I am going to demonsrate a rather large flaw in your argument with nothing more than red highlighting.
All Tyreke Evans + Marcus Thornton backcourt lineups with at least 50 offensive possessions last season, with Off RTng:
Reke/Thornton/Salmons/JT/Cousins 348possessions 99.43 OffRtng
Reke/Thornton/Salmons/Hickson/Cousins 131possessions 96.18 OffRtng
Reke/Thornton/Salmons/Hayes/Cousins 122possessions 93.44 OffRtng
Reke/Thornton/Salmons/Hickson/Hayes122possessions 111.48 OffRtng
Reke/Thornton/Salmons/JT/Hayes 102possessions 90.20 OffRtng
Reke/Thornton/Salmons/Hickson/JT 62possessions 106.45 OffRtng
I think the red highlights kind of speak for themsleves. We ****ing tied a colossal anvil around the ankles of that backcourt pairing. That's all of them by the way. Not ONE major Reke/Thornton lineup did not include maybe the worst player in the NBA for the first half of the season at SF, normally along with an offensively incompetent PF, or a guy we'd release before the year was out.
Now I don't want to take the tiem to list them, but spin that around, and of the 10 different 50+ possession linueps IT was a part of you know how many of them had Salmons at SF ? 1. Uno (that freakishly successful run while Reke was out for a couple of games). 1 other had Hayes at PF. None had Hickson.
My flawed argument? YOU are the one who likes to spin stats for your own incredibly biased opinion.
For 1, 50 offensive possessions isn't near enough of a sample size to determine anything about how an offensive lineup runs. In fact, the only lineups I would feel comfortable making any sort of assertions on would be:
IT-MT-Reke-JT-Demarcus- 601 offensive possessions
Reke-MT-Salmons-JT-Demarcus- 348 possessions
IT-MT-Tyreke-Donte-Demarcus- 221 possessions
and none of them were successful. The top one was great offensively, atrocious defensively. The 2nd team was atrocious offensively, and below average defensively (but liveable if that offensive group actually work) and the third was surprisingly most balanced, but still atrocious defensively.
One. Hickson was hurt and then fell out favor with Smart by the time IT got a majority of his playing time. He was always a terrible fit for us anyway, so it's not surprising our offense sucked with him on the floor with the starters.
Two. the Reke-MT-Salmons-Hickson-Hayes lineup was one of the few that actually produced positive results for us this season (with a respectable sample size). That team scored 136 points and allowed 132 points. Not fantastic, but certainly not the atrocious lineup everyone claimed it was when Hickson/Hayes were on the court.
Three. The Reke-Thornton-Salmons-Hickson-JT lineup was another one of our more successful lineups on the year(small sample size, but we'll ignore that for now). They scored 66 points and allowed 61. How is that possible you may ask? We had two cooks in the kitchen on offense (Reke, MT) a real SF in the game (no matter how bad he was) and 2 bigs that did not demand the ball as Cousins does.
This isn't an anti-Reke tyrade. Or an Anti-Thornton tyrade. I'm simply stating facts about what happened with our team last year and 2 things stuck out. When a real SF was in the game, we got instantly better defensively. I should perhaps clarify my original statement from Reke/Thornton playing together sucks offensively to this: When we have 2 cooks in the kitchen as opposed to all 3 (of Reke/Cousins/MT) our offense skyrockets. And I mean it's not even in the same ball-park. So, using logic, we can assume that if we add a defensive minded SF who doesn't demand the ball and is better than Outlaw/Salmons, our defense will drastically improve. The same is also true on offense: If we send MT to the bench and start Reke at the 2 with IT, our offense becomes hell of a lot better.
* FYI the only 3 successful lineups with 100 or more possessions had Outlaw or Salmons at SF and IT at PG. So let's give credit when it's due eh?