One of the interesting things about our metrics is its position-adjustment. Essentially, the things that big men do in the NBA are the things that are most important when it comes to winning: shooting efficiently, rebounding, not turning the ball over. But, of course, you cannot play five centers. Or, more accurately, part of the reason that centers tend to shoot more efficiently and grab rebounds is because they hang around near the basket a lot. And part of the reason they don't turn over the ball a lot is because unlike the point guard, they don't have to bring the ball up the court while one of the other team's quickest defenders hounds them.
This becomes a popular criticism of our metrics. "On paper", a team of Tyson Chandler, Omer Asik, Dwight Howard, Andre Drummond, and DeAndre Jordan would win like 75 games. Except, of course, they would lose a ton of them because none of those players would produce many wins playing point guard, and somebody has to bring the ball up. So the real question isn't "Which of these teams is better?"
| Team Center | Team Point |
|---|---|
| Tyson Chandler | Chris Paul |
| Dwight Howard | Ricky Rubio |
| Omer Asik | Kyle Lowry |
| Andre Drummond | Goran Dragic |
| DeAndre Jordan | Stephen Curry |
I think the point guard team runs the floor here. And this is the kind of thing that leads people to conclude that small ball is the dominant strategy in the NBA. But, of course, the argument is more like, "Which of THESE lineups is better?":
| Team Big Ball | Team Small Ball |
|---|---|
| Chris Paul | Chris Paul |
| Goran Dragic | Goran Dragic |
| Stephen Curry | Stephen Curry |
| Andre Drummond | Kyle Lowry |
| Kevin Love | Ty Lawson |
And I think the answer gets a lot closer to what the "small ball vs. traditional big ball" argument is trying to establish. By the way, in constructing these crazy, arbitrary lineups, I did a couple of things on purpose:
- I left off the game's two best players, in LeBron James and Kevin Durant. One of my big problems with the coverage of Miami's "small ball" strategy is, as I have pointed out far too often, that LeBron James is not small. The man could go toe-to-toe in a cage match with Karl Malone. The problem with the other 29 teams trying to emulate this strategy of playing your SF at PF is that it kind of falls apart if you don't have "The LeBron Luxury". Kevin Durant falls out for similar reasons. By including guys like Drummond and Love on the Big Ball team, I'm making a clear choice about playing traditional PF/C men; neither of them have the versatility to really play SF. And I avoid the problematic scenario that the lineup with LeBron is always better if you hold most other player constant, because, well, DUH.
- I picked shooters. Guys like Rubio and Rondo are left off the list for team Small Ball precisely because I want to avoid concerns about how one team or another would lose because "player X can't shoot".
Now, I actually don't know which of these lineups is better. And in fact, our good friend Ari Caroline has written a few posts about optimal lineups that can spark some interesting discussions. I am just trying to steer the question away from silly comparisons. Yes, if coaches divide up the bigs and the wings in scrimmage, the wings will win (unless LeBron gets to be on the "bigs"). But what happens when you play the PG-PG-PG-PG-C team against the PG-SG-SF-PF-C team or the PG-PF-PF-PF-C team? What happens if you play 4 centers and LeBron?
Those are much more interesting questions. I'd kind of like to see them explored in the all-star game. Could Hibbert, Noah, LeBron, Drummond, Bosh beat a more traditional positional lineup like Paul, Curry, Kawhi, Love and Jordan?