Since various players' names have been floated as bench material, here are the two-man lineups with Keon Ellis, minimum 400 total minutes:
DeRozan +5.5. Fox +4.7. Sabonis +4.2. Murray +2.5. Monk +0.4. LaVine -1.8. Lyles -3.0.
Shipping off Fox undoubtedly hurt Keon's overall effectiveness. He plays terribly with LaVine and, especially, with Lyles.
Here are the two-man lineups with Monk, whom Ellis typically replaces in the starting lineup, again with a minimum 400 minutes:
Sabonis +3.2. DeRozan +3.2. Fox 2.2. Murray 2.0. Lyles +1.2. LaVine 1.1. Ellis +0.4.
Monk also plays well with Sabonis and DeRozan, but not as well as Ellis. On the other hand, there is no one teammate with whom he plays poorly this season.
Also of note with respect to the starting lineups, with a minimum 300 minutes, Zach LaVine has negative numbers playing alongside: Murray -1.4. Sabonis -1.6. Ellis -1.8. DeRozan -1.9. He is positive on the court only playing with: Monk, +1.1, and Valančiūnas, +0.8.
If you were Doug Christie, what would you do with those numbers?
Honestly, nothing. 2-man lineups are so incredibly noisy and you can't really gleam much from it because of how many outside factors go into these numbers.
Lineup data in general you have to be very careful with. Even most 5-man lineup data, you're looking at anywhere from like 50 minutes-300 total minutes.
Just as a few examples, sorting Feb 7th and later, or basically when this core was fully formed:
Monk-LaVine-DDR-Keegan-Domas
140 min
114.8 ORtg
123.7 DRtg
-8.9 NET
Keon-LaVine-DDR-Keegan-Domas
121 min
116.7 ORtg
111.9 DRtg
4.9 Net
Keon-LaVine-DDR-Keegan-Jval
92 min
125.4 ORtg
111.1 DRtg
+14.3 Net
Monk-LaVine-DDR-Keegan-Jval
57 min
115.3 ORtg
110.7 DRtg
+4.5 Net
Monk-Keon-DDR-Keegan-Domas
34 min
102.7 ORtg
95.7 DRtg
+7.1 Net
Monk-Keon-DDR-Keegan-Jval
31 minutes
118.5 ORtg
107.2 DRtg
+11.2 Net
Monk-Keon-LaVine-Keegan-Domas
24 minutes
105.5 ORtg
78.2 DRtg
+27.3 Net
Lavine-LaRavia-DDR-Keegan-Jval
23 minutes
108.5 ORtg
102.2 DRtg
+6.3 Net
Monk-Keon-LaRavia-Lyles-Jval
23 minutes
94 ORtg
127.5 DRtg
-33.5 Net
Monk-LaVine-DDR-Keegan-Lyles
21 minutes
123.9 ORtg
127.9 DRtg
-4.0 Net
These are our 10 most used 5-man lineups since the trade deadline. And looking at this, makes some of the lineup decisions even more frustrating; as some of us have been saying, when you balance out the offensive hubs and stagger them, this team becomes pretty damn good. And the reality is most of our games have seen us try to dig out of the hole the starting group puts us in.
The blueprint is real easy. 2 or 3 of Monk/DDR/LaVine/Domas on the floor, put 2 defenders with them (Keon/LaRavia/Keegan/Carter) and this team can be really really damn good