A deep dive into Mike Woodson and his history with substitution patterns
If you do enough digging on the internet, you can find a New York Knicks practice report published by ESPN from February 2013.
The opening lines of Jared Zwerling's article – Zwerling now works as the founder and president of CloseUp360 after a tenured NBA writing career – reads like this:
The change, as Woodson says in the full article, was not one he'd opt to make often. Chandler was in the midst of his one and only season as an NBA All-Star throughout his 19-year playing career, in which he averaged a double-double on more than 32 minutes a night. In the 2012-13 season, he was one of three New York players to start every game he appeared in during the regular season.
That season, Chandler led the Knicks in win probability difference when he was on the floor versus off, and possessed New York's second-highest difference in net scoring margin change. On a roster that featured Carmelo Anthony and multiple other impactful players with long careers at the NBA level, Woodson was willing to make a switch with Chandler – the player analytically among the most important to wins on a nightly basis.
The defensive anchor with the second-highest player efficiency rating of the Knicks' game-to-game regulars that season, the change was made out of necessity for the betterment of New York's gameplan for the opponent. While it didn't lead to a victory that evening, it was a positive change that lent Woodson the idea of further exploration with it.
"When you look at our plus-minuses, it was a plus for us," Woodson said, "so I think I'm going to try and see how I can work that a little bit and see what happens."
Now, nearly 11 years later and the head coach of his alma mater, the same previous ideals still maintain with Woodson's coaching philosophies. He's admittedly still hesitant to make any rash changes to his rotations and how he goes about transitioning from one to the next.
After the Hoosiers' 28-point loss to Auburn in December, Woodson was questioned about the matter after Indiana made a hockey-style line change with an early 12-point lead that was erased by the time IU starters re-entered the contest.
"I kind of substitute pretty much the same way every game," Woodson said that afternoon in Atlanta. "You can't just burn them. Bottom line was, when my starters got back in the game, it was probably a close, tied game."
A month later on a Tuesday evening in Piscataway, N.J., Woodson was pressed once again after another early advantage was diminished with a lionshare of the Hoosiers' first five on the bench. The Indiana advantage hovered around seven until a unit of four reserves and one starter got consistent run, coinciding with the time Rutgers' run spanned to get back into striking distance.
"Run" is a word used lightly in a game that featured just 123 total points, but with precious little breathing room against a suffocating Scarlet Knight defense, Woodson elected to substitute out some of his best scorers all at the same time.
The questioning that evening about playing with four subs at a time, however, didn't yield a response.
"I'm not going to sit here and answer that question when it comes to the fans or you," Woodson told reporters postgame. "I elected to go to my bench, which I've done this season, and I've gotten some good results here and there. And tonight, they didn't kill us but they let (Rutgers) back in the game."
Plus-minus is a bit of a misleading stat when interpreted incorrectly, but it can also provide a base-level snapshot of how a team performs when a certain player is on the floor. This season, Indiana's starting five combines for an average +/- of 61.2, with the range stemming from Xavier Johnson's +33 in 218 on-floor minutes to Trey Galloway's +82 in 523 on-floor minutes. Galloway's minutes are the most inflated of any Hoosier this season given IU's need for a senior presence in its backcourt after Johnson's injury caused him to miss time.
Yet, only one Hoosier not in IU's night-to-night starting five has a positive +/- this season. Gabe Cupps checks in with a +6 over 352 minutes of play, by far the most run any bench player has got due to his seven starts in Johnson's absence.
The five other bench unit players average out to a +/- of -43.4, ranging from Anthony Leal's -11 in just seven games and 57 minutes to CJ Gunn's -61 in 214 minutes.
Woodson alluded to plus-minus all those seasons ago when making the alteration to bring Tyson Chandler into the game at different points to create a different impact. And still, while +/- doesn't provide the clearest picture of the split in production when players are on the floor versus off, it suggests what many have come to realize so far – Indiana, like the Knicks 11 years ago, is a better team with more of its starters on the floor together.
Take that Knicks team for example. New York had seven different lineups with at least 50 minutes played together that season with a positive net rating. Four of them featured the Chandler, Carmelo Anthony and Raymond Felton, the other two Knicks who played and started 60+ games throughout the year.
Using EvanMiya.com's advanced player and lineup ratings, a deeper understanding for how each IU player is impacting the game is able to be achieved. Bayesian Performance Rating, better known as BPR, is considered a measure of a player's overall value to his team when he's on the floor. It's interpreted to measure how many points per 100 possessions better than the opponent a player's team is expected to be if he were on the court with nine other average players. Of course, a higher value is desired.
Of players with at least 300 possessions, here is how the Indiana roster shakes out:
From there, we can get a better understanding from an analytical standpoint of the lineups that Indiana outfits and how they perform as a cohesive unit. EvanMiya.com also provides such data.
Here's a list of every five-man lineup with at least 15 possessions played together through the first 16 games of the year:
Some things that jump out right away:
- Every single lineup with a positive team efficiency margin involves one of Malik Reneau or Kel'el Ware, with eight of the 13 involving both, but not it's best. The most effective lineup by adjusted efficiency margin is the Hoosiers' smaller lineup of Gabe Cupps, Trey Galloway, Mackenzie Mgbako, Anthony Walker and Ware.
- The bottom three lineups, all in the negatives and by quite some margin, have two or less everyday starters on the floor.
So, how does Indiana go about improving results and keeping its best players on the floor? Of course, Woodson is right when saying he can't burn his starters for the entirety of the game. There have been instances this season where late rotational changes and a reliance on his bench has been pivotal to the outcome of a game. Performances on the road at Michigan and in some of those early-season non-conference close calls come to mind in immediacy.
There comes a time when Indiana must take a chance to see if there is to be any added impact from the bench on a nightly basis as well. While resting starters, players six through eight – however deep a rotation may go on a particular evening – must be counted upon to manage the game and limit eventual drop off in production that often comes, if not avoid it altogether.
How IU goes about integrating them in the game, however, could be due for some reexamination. Indiana has handed back control of a contest too often this season after jumping out to early advantage. It burned them again in defeat to Rutgers.
Yet, if past history tells the future of what's to come this season, a shortening of the rotation is soon on the way. From February on in the 2022-23 campaign, you could essentially only count on a meaningful share of minutes from seven Hoosiers on a nightly basis as the season drew to a close.
Should the same changes be on the way this season, however, Woodson may find himself with tough decisions on who to trust down the stretch. If the starting frontline is to remain unchanged, then one or two of the IU bench unit – originally constructed with the idea to run two separate units – will likely end up merging with the starting group and center back on the idea of just one unit.
One game is not the end of the world. But a worrying pattern developing as it has would be valid cause for concern.
Those end-of-season changes may have to come sooner. And, in different forms.
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