Visual Analysis of Minutes Played: Confirming What We Know

@Deuce and others made a good suggestion in my other thread about looking at minutes distributions in the regular season and playoffs and letting the data tell us if our strict, tightened playoff rotations also match what other teams are doing.

This is not a perfect analysis, but it is quick and serves its purpose.
Information/disclaimers:

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I copied CSV files from basketball-reference on all players' minutes played 2018-2019 regular season and 2019 playoffs
I de-duplicated players on multiple teams, only kept latest team stats
Removed players who played less than 4 playoff games (injury issues skew the data)
Ranked each player among each team by minutes played (1-15)
*Average minutes don't add up to 48 minutes because this is an average across players by their rankings. Injuries and lineup changes and my exclusions of players who didn't meet 4 playoff games played affect this.

Exhibit A:

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What does this tell us:

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Houston played its starters (at least, its top 5 most played players) the heaviest in the regular season tied with OKC.

(The main point of this was to compare regular season minutes to playoff minutes across players apples to apples. So the fact that Houston played an average of 21.7 bench minutes is misleading, that's just an average across players eligible for direct comparison.)

In the playoffs, Houston's top 5 guys increased their minutes by 7% on average (there's only so much to increase by!) but Golden State had the largest leap, followed by Denver and Boston. However, BENCH-WISE (6th man and on) Houston had the largest drop at -38%. Ouch. The Warriors, already the most top heavy team, also decreased by 23%. But they had more top-end talent.

So let's look at this another way by splitting it up among rotation guys (top 7) and not just starters (top 5):

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Again, the Rockets led the league in minutes played by the top 7 in the regular season. In the playoffs, these guys' minutes stayed steady. Meanwhile, the "depth" (or utility guys) 8, 9, 10 on the depth chart absolutely fell off a cliff compared to other teams. (-49% versus a non-Rockets league average of about -17%.)

Enough jabbering, let's bring it home:


Takeaways from this:

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1. #1 guys elevated their minutes about 8% on average in the playoffs. Harden went up 5%. We're good there. Tucker (our version of a #2 minutes muncher) went up as well, OK.

2. Here's the first problem. This is another angle to the Capela story we already know... his regression really put a dent in our already top heavy depth...

3. Meanwhile, Paul and Gordon's minutes were escalated heavily. Gordon in particular jumped more heavily (18%) than the typical #5 guy (4%). We were using these two as our all-in strategy on our guard-heavy lineup. (And then wondering why we couldn't rebound... an analysis for another time.)

4. This is the D'Antoni effect. Now we see it in data. Rivers' fall in minutes is partially due to injury so let's excuse that one. House's minutes would've been lower but were skewed by at least some minutes in the Jazz series. But we're already seeing big drops on the 6th and 7th guys (these are supposed to be key game-swinging positions). It gets worse with Faried and on. This is why we burned out brightly.

TL;DR version - just look at this last chart, at the League's average minutes distribution and ours in the playoffs. The league is playing their 8th and 9th guys 14-15 minutes. Even 12 and 13 guys are getting 4-5 minutes of burn in spot situations (not on the Warriors, obviously.)

Seen another way:

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If this isn't as stark as you were expecting, it doesn't really need to be. We're not that far away from being the top team. It's the little things like this that blow it up.

We complain a lot about only having the veteran minimum, MLE, etc available. We want to chase stars. And that's great. But veteran minimum and sneaky contracts can definitely be used to find specialists (or at least not HUGE LIABILITIES) to take these minutes that are currently a void for us. I hold Morey more accountable for this than D'Antoni. And I say this as a Morey fan.

Daryl, I did data stuff. Go sign a rebounding, 6'10 depth PF for once in your life.

 

Harden should be sitting his butt down for a couple of minutes when he's tired, because our GM should be able to find another forward to complement our rotation! That way, when Harden is on the floor, he can help with proper spacing and everybody wins. It's all connected.

 

Sure. But I also think that Faried and Green (and Capela) sort of made themselves unplayable with our switching defense. When that happens, we have Tucker as the only non-guard in our rotation.

Something in that cycle has to give. Either signing switch-capable forwards, or adjusting the defense.

 

agreed. The main takeaway for me is that Morey needs to improve guys 6, 7 and 8 for us to be an elite team. A lot of fans are looking for us to get a number 3. That's nice but isn't the only positive scenario.

 

Rivers was great for us in the playoffs, especially the Warriors series.

Faried was too fatally flawed, unfortunately.