2021-2022 ROSTER TALK: [ARCHIVED]

[SwisherPrice]

The "Space Ball" Era is here. If you play a lot of minutes at the 5 then you better have some 3-pt shooting ability! Even better if you aren't a complete mismatch on switches

https://theathletic.com/3314194/2022/05/...spaceball/

Underlying their 2022 postseason shortcomings, however, is one potential failure that was consistent across both teams: They couldn’t deal with spread-out lineups. This isn’t “small ball” so much as it is “space ball.”

Space ball is what happens when the size of the players on the court isn’t the issue, but rather where they are standing. It’s what happens when the Mavericks put five capable 3-point shooters on the perimeter and leave Rudy Gobert and Ayton in no man’s land, or when the Bucks’ protect-the-rim-first defensive ethos leaves them essentially daring Grant Williams to eliminate them.

You thought centers were dinosaurs now? Just you wait. Gobert has been one of the most valuable players in the league the past few regular seasons, but the Mavs’ space-ball approach,  much like that of the Clippers a year earlier, rendered him irrelevant. It wasn’t that he sucked; it was that he was no longer in a position to offset the carnage on the perimeter. The Mavs beat Utah twice even without Dončić by employing this approach.

Ayton met a similar fate in the conference semifinals, as did his backup JaVale McGee. In the ultimate irony, a Phoenix team that lost in the NBA Finals a year ago because it didn’t have enough quality size, lost this year because it lacked the perimeter groupings to face off against space ball. The Suns’ only good player between 6-foot-7 and 6-foot-11 was Cameron Johnson; when they tried to go small without one of their traditional centers, they ended up too small. (For the second postseason in a row, having Dario Saric might have helped.)