The Death of the Death Lineup: NBA contenders who ignored the center spot could pay the price this year

From the Clippers to the Celtics, many NBA contenders ignored the center position completely this summer, and could pay the price.

Look across the recalibrated NBA hierarchy after a summer of immense change and you’ll see stars in new environs and several potentially devastating duos, but hardly any centers. Did the league learn the wrong lessons from the Golden State Warriors’ small-ball dynasty?

Despite the departure of Kevin Durant from the Bay creating a greater degree of parity this season than in any since before LeBron James went to Miami, many top teams have ignored the center position completely, potentially jeopardizing their title dreams. While the league is certainly becoming increasingly perimeter-oriented every season, the best teams can play small as an adjustment, not a default. Still, projected playoff teams like the LA Clippers, Boston Celtics, Los Angeles Lakers and Portland Trail Blazers have sacrificed size and could pay the price.

At the same time, dominant big men threaten to force even greater adjustments around the league this year. It’s hard to imagine the smaller contenders containing effective role players such as Brook Lopez or Clint Capela, let alone MVP-caliber big men like Joel Embiid or Nikola Jokic. Teams are combating their lack of traditional centers with tweener bigs and versatile perimeter players, but we could be in for a clash this season of roster-building styles that determines seeding in the regular season and ultimately, the NBA championship.

Not every team has their own Draymond Green

The element that allowed Golden State to unleash the Death Lineup and its various alternatives was the intuition and multiplicity of Draymond Green. Not only could Green defend in space at an elite level off switches or in help situations, but the 2017 Defensive Player of the Year could also fulfill typical big man duties such as defensive rebounding and rim protection. This simplified the duties of teammates, which is how Andre Iguodala, Shaun Livingston and Klay Thompson made so many incredible individual defensive plays over the years.

But Green is a unicorn. Few players have altered the makeup of the NBA like he did, and few play the game as intelligently or with the same versatility as Green.

Perhaps the best simulacrum of Green in the modern league is Anthony Davis, whose defensive prowess the Lakers are hoping makes up for their subpar defensive talent compared with their contending counterparts. In his last full season (2017-18), the Pelicans allowed 8.0 fewer points per 100 possessions defensively when Davis was on the court, according to Cleaning the Glass. However, Davis’ job was made easier by the presence of other bigs such as DeMarcus Cousins, Nikola Mirotic and even Cheick Diallo that season. Davis played more center in New Orleans than was let on, but still, asking him to occupy that role with only JaVale McGee and Dwight Howard in the mix beside him is a tall order.

Earlier this summer, Lakers head coach Frank Vogel told NBA.com, “I still think there’s a place for centers and big men in this league. The thing that’s gone away more than anything are lineups with two bigs. The non-shooting power forwards.” Hopefully, this means Davis — who took three 3s in 22 minutes in the Lakers’ first preseason game — will still take his game to the outside even next to a ball-dominant point forward like James.

Meeting high expectations and raising the floor and ceiling of the team is why Los Angeles gave up the kitchen sink for Davis. As one of the best players in the league, Davis has to know the Lakers’ hopes ride on his ability to do a whole ton on both ends. McGee’s game is limited, and some teams will play him off the floor because of his limitations in space. Howard isn’t even a lock to stay on the team all season on a non-guaranteed contract. The Lakers could’ve done a better job filling out the frontcourt rotation, and may still have to on the buyout market to achieve their championship dreams.

Defense is the most important duty for modern centers

These teams’ offenses will suffer very little from their lack of center depth. In fact, many may benefit, but trading defense and rebounding for offense brings diminishing returns. At some point, not being able to match the size and defensive prowess of opponents will sting the teams who didn’t prioritize the center position this offseason.

Take the Clippers, who bolstered their wing rotation more than any team in a series of deals that culminated with Paul George and Kawhi Leonard in red, white and blue. Their defense will manufacture turnovers and prevent dribble penetration, but the back line leaves much to be desired. The only centers on their roster are the young Ivica Zubac and Montrezl Harrell, who is undersized and defensively limited. Los Angeles will be asking a lot of its wings defensively because they cannot rely on a center to protect the rim and end possessions on defense.

Instead, coach Doc Rivers may shift his rotation on a nightly basis to take advantage of matchups as well as his team’s depth. “I do think there is a chance we have a sliding starting lineup,” Rivers told the LA Times this month. “Where a different four [power forward], a different one [point guard] … I thought about that all summer, and again watching us, it leads me to think that’s what we’re going to do.”

The Clippers will be pushing the perimeter focus of modern basketball to its outermost limits, betting that efficient shot creation and elite wing defense will be enough to contend for a title. Flexing different players in and out could help, but it won’t be able to manufacture defensive talent. The similarities of Leonard and George will act as a strength as well as a challenge for this team in its first year together as the Clips figure out how to use elite perimeter defense to shut the door on elite opponents.

Despite making the conference finals for the first time in Damian Lillard’s career last season, the Blazers face similar questions about their defense. Portland has finished in the top 10 defensively just twice during Lillard’s career, per Cleaning the Glass, and the roster will present the toughest challenge of building an effective defense yet.

The center position was somewhat out of Portland’s control after the scary leg fracture Jusuf Nurkic suffered in March, but rather than replace him with passable regular-season big man Enes Kanter or someone even better, the Trail Blazers acquired Hassan Whiteside, a friend of Lillard’s. Though Whiteside allowed the third-lowest defensive field goal percentage among high-volume rim protectors last season, those numbers are tricky on good overall defenses like Miami’s. A reputation for lunging out of position for blocks has rightly followed Whiteside to Portland, where he will have a tougher time maintaining a similar level of impact with basically zero real forwards on the roster.

Few options were available to cap-strapped Portland while Nurkic recovered, and they found a very talented player in Whiteside who is close with Lillard. One would think that defensively, the Blazers’ conservative scheme should be easy for Whiteside to master, but he needs to be great in the paint to hide the lack of size and instinct on the rest of the team’s roster.

As Portland saw in crunch time repeatedly during last year’s Western Conference Finals, its bigs were exploitable. The Warriors shot 75.2 percent inside five feet in that series, and young combo big man Zach Collins fouled 7.1 times per 36 minutes in the playoffs, indicating he’s probably not ready to handle big minutes across both frontcourt positions despite high-level mobility and rim protection instincts. Many of the culprits of Portland’s collapse against the Warriors are gone, but it’s no sure thing that Whiteside is an upgrade. If he isn’t, Portland will simply spend the year waiting for Nurkic to return.

The league is adjusting to small-ball

This lesson was more clearly ironed out by the Toronto Raptors during their 2019 championship run. Toronto’s style proved that the best advantage was not to out-small opponents but to find lineups that had both size and skill in spades. Finding bigs who can keep up as pace continues to rise and teams take more 3s is vital. A frontcourt of Leonard, Pascal Siakam and Marc Gasol is no one’s idea of tiny, yet Toronto was able to match the Warriors’ feared versatility (albeit without Kevin Durant).

The Celtics seem to disagree. Their lack of proven center talent even inspired SB Nation’s Michael Pina to imagine a super-small lineup featuring Kemba Walker, Marcus Smart, Jaylen Brown, Gordon Hayward and Jayson Tatum. Most NBA fans would love to see that lineup actually get time on the court, but that’s no way to construct a go-to playoff lineup.

This is especially true in the Eastern Conference. Boston will need to go through the Milwaukee Bucks (Lopez and Giannis Antetokounmpo) and Philadelphia 76ers (Embiid and Al Horford) just to make the Finals. The fact that they can’t match their primary rivals’ size is a big reason why the Celtics are looking at a reset season. It appears Horford’s departure really caught the Celtics off guard, and while they quickly pivoted by signing Kanter on a cheap deal, the guys behind him are inexperienced.

While coach Brad Stevens has said that defense will have to be an emphasis from Day 1 in order to maintain his team’s defense-first identity, he told NESN he believes certain lineups could be “awfully good” on that end of the floor. It’s hard now to imagine that any of those lineups include the Celtics’ centers, unless Robert Williams breaks out in his second season. Currently, it appears the Celtics plan is to start Theis and bring Kanter off the bench.

Even with Kanter, who has blocked just 0.7 shots per 36 minutes in his career, the Celtics will be at a big nightly disadvantage at the 5. Worse still, they don’t possess the depth to throw different looks at opponents. Williams has played just 283 NBA minutes, while veteran Daniel Theis is basically a Kanter clone without the post game and international journeyman Vincent Poirier is unproven. Boston could throw Semi Ojeleye or Grant Williams at center in smaller lineups, but then they’re back to an ineffective square one against the best teams.

Ahead of the curve or behind the times?

There’s a very good chance Anthony Davis puts it all together as a playmaker, shooter and defender with the Lakers and renders concerns about the team’s frontcourt depth moot. But aside from the Lakers, each of these teams has not only sacrificed size and defensive acumen, they’ve made a bet that their perimeter talent can combat the growing presence of inside-out bigs around the league.

The problem is not simply that the Celtics, Blazers and Clippers lack balance. They also will struggle to contain the cadre of elite big men developing in the NBA. The response to the small-ball trend in many NBA cities was to find and develop big men who could keep up with the game as it moved outside and punish mismatches when opponents went too small. Among them are Embiid, Jokic, Karl-Anthony Towns, Kristaps Porzingis and Myles Turner. Leading the next generation are Deandre Ayton, Lauri Markkanen and Zion Williamson, to name a few. There is too much big man talent to ignore these players completely, so teams and individuals have adapted.

Many NBA teams have not. Stars such as Lillard, George, Leonard and Walker can win games on their own and force adjustments that bigger teams aren’t ready for. High-level basketball is not a one-way street, and all of these teams have smart coaches. Yet the balance of power among the NBA’s elite is shifting back toward bigger players, and many contending teams were unable or unwilling to ride that wave.

For now, jumbo wings who can defend Antetokounmpo, James, Leonard and Ben Simmons are the most important role players in the league. Add a guy like that, and maybe being weak at center is manageable. The best teams, though, can account for every situation and ideally have star players who can adjust to opponents and matchups on the fly. Ignoring bigs when there are so many great ones around the league is a recipe for disappointment.