Let’s start this article off with a few caveats: The Portland Trail Blazers have only played three games. Jake Layman is currently in the starting lineup. And Nik Stauskas is playing some of the best basketball of his professional career.
Now that’s out of the way, here’s a crazy statistic: the Blazers second-unit (Evan Turner, Zach Collins, Maurice Harkless, Seth Curry, Stauskas) is currently a +14.1 plus-minus while the starters (Damian Lillard, CJ McCollum, Al-Farouq Aminu, Jusuf Nurkic, Layman) are a -8.8.
This means that the the bench is a +22.9 over the team’s starting group.