Nets' Hollins says starters aren't changing, Williams and Lopez remain reserves

The Brooklyn Nets have won four of their last five games and, salaries be damned, they're not changing.

That was the message from head coach Lionel Hollins after the team's 107-99 win over the Sacramento Kings on Monday, a game in which Brook Lopez and Deron Williams continued to come off the bench. That's $35 million in salary in a reserve role, something most teams would likely bristle at, but Hollins doesn't sound ready to tweak what's been working.

"This is the Brooklyn Nets," Hollins said Monday. "Yes, they were starters, but they've been in and out of the lineup. And if you note, while they were out we started playing better and winning, so why would I go back and change the lineup for now?"

On the one hand, Hollins is correct. The team did begin finding a groove with two of their stars sidelined, and they've continued to roll with them off the bench. Mason Plumlee and Jarrett Jack have played well, and Sergey Karasev has been a nice find in place of Bojan Bogdanovic.

At the same time, that starting five hasn't been all that effective, getting narrowly outscored by opponents in a 76-minute sample. The original starters, meanwhile, have outscored opponents by 3.6 points per-100 possessions in a large sample. The team has also been better with Williams on the floor than without him, though they've been better off without Lopez.

If the team is confident with the current starters and Hollins is capable of making substitutions such that his top names still get their minutes - that was not the case at all on Monday - then there's not a big issue here. Williams is publicly on board with working his way back to form from the bench, and Lopez really hasn't played well enough to complain.