Assessing where we stand as of the last several weeks:
Starters: Smart, Brown, Tatum, Horford, RWill
Brown has been a little up and down but still good. Other than Brown, everyone else is absolutely peaking. Can't really expect things to be any better right now.
Core Bench: Pritchard, White, GWill, Theis
We don't have a true back up wing in this group (Nesmith may emerge but time is running out on this season) but this is a good bench. White is on the upswing (improving from 0-8 to 2-8), Pritchard seems to have found his shooting confidence again, and GWill/Theis give us quite a bit of versatility as back up bigs. Joking aside on White, he has been useful, probably slightly better than Richardson and Pritchard has been roughly equal to Schroder, but he needs to figure out his shot.
Deep Bench: Nesmith, Hauser, Stauskas, Fitts, Kornet
There are some potentially useful players in this group as 3rd stringers but you can't expect much from any of this. I think we are at 14 right now so there is one more slot. It would be nice if one of these emerged as an actual playable back up wing. As of last night, Fitts now has 12 total NBA points over 2 seasons, 4-9 (44%) from 3, just say'in.
BTW, where has Kornet been the last couple of games?
ANSWERS:
Brown has been playing through an injury.
Grant is playing backup wing.
Kornet shouldn't even be in the NBA.
Grant has played wing for a total of 9 minutes and entirely in 1 game. I determined this by checking 3-man line up for when Grant was on the court with 2 other bigs (2 of Horford, RWill, Theis). I think it was the Detroit game but I am not sure. Anyway, the team was -4 in those 9 minutes.
GWill offers some versatility but he has not been playing back up wing and I don't expect he will be in any significant way moving forward. In a pinch, it is a nice option to have. I was actually surprised to not have seen it more.
Other than garbage time (and the 9 min mentioned above), they have been able to keep at least one of Brown or Tatum on the court and when it is only one of them, they play with 2 guards (some combination of Smart, White, Pritchard), along with some combination of the bigs (Horford, RWill, GWill, Theis).
I consider Brown and Tatum to be wings, Smart, White, and Pritchard to be guards. The principle combinations they use are:
1 guard, 2 wings, 2 bigs
2 guards, 1 wing, 2 bigs
Not really a whole lot of difference really but there is a subtle difference.