8	18.6
2014	IND	Hill-Lance St.-George-West-Roy	14.6	4.4	10.2

After no major personnel changes, two small market teams are consuming wins at a ferocious pace. This is evidence that we have little understanding of how valuable supporting casts are. If you want to judge Lebron and Dirk by what they achieved when they were "solo," remember that the bench is more difficult to judge than the star player, and all it takes is a bad bench or a misplaced starter to keep a team from piling up wins. Going just by year-to-year changes, one would think Robin Lopez and Luis Scola are all-star players, but we're missing all the details: staring at a single Douglas fir and missing the forest.