Trade & FA 2025-26: Free Agency Starts 5pm CST/6pm EST

[mvossman]

"I have read a lot on here that size is coming back and that is where the NBA is heading." --- It's not OUR analysis. It's what the NBA itself is doing, so apparently they have perceived that there's a good reason to go there. Hoops at the NBA level is so multi-faceted, and an advantage can be gained in many ways. 

"But it still looks to me like space is what wins in the playoffs, not size." --- I think there is a tendency to search for these grand declarations of what is the ideal winning formula, when instead there is really no such thing. That's the NBA, where a team finds an advantage and uses it to win a title, then some other teams mimic that and try to outdo them at their own game BUT other teams try to find a contrasting style that's better. In the end, either can be the answer.

And sometimes we even mis-identify what advantage the winner used -- for example, with OKC, was their difference-making special sauce really spacing? or was it defense? or was it SGA getting ridiculously favorable treatment by the refs? If they had been without any of those 3, would we have seen a different winner?

Don't forget that a year ago, it was BOS who had invented basketball. Millions of 3s. And now they are an afterthought. And a year prior to that, it was DEN who was unstoppable. A dominant big who is so versatile that he can't be stopped. And so on. It's been 8 different winners in the last 8 seasons.

Maybe OKC will repeat. They are the heavy favorite. Then again, recent history says next year's winning formula is still TBD.

Except there are some strong patterns regarding what has been successful, especially if you look at the champions over the last several years:

Just about every champion has a top 5 offensive creator.  The only recent exception is Boston, who had an insane amount of talent/creation in the starting lineup (Tatum, Brown, Jrue, White).  

Every champion has had a top 10 defense.

Every champion has had no more than two playoff rotational bigs, and at least one of them can space the floor.  The closest exception to this is the Covid Lakers with AD and Howard.  

The Mavs have had the most success when adhering to this model.  Luka as the creator, defense led by Maxi/DFS/Bullock or Lively/PJ/DJJ and Maxi as the spacing big (I will mention that Luka needed help in both cases with a high level secondary creator in Brunson/Kyrie).  Then Nico lets DJJ walk without replacing him, making it unlikely to meet the defense requirement, and then he trades away our elite creation.  In the near term, this team will have to match the Boston model using creation by committee with Kyrie, AD, Flagg and probably a trade.  I have seen nothing to suggest that employing three non shooting bigs is going to do anything to counter the lack of creation.  My guess is in the unlikely event that both AD and Lively are healthy in the playoffs, you will see one of them as single big 90% of the time.