A nail without a hammer

Should the Clippers drop Marcin Gortat from the rotation? At the moment the Clippers are running an 11-man rotation. And if you ask me, Gortat should be out of it.

Why, you may ask. It’s not because we need a shake up. We’ve been great for the start of the year. It’s not because Gortat has been so awful. No, nothing like that. Although he has struggeled a bit with his field goal percantage, he’s been a great rebounder and a decent defender. But, after watching the Wizards game I was convinced: the Clippers would be better off without him.

Again, Gortat is not bad. It’s not that I’m talking about here. It’s about Montrezl Harrell and Boban Marjanovic being so great. Let’s start with statistical comparisons. I’m going to drop a link to a Basketball-Reference site, where you can see these stats and much more in a different form:

https://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/LAC/2019.html

Ok, so why drop Gortat? A good way to compare players on the same team in my opinion is to compare their per 36 minutes stats:

Marcin Gortat: 7.5ppg 13.7rpg 3.4apg 1.4bpg
Montrezl Harrell: 24.1ppg 11.0rpg 2.4apg 1.5spg 3.9bpg
Boban Marjanovic: 32.8ppg 16.7rpg 0.6apg 1.3spg 1.3bpg

Looks pretty clearly in favour of Harrell and Marjanovic. On/off stats also highlight this:

Marcin Gortat: -15.0
Montrezl Harrell: 5.8
Boban Marjanovic: 6.5

Also lineup stats show this. The starting lineup is -2.0 points per 100 possessions as is. If you swap Gortat with Harrell, it jumps up to +18.6 points per 100 possessions. It gets even better with Bobi, it gets all the way up to +22.2 points per 100 possessions.

This article is not to show how bad Gortat has been, don’t get me wrong there. It’s to show how much better our other centers have been. I’m hoping to see Harrell and Boban get most, if not all, of Gortat’s minutes.

Would you reduce Gortat’s minutes? Who would you start out of Gortat, Harrell and Marjanovic? Drop your opinions on the comment section on Twitter or Facebook: @ClipsNationLAX.