With an eye to the playoffs, NBA teams are tinkering with lineups
By Jared Dubin
As we move toward the end of the regular season and eventually into the playoffs, which players NBA coaches choose to put on the floor take on greater and greater importance. Coaches can affect games in a variety of ways, but none have a greater cumulative effect than determining which combinations of players best serve their purposes at any given time.
Throughout this season, coaches around the league have done a ton of tinkering. Below, we’ll highlight two Western Conference maneuvers that have worked out well so far — one more well-publicized than the other. In addition, we’ll work through the lineup decisions two Eastern Conference contenders will have to make in the weeks to come.
Houston Rockets
Ryan Anderson is a wonderful player. He’s an ace sharpshooter and key to the Rockets’ elite floor spacing, connecting at a higher rate on his 3s than any other rotation regular. For 50 of the first 52 games of the season, Anderson was also a starter — just as he had been for last year’s Rockets.
But in early February, Mike D’Antoni sent him to the bench in favor of Luc Mbah a Moute. A few games later, he D’Antoni pivoted to P.J. Tucker for that role. Tucker has been starting while Anderson’s been coming off the bench ever since. Considering D’Antoni was among the first NBA coaches to weaponize the stretch 4, it seems like a strange move to shift the one player on the team who truly fills that role to the bench. But it makes much more sense if you view it as D’Antoni inoculating his team from needing to depend on Anderson in the postseason.
Anderson was repeatedly exposed in pick-and-roll defense during last year’s playoff loss to the San Antonio Spurs. In signing Mbah a Moute and Tucker this past offseason, the Rockets essentially ensured they had other options for to use in Anderson’s spot should this time around.
Once the Rockets proved through the first 50 or so games of the year that they were a legit contender as close to being on par with the Warriors as a team could get, D’Antoni made the move to Warrior-proof his squad. The Rockets will pretty much always have the best possible spacing, whether Anderson is on the floor or not. Their shooters stand a few feet outside the line above the break and as deep in the corners as possible, stretching the defense to its horizontal limits while Clint Capela provides a vertical element. Those forces together give James Harden and Chris Paul enough room to work their individual magic.
So D’Antoni made the prudent move: he made sure to figure out how to run rotations that don’t depend on Anderson’s skill set, while still being sure to utilize him in situations where he won’t become a liability. The Rockets can play Anderson whenever he won’t be victimized, but they can also just use Tucker or Mbah a Moute alongside Harden, Paul, and Trevor Ariza, which, by extension, allows them to be as flexible defensively as possible.
San Antonio Spurs
Gregg Popovich’s decision to permanently send Tony Parker to the bench in favor of second-year point guard Dejounte Murray has been widely publicized. Less publicized is how the Spurs have actually done since making the switch.
San Antonio is only 14-13 in the 27 games Murray’s started since becoming a permanent fixture on Jan. 21, but that relatively (for the Spurs) poor record is not the fault of the starting group. San Antonio has been 4.3 points better per 100 possessions with Murray on the floor than off during that time, and 7.3 points worse per 100 possessions with Parker on the floor than off.
The most common starting five for San Antonio during this run has been Murray, Patty Mills, Danny Green, Kyle Anderson, and LaMarcus Aldridge. Aldridge doesn’t particularly like playing center and Anderson doesn’t look all that much like a power forward, but that group has been straight up demolishing opponents, outscoring them by a ridiculous 22.6 points per 100 possessions across 145 minutes while scoring and defending at levels that would smash the league-best marks of the Warriors and Celtics, respectively.
Of course, the Spurs are only plus-0.2 points per 100 possessions in the 1,252 minutes they played with a group of five players other than Murray-Mills-Green-Anderson-Aldridge on the floor during that time. And that’s a different issue entirely.
Cleveland Cavaliers
The Cavs still haven’t exactly played a game with the group of players you’d expect them to have come postseason, let alone one coached by Ty Lue as opposed to Larry Drew. They’ve also yet to really experiment all that much with what seems like it should be (one of) their best postseason lineups: George Hill, Rodney Hood, LeBron James, Kevin Love, and Larry Nance Jr.
That unit has appeared in three games together thus far, for only 13 minutes. They outscored the Suns, Nets, and Pelicans by 10 points in those 13 minutes, which is really good; but it’s also only 13 minutes.
With just six games left in their season and only three against playoff squads, there’s not much time remaining foe the Cavs to get this group more work. It would actually probably be better to give the unit a whirl against the Mavericks and Knicks as opposed to letting the Raptors, 76ers, or Wizards get a live look at how it works; but given the complexion of the post-deadline version of this team, slotting the length and athleticism of Hill, Hood, and Nance, plus the shooting of Hill, Hood, and Love next to LeBron seems like the best possible version of the New Cavs. You could make an argument for Tristan Thompson in the Nance spot or J.R. Smith in the Hood role, but neither of them has reached the heights this season that they have in the past.
This configuration could prove especially useful against the next team on our list, whereas going small with another shooter in place of Nance might be playing into their hands.
Toronto Raptors
We know the Raptors will have both Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan on the floor to close out games in the playoffs. We also know they’ll almost definitely know they’ll have Serge Ibaka out there as well.
After that is where things get interesting, especially if the Raps meet the Cavs at some point. Second-year guard Fred VanVleet is fourth on the team in clutch-time minutes, and the Lowry-VanVleet backcourt has been killer late in games. But if the Cavs are playing big and LeBron is effectively their 3-man, going small poses defensive problems for Toronto.
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DeRozan cannot handle LeBron. Lowry and VanVleet would be hopeless against him as well. Would Dwane Casey be willing to sub OG Anunoby in VanVleet’s place? Can OG even be trusted to handle LeBron in a late-game playoff situation? What about C.J. Miles or Norman Powell?If none of them can work, which big man plays next to Ibaka? Pascal Siakam? Jonas Valanciunas? Jakob Poeltl? The best move would be to use Ibaka or Siakam on LeBron, but that leaves one of the smalls to guard Love or Nance, which could get tricky pretty quickly. There are a lot of options and no easy answers here — especially if the Raps want to trust the guys that got them here in the first place.