A look at the Detroit Pistons’ lineup combinations

The Detroit Pistons have been enigmatic this season. Having to mix and match lineups all season long the team has struggled to find continuity on the floor.

Most NBA teams have the ability to put the best player on their roster at each position on the floor and call it a starting lineup. Usually that lineup is their best lineup. A season after that very much being the case with the Detroit Pistons, things have been thrown into disarray.

Last season the starting lineup of Reggie Jackson, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Marcus Morris, Tobias Harris and Andre Drummond was among the more consistent and dependable lineups in the NBA. This season however, with Jackson injured and struggling much of the season and Drummond simply struggling, the Pistons have battled to find continuity and reliable five-man units.

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Some of the most reliable combinations of players from last season have been utter disasters. That starting lineup from a year ago has a net rating of -17.1 in 282 minutes and over 500 possessions together. That makes them by far the worst five-man unit in the NBA this year. Not at all what you expect from the starting lineup of a playoff team.

While the five-man unit as a whole is dismal, most individual lineups only play a few minutes per game together. This makes finding a reliable sample difficult for some lineups. An entirely different exercise is looking at duos or two-man combinations.

Fortunately such a service exists for breaking down the production of two-man combos. NBA 2-Man Lineups provides a season-long breakdown of each duo on each team going back to 2007-08.

The above shows the net ratings for each Piston combination. As you can see, several of these duos are posting jaw-dropping numbers. Tobias Harris and Reggie Jackson are posting a -14 net rating, Jackson and Drummond combine for -8.3, and Jackson plus Baynes produce -9.7. Conversely, KCP has good numbers with all bench units and Baynes has positive net ratings with everybody outside of Jackson.

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Take a look at this site and refresh it through the year as the numbers will change on a game-by-game basis. Hopefully for the better in a few of these cases.