I think it’s been long enough that we can say for certain: the non-LeBron minutes are an absolute problem. It’s obscene how reliant our team is on someone who is about to be 39 and has played the minutes of a 45 year old throughout his career. If we cannot figure out the non-LeBron minutes, we have absolutely no chance of winning anything this year. I don’t think Gabe Vincent and Vando alone returning from injury is going to change that at all.

Our second best playmaker right now is D’Lo. Especially the way he’s been playing this season. He looks like a true blue facilitator that we want to have the ball more often than not when he’s in (what a world, right? That D’Angelo Russell has become a really efficient playmaker.)

That makes me think that maybe the wrong person was moved to sixth man. I understand the politics of it, and that they want to keep D’Lo’s trade value high, but from a purely basketball standpoint, Reaves is a much better off ball player than D’Lo, so he’s a much better fit next to LeBron, who is at his best with the ball in his hands.

Meanwhile, a D’Lo unshackled from having to play off ball more when LeBron is in, I feel like could comfortably carry our bench’s offense in his absence.

Since we stagger AD and LeBron with the bench lineups, I’m imagining two different bench lineups:

LeBron with a lineup of Vincent, Cam/Vando, Wood/Rui, and Hayes

AD with a lineup of D’Lo, Cam/Vando, Rui, Wood/Hayes.

I think both of those lineups are good tbh. They have enough scoring and defense to hold it down while one of our two stars are on the bench.

Not sure about advanced stats, but from my vantage point, Reaves has been struggling the most this year when being asked to facilitate the offense and has been at his best when another facilitator is being the primary playmaker and he can playmake when the defense is already out of position. Maybe we should embrace that and let D’Lo command the non-LeBron lineups