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SALT LAKE CITY — The Jazz went on a three game road trip this week, and absolutely clobbered their first two opponents in Atlanta and New Orleans, scoring over 120 points in consecutive road games for the first time since 1983-84.
Then, on the second night of a back to back Thursday night, they decided to let George Hill rest due to his still-limiting left big toe sprain, and they got the loss in heartbreaking overtime fashion.
Of course, that felt like kind of a microcosm for the whole season: if the Jazz's talent is available, they're really good, but if not, some bad losses can occur. I wanted to see if that was true (well, I knew it was, but anyway), and by what degree having healthy players has made a difference for the Jazz this year.
And I wasn't completely happy with the resources already out there. Lineup data from stats.NBA.com and NBAWowy can capture the moments on the floor with or without individual players, I wanted to know how having players out impacted the entire rotation. And I wanted to know win-loss records too: while the Jazz PR department compiles win-loss totals based on injuries to individual players, they don't capture the different combinations that happen when multiple players aren't healthy.
So I did it myself. Of course, this doesn't take into account injuries to Dante Exum, Boris Diaw, Alec Burks, and even some others this year, but I had to control the number of combinations at some point. Here's the data table:
| Lineup | Games | Wins | Losses | ORtg | DRtg | NetRtg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Healthy starters | 9 | 8 | 1 | 109.5 | 100.3 | 9.2 |
| Missing only Hill | 12 | 8 | 4 | 111.0 | 105.0 | 5.9 |
| Missing only Hood | 8 | 6 | 2 | 115.4 | 105.6 | 9.7 |
| Missing only Hayward | 5 | 3 | 2 | 102.0 | 99.5 | 2.5 |
| Missing only Favors | 6 | 5 | 1 | 116.3 | 100.6 | 15.8 |
| Missing Hill and Hood | 3 | 0 | 3 | 108.7 | 113.8 | -5.0 |
| Missing Hill and Favors | 7 | 3 | 4 | 104.0 | 110.3 | -6.3 |
| Missing Hayward and Favors | 1 | 0 | 1 | 114.9 | 124.8 | -9.9 |
| Missing Hill, Hood, and Favors | 2 | 1 | 1 | 121.9 | 111.5 | 10.4 |
| Missing Hill, Hood, Hayward, and Favors | 1 | 0 | 1 | 101.5 | 108.7 | -7.2 |
| Overall | 54 | 34 | 20 | 109.6 | 104.4 | 5.2 |
Some takeaways:
- The Jazz are indeed very good when they have healthy starters available: 8-1 in only nine games, with a +9.2 net rating.
- Having only one player out doesn't seem to be a death sentence: the Jazz are still a very good team in those games, going 22-9.
- Missing two or more players is bad news bears. Without their starting backcourt (as was the case Thursday), they're 1-5. Missing any combination of two or more players, they're 4-10.
- The Jazz are okay without Derrick Favors, unless they're also missing one of their perimeter threats. Then, they have struggle scoring and defending.
