David Locke posted a stat check today that compared the Jazz's statistically best and worst player tandems. The results really surprised me. I'll leave the link --here-- so I don't have to paste the whole thing.

My first comment was that I didn't expect to see Marvin anywhere on the "best lists" because of how poorly he has performed, and I definitely didn't expect him to be at the top. I actually don't remember the last time Marvin and DMC played together. Also, Jefferson and Favors are only mentioned once.

This list really illustrates a lot of the problems that the Jazz have had. Mostly, because we don't see some of these pairings as often as we should. The Burks/Foye backcourt (which I made a fanpost about last week) has consistently proven, STATISTICALLY, to be one of our strongest lineups. Yet we almost never see it.

Seeing Burks and Carroll all over the page was really encouraging to me. ALL of our best offensive playing pairs includes one of them (but never both, interestingly enough). Both of them were left out of the "worst" section as well, which was awesome. The worst pairings, to me, had only one surprise: Foye, Hayward.

I've compiled a common sense lineup pairing, using the list provided for our statistically best offensive and defensive lineups. Both of these combinations had 3 or more pairings that were listed in the top 5 of their respective category, and none of the worst.

Offense:

Burks, Foye, Carroll, Jefferson, Millsap

Defense:

Burks, Carroll, Marvin, Millsap, Kanter

The biggest take away from this little thought experiment is that I don't think I've ever seen either of these lineups together as a whole. I mean, if i'm wrong tell me, but I would wager that both these lineups have seen < 5 minutes on the court as a whole, the entire season. I know that individual pairings =/= 5 man lineups, but I thought it was interesting to extrapolate the results to a 5 man unit.

I'm not suggesting these lineups will be great or anything, but the offensive lineup could be a legitimate substitute for our current starting lineup.

Credit goes to David Locke for the cool blog post. NUMBERS DON'T LIE. Discuzzzz