As the Hornets dropped their third straight contest on Monday, changes to the team’s starting lineup and rotation were an apparent need. Once again, Charlotte started slowly in its second game in three nights in Philadelphia and was forced to play catch-up the remaining three quarters.
After not committing to any changes immediately after the loss, which dropped the Hornets to 2-5, head coach James Borrego acknowledged changes to the rotation and lineups for Wednesday’s game against Atlanta.
“There are lineup tweaks that will be made for tomorrow,” he said. “Not necessarily in the starting lineup but I think along the way, trying to find some different combinations of guys as we move throughout a game to give us more offense. I’ll look at those tomorrow in the flow of the game. I imagine the starting group will be the same. But as we go, we could see some different lineup combinations out there.”
A call for a lineup change isn’t new; many have pointed at LaMelo Ball as a strong candidate to replace Devonte’ Graham in the starting lineup. While Ball had continued to improve on a game-by-game basis, Graham was mired in a shooting slump.
On Monday, though, Graham broke out with five 3-pointers while Ball struggled shooting from the field, going 5-of-16 overall. Those respective performances are likely enough to keep Ball out of the starting lineup for at least one more.
The current starting lineup of Graham, Terry Rozier, Gordon Hayward, P.J. Washington and Miles Bridges has played together 66 minutes. While it’s the most-used five-man lineup on the team, it has not been a successful one. The group sports an offensive rating of 86.1, a defensive rating of 109.3 and a net rating of minus-23.2.
Starters aside, Borrego noted the lack of sample size as the main reason to not yet make wholesale changes.
“This is not a great sample size yet,” he said. “There’s a couple of metrics, lineups that I think there’s a good enough sample with that I’m evaluating right now. A lot of them, it’s tough to evaluate on. We just don’t have a great sample size. Ten minutes of a group playing together is not a great sample. I don’t think that’s fair. It’s basically one or two games and that’s not fair.
“Look, I’m evaluating and it is early in the season. I’m not going to overreact right now. I want to stay poised and focus on what we can improve on right now at this moment and get better at it and make tweaks along the way. I think we’ll look at some different lineups, as I said earlier. We’ll look at some different combinations tomorrow to get some more offense. I think the starting group has a pretty good sample now and I’ll continue to evaluate that.”
Six five-man lineups have a sample size larger than the 10 minutes that Borrego mentioned. Only one of those has an offensive rating worse than the current starting lineup, that being the starters with Miles Bridges in for Washington.
Those offensive struggles for the starting lineup have led to multiple slow starts for Charlotte. The team ranks 28th in the league in first-quarter offensive rating at 98.3. The team’s defensive rating in the first quarter is 10th.
While Borrego noted the offensive struggles of the starters to open games, he also noted the other effects that could come with making lineup changes.
“We do have to get off to better starts and that group is struggling to score,” he said. “Those are the facts. But I’m not going to give up on that group just yet because I think sometimes you try to plug one hole and you open up a floodgate somewhere else. So let’s stay the course, stay poised, continue to grow and get better.”