Nets’ fourth-quarter lineup could hint at team’s future look

DETROIT — Jacque Vaughn knows his starting lineup’s scoring offense hasn’t been able to outweigh its sorry defense.

And even though the Nets escaped the Pistons with the same lineup, changes are likely coming. 

They could come as soon as this week.

And the fourth quarter could be a hint as to what the switch could be, with Vaughn playing Dorian Finney-Smith every second and never getting Cam Thomas up off the bench. 

“Yeah, I think [Finney-Smith] knows how I value him and how we value him as an individual and the plays that he can make. He’s done it before,” said Vaughn. “There’s a certain amount of poise that you have to have at the end of the game and he took on the challenge of guarding Cade [Cunningham] also at the end of the game, so you know we needed him on both ends.” 

A couple of weeks ago, after Vaughn replaced Finney-Smith with Thomas, he said he wanted to see Thomas with the starting lineup and collect enough data to weigh that against the quintet that opened the season.

The numbers don’t look good. 

The starting lineup of Finney-Smith alongside Spencer Dinwiddie, Mikal Bridges, Cam Johnson and Nic Claxton entered Tuesday a plus-12 in 112 minutes over 13 games.

Their plus-8.3 Net Rating was stellar. 

But when Finney-Smith missed a game due to injury, Thomas replaced him in the starting lineup and has never left.

That quintet is minus-54 in 129 minutes together, their minus-19.0 Net Rating worst in the NBA of all units that have logged at least 100 minutes.

They got outscored 20-7 to start Tuesday. 

“When I reflected back on that, I said I’ll continue to gather the data and the data would speak for itself,” Vaughn said. “I’m more analytically based than I ever have been in my career. So you take this group that’s started recently, the numbers haven’t been efficient or sufficient enough for us, so there probably will be a change at some point. What that change is, I’ll continue to see what they need and what’s best for the group. 

“You’d think, and the thought process behind it was, to have four shotmakers and a big who could roll and get to the rim, that that would offensively be pretty good for us and that we’d be able to score enough and cover up some more sins with offense, and that’d be enough to get the defensive side of the basketball done. But it just hasn’t produced itself and so it’s staring us in the face and the numbers are behind it,” Vaughn said before the game. “I’m definitely concentrating on getting this win tonight but not to say that we won’t have a different starting lineup in the beginning of the year.” 

The Nets return home for the tail end of a back-to-back on Wednesday versus the Bucks.

Then they open a four-game road trip Friday night in Washington. 

That Wizards tilt would seem an ideal time for a shake-up.

And Bridges, Claxton and Dinwiddie would seem safely entrenched.