Fingers crossed that on Friday we will have the top 8-9 players available all on the same night for the first time in what has to be months. I was curious as to how often the Celtics had their most commonly used lineup available, so I went to the lineup stats on NBA.com. What I found is that our starting unit has played the 34th most minutes together of any 5-man combination, although it has only been available for 12 games (out of 46), which puts it outside the top 100 for games played by a 5-man lineup. What I also found is that it performs really well together. It's net rating is 17.5. Of the 34 lineups with at least that many minutes together, only two have performed better. In other words, Ime's preferred starting lineup works, and is one of the better lineups in the NBA.
Obviously there are some problems with the overall construction of the team, but the starting lineup has been remarkably successful, and hopefully we get to see it nightly for the next few weeks. (My preferred closing lineups, with Richardson or Grant replacing Horford, also work, with a combined net rating of about 28 in 50 minutes combined). The starters with Schroeder instead of Smart have also proven very effective in 5 games, 46 minutes of action (27.8 net rating). Somewhere buried in this mess is a quality team. Hopefully we can get a run of everyone being available for several games in a row to see it.