The NBA’s skeleton keys can unlock any lineup

Not every player in the NBA can be superstar or an All-Star. Not every player can be a prospect. Some guys are just there to do the things that need doing — to fill in the blanks next to the stars and the prospects and not necessarily be noticed all that often. These are the skeleton keys, the lineup unlockers, the guys whose contributions make everything else work. Nearing the midway point of the season, there are several of these players standing out.

Danny Green

I’m still trying to figure out why the Spurs were apparently so eager to throw Green into the Kawhi Leonard trade as a piece to make the money work. His shooting had dropped off a bit the past two seasons as he adjusted from an offense that based around pick-and-rolls to one that was based around post-ups, but he still defended multiple positions at an extremely high level and had a ton of the institutional knowledge the Spurs famously love.

Now in Toronto, Green has every bit of his groove back. He’s having his best shooting season since 2015, knocking down 41.5 percent of 5.5 attempts per game from behind the 3-point line. He’s also shooting over 50 percent on 2-pointers for the first time in his career, fueled by the best at-rim finishing rates he’s ever had.

He shows up all over the Raptors’ best lineup combinations, and his partnership with Leonard and Kyle Lowry gives the Raptors arguably the best group of perimeter defenders in basketball. Green has the best defensive RPM of any guard in the NBA and the fifth-best mark of any perimeter player. He can play alongside any one of the Raptors’ wings and/or point guards, and seamlessly slide between positions on both ends of the floor. (He’s one of just 24 players that has defended point guards, shooting guards, and small forwards on at least 180 distinct possessions this season, per an analysis of Second Spectrum defensive matchup data performed by Nylon Calculus’ Krishna Narsu.)

Malcolm Brogdon

It seems like a strange comparison to make, but Brogdon has essentially played the CJ McCollum role for the Bucks this season. He starts alongside Eric Bledsoe as a de facto off-guard, but also works as the backup point guard. (McCollum himself no longer really does this, but he did for a good long while.) He is shooting the absolute lights out of the ball, working on a 51-44-98 shooting line that is so ridiculous that I had to triple-check just to make sure I wasn’t going crazy.

Under Mike Budenholzer, Brogdon is shooting at the rim and from 3 more than ever before, and he has almost completely eliminated the mid-range shot from his game. He still has his occasional moments where he pump-fakes a defender that doesn’t exist or takes a few dribbles to absolutely nowhere when he should either shoot or attack right away, but for the most part he has kept the line moving offensively, formed a nice two-way pick-and-roll partnership with Giannis Antetokounmpo (the Bucks occasionally have Brogdon screen for Giannis), and attacked closeouts as a second-side driver.

It’s there where he has really shined, as he’s averaging 9.8 drives per game and finishing at 54.7 percent when he drives to the rim. That’s the 15th-best on-the-drive field goal percentage among 104 players averaging at least 5 drives per game. He’s creating points on the drive at about the same rate as Kyrie Irving. Oh, and his size (6-foot-5, 230 pounds) allows him to defend pretty much any guard in the league. That’s always a nice plus.

Justise Winslow

In case you haven’t heard, Winslow is the Heat’s starting point guard now. This dude just does absolutely everything. We covered him in our season preview on 10 of the most interesting players in the NBA for the 2018-19 season, and he has essentially done everything we said we would see this year:

"His skill set is diverse and the Heat can use him in a host of different roles in a pinch. It’s not uncommon to see Winslow, during the same game, working as a primary ball-handler, a screener in pick-and-rolls, a spot-up shooter, and a dunker-spot lurker. His size and agility lend themselves well to working all over the floor and with all different kinds of teammates next to him.…Everybody can always use fill-in-the-blanks guys, especially those who have the capability to be more than that. Everybody can always use multi-positional defenders who can play alongside nearly any teammate. And everybody can use athletic, 22-year-old, 6-foot-7 wings."

Crucially, Winslow has also upped his 3-point volume and connection rate to career highs, knocking down 39 percent of nearly 4 attempts per game. The one area where we stated that he needed to improve — aggressiveness driving to the basket — has indeed improved, as he’s gone from averaging 4.8 drives per game last year to 8.5 this season, despite playing almost the exact same amount of minutes per game. He’s still not finishing well on the drive, but he’s passing more often and creating more opportunities for his teammates. He has 24 drive-and-dish assists this season — nearly half as many as he had during the previous three seasons combined.

Josh Hart

Among the Lakers’ young players, Hart has probably been the cleanest fit alongside LeBron James.

He’s comfortable working off the ball as either a spot-up shooter or second-side attacker. He moves well without the ball in his hands. He can seamlessly swing back and forth between screening and being screened for. As such, the plus-7.9 net rating James has alongside Hart is the best figure for any of the nine Lakers with whom he’s shared the floor for more than 100 minutes.

Hart’s combination of size, quickness, and strength has led Luke Walton to use him as something of a utility player, moving him around to every position and even using him as a power forward in small-ball bench lineups. He’s just the kind of flexible piece that makes having a superstar like LeBron easier because he can and will do all the things you don’t want LeBron doing.

Jae Crowder

Crowder for some reason still cannot hit a shot, but when he plays alongside Donovan Mitchell, Joe Ingles, and Rudy Gobert, the Jazz consistently just crush everybody in their path. That four-man unit has played about 10 minutes per game this season, and the Jazz are outscoring opponents by a ridiculous 14.2 points per 100 possessions when they share the floor. There are 63 four-man lineups in the NBA that have played at least 300 minutes together, and that group has the fourth-best pace-adjusted scoring margin of them all, just two spots behind Ricky Rubio and the Mitchell-Ingles-Crowder trio. In other words: Crowder appears to be the best power forward option the Jazz have when their best guys are on the floor.

Even though he’s not shooting all that well himself, he still draws much more attention on the perimeter than Derrick Favors, largely because he’s a wing and it’s assumed that he will shoot, even if he isn’t necessarily hitting this season. Crowder has the versatility to defend any forward in the game and he is always in the right place, which makes him an excellent fit for a Jazz team that plays a system predicated on positioning and forcing the opponent toward Gobert at all times. He hasn’t quite gotten back to the level he reached in Boston, but his impact on his team’s performance is similar.

Iman Shumpert and Bogdan Bogdanovic

Shump appears to finally be healthy after years of injuries, and the Kings are resting him on occasion to make sure he doesn’t get injured again. He’s largely starting at the 3 next to De’Aaron Fox and Buddy Hield, and it seems like a hybrid wing role on a team that runs as fast as possible as often as possible is the role he was always meant to play. He spots up from 3, pushes the pace, and — for the first time in his career — makes quick decisions when he gets the ball to either put it up, drive to the rim, or give it to someone else who will do one of those things. He’s back to defending multiple positions at a high level, and he has slashed his turnovers to career-low rates by finally focusing on only doing the things that he does well.

Bogdanovic missed some time at the beginning of the season but now he starts when Shump sits out, and also spends plenty of time on the floor with both Fox and Hield even when Shump is healthy. Those lineups are absolutely demolishing teams, outscoring them by 17.2 points per 100 possessions. We need to be seeing more of that group. One of a small handful of European players ever to come across the pond and immediately shoot at a high level, Bogdanovic just makes sense for everything this team wants to do. Though he is not actually related to Bojan Bogdanovic, he fills a similar role on his team as Bojan does on the Pacers.