How Lineups have Changed

The end of the last decade saw teams with a single, MVP-caliber, all-time great player lead their teams to titles. The 2007 Spurs, 2008 Celtics, 2009-2010 Lakers, and 2011 Mavericks each only had a single player ever make first-team All-NBA, excluding 2011 Jason Kidd.

This past decade has seen a dramatic shift. Since the ’11 Mavs only the 2019 Raptors have not had at least two players that made the All-NBA first team within two years of the title. Miami had Wade and LeBron, the Spurs had Duncan and Kawhi, Golden State had Steph and KD, and the Lakers had AD and LeBron. The 2015 Golden State squad only had one first-team-caliber player, but three player made an All-NBA team that season. No team has ever duplicated that feat so I am including them as a star-dense team.

In ten years, we have gone from teams with fantastic supporting casts around a top player — Duncan, Garnett, Kobe, Dirk — and a few supporting stars — Pierce, Allen, Parker, Ginobili, Gasol, Bynum — to a league where every champion has a legitimate claim to two players that are, at worst, among the top ten in the NBA. But you already knew that we are in the superteam era.

These changes impact more than player movement and franchise planning, the game on the court has changed. Yes, offenses have shifted to layups, threes, and free throws, but the entire composition of a lineup has also changed. With multiple All-NBA players on the court, ones who demand a high offensive load, how do teams share the ball differently? How do the 2011 Mavs and 2007 Spurs compare to teams like the 2020 Lakers and the 2013 Heat? How does a lineup of Kobe, Pau Gasol, Lamar Odom, Luke Walton, and Derek Fisher play? How are shots distributed? What about KD, Steph, Klay, Draymond, and Zaza Pachulia? Each of these teams dominated their respective seasons, but we all know that Steph and Klay shoot more than Gasol and Odom.

So yes. We’re in the era of superteams. Players shoot more threes. Teams tank. Post-ups don’t matter. I am here to show you how the fabric of lineups has changed. And hopefully come up with some answers as to why this is all happening.

Five Major Lineup Types

Each lineup has a unique mix of usage rates for its players. Some share the ball evenly, others concentrate possessions into one, two, or three players. Nearly every lineup that falls neatly into one of five buckets: Star with Support, Big Three, Two-Star, Egalitarian, and Lone Star. The table below describes the usage rates for each lineup type.

	Star w/Support	Big 3	Two-Star	Egalitarian	Lone Star
Player 1	30%	27%	32%	25%	38%
Player 2	22%	24%	27%	22%	21%
Player 3	19%	21%	18%	20%	17%
Player 4	16%	16%	13%	18%	14%
Player 5	13%	11%	10%	15%	11%

Now let’s break down each lineup type with a few examples.

Two-Star

2016 GSW (+7.6)	2016 OKC (+4.4)
Stephen Curry 29% Klay Thompson 27% Draymond Green 16% Harrison Barnes 14% Andrew Bogut 13%	Kevin Durant 30% Russell Westbrook 28% Serge Ibaka 20% Steven Adams 13% Andre Roberson 10%

The 2019 offseason saw what most people considered a shift to big three’s to big two’s, notably with the AD-LeBron and PG-Kawhi pairings in LA. However, some of the top lineups in the league have centered around two stars for a while.

These lineups have two leading offensive players, usually with an offensive rating over 27%. The third player usually falls just below 20%, using enough possessions to be an integral part of the lineup but still far below that of the two stars.

The 2015-16 Warriors lineup above was among the best lineups in the league, and their two stars combined to use 56% of possessions, 29% for Curry and 27% for Klay. Draymond, Harrison Barnes, and Andrew Bogut each has similar usage rates in their supporting roles.

The Durant-Westbrook-era Thunder epitomized the two-star lineup. This 2015-16 lineup was strong offensively, but not all-time, and saw KD and Westbrook combine for a usage rate of 58%, at 30% and 28% respectively. Ibaka carried a higher than normal load for a third player at 20%, but not enough to consider this group a big three. Adams and Roberson mostly filled defensive roles and do not carry any sort of offensive load.

Stars with Support

2013 SAC (-1.9)	2017 HOU (+10.3)	2018 PHI (+5.9)	2019 BOS (+8.7)	2019 MIL (+4)
DeMarcus Cousins 28% Tyreke Evans 20% Jason Thompson 20% Isaiah Thomas 19% John Salmons 13%	James Harden 31% Clint Capela 21% Ryan Anderson 20% Trevor Ariza 16% Patrick Beverley 12%	Joel Embiid 31% Ben Simmons 19% JJ Redick 17% Dario Saric 17% Robert Covington 15%	Kyrie Irving 31% Jayson Tatum 20% Al Horford 20% Marcus Morris 19% Marcus Smart 10%	Giannis Antetokounmpo 30% Khris Middleton 18% Brook Lopez 18% Eric Bledsoe 17% Malcolm Brogdon 17%

Stars with Support (SwS) are my personal favorite lineups. The best of these lineups include a talented star offensive player with plenty of supporting players. I’ve included more examples here just because it is fun to think about the supporting casts — Ariza and Pat Bev, Redick and RoCo, Smart and Marcus Morris, Middleton and Lopez. These lineups have one player carry a usage rate around 30%, with the other players sharing the ball pretty evenly. Rarely will the second player be above 22%, and the gap between 2 and 4 is usually only about 5%.

I don’t need to break down the above lineups. Each of the five on the right had some of the best offenses in the league each year, especially the ’17 Rockets and ’19 Celtics lineups. Each situation found the perfect cast to support a star scorer, with a good mix of playmaking, shooting, defense, and secondary scoring throughout.

I include the Kings lineup to show that these lineups don’t always play perfectly, falling below the team- and league-average offensive rating. This lines up with how I viewed the Demarcus-Cousins-era Kings, Boogie takes a lot of shots, while a rotating cast of mediocre guards and wings that put up numbers on a losing team.

Big Threes

2012 MIA (+4)	2017 GSW (+12.2)	2017 LAC (+5.3)
Dwyane Wade 28% LeBron James 26% Chris Bosh 25% Mario Chalmers 15% Joel Anthony 6%	Klay Thompson 26% Kevin Durant 24% Stephen Curry 23% Draymond Green 14% Zaza Pachulia 13%	Blake Griffin 28% JJ Redick 23% Chris Paul 22% DeAndre Jordan 15% Luc Mbah a Moute 11%

Every is familiar with Big Three’s. You’ve got three offensive stars with two role players that fill in the cracks. Expect to see the top three using about 75% of the total possessions, with usage rates within five to six percent of each other.

Some big three lineups are obvious, like the Big 3 Heat where LeBron, Wade, and Bosh each have a usage rate above 25%. Just as obvious are the 2017 Warriors, where KD, Steph, and Klay combine to use 73% of possessions. Slightly less obvious are lineups like this Clipper’s one from 2017. The usage rates of Blake Griffin, JJ Redick, and CP3 line up nicely with those of the 2017 Warriors, also combining for 73% and each above 22%. The Clippers lineups shows that an offense can function as if it has three offensive stars, even if we do not think of all three players as scorers, like JJ Redick here.

Egalitarian

2010 MEM (+3.2)	2013 IND (+3.2)	2018 MIN (+1.4)
Zach Randolph 24% Rudy Gay 22% O.J. Mayo 20% Marc Gasol 18% Mike Conley 16%	David West 24% Roy Hibbert 23% Paul George 22% George Hill 18% Lance Stephenson 14%	Jimmy Butler 23% Andrew Wiggins 22% Karl-Anthony Towns 21% Jeff Teague 19% Taj Gibson 15%

We always love these teams. The mid 2010s Pacers. The Grit-and-Grind Grizzlies. Random Nuggets teams. The Spurs. The Big 3 Celtics with Rondo. That Jimmy Butler T-Wolves team. The media adores how stars share the ball and these teams always seem to outperform expectations as superstars sacrifice their egos for the betterment of the team. Nobody uses more than 25%, and rarely will somebody fall below 15%. Nobody dominate the ball, and everybody contributes.

Just take a look at the three lineups above. The range of usage rates is no more than 10%. Each and every player, at that moment in his career, can hold their own on the offensive end and make a solid contribution. Other than the Seven-Seconds-or-Less Suns, all-time great offenses do not have an egalitarian composition, but they can still produce good results with the right players.

Lone Star

2009 LAL (+7.2)	2009 MIA (-3.6)	2013 NYK (+8)
Kobe Bryant 35% Pau Gasol 21% Lamar Odom 18% Luke Walton 14% Derek Fisher 12%	Dwyane Wade 36% Mario Chalmers 20% Udonis Haslem 18% Shawn Marion 17% Joel Anthony 10%	Carmelo Anthony 37% JR Smith 23% Raymond Felton 19% Tyson Chandler 11% Jason Kidd 10%

Ah, now it gets fun. Bring on the Twitter fan accounts. We claim need superstars to shoot the ball even when it doesn’t go in (see: Bryant, Kobe - 2009), but criticize them as losers when shots fail to fall (Westbrook, Russell - 2017).

These tend to come from seasons where a superstar player does not have another star to share touches with, and takes it upon himself to be his own second star. He ends up using at least a third of the possessions, but usually falls in the 37%-38% range. As seen in the sample lineups, the other four players tend to lack their own scoring abilities. Only JR and Pau Gasol are considered talented scorers, and they are the highest two usage players among the supporting casts.

Even though these lineups feel borne out of necessity rather than design, the ’09 Laker and ’13 Knicks show that lone-star lineups can still have success.

A Changing League

As I mentioned up top, the league is changing, and lineup composition often goes overlooked.

From 2009 through 2014, egalitarian lineups took up by far the most possessions. No other lineup type came within 10%, and in 2013 no lineup type came within 25%. However, since the start of 2015, egalitarian, SwS, and big three lineups have effectively been tied to lead the league, each hovering just below 30%. Two-star and lone star lineups have been pretty consistently around 12% and 6% respectively.

So what does this mean? Why have egalitarian lineups fallen off in popularity and finds itself next to big three and stars with support? Is this the cause or effect of a league-wide trend? I hope that I can shed some light on possible answers.

League Talent

As more talent enters the league, there are more “star” players, so why not take our egalitarian lineup, throw in a legitimate offensive star, and give him more possessions? In this case, we end up with an SwS lineup, where the elite role players take a small step back and the star gets more touches.

Star acquisition could also result in lower end talent on the bottom end of a lineup. If a team adds a star wing, maybe they give the fifth spot in a lineup to a defensive guard who shoots less. The second and third players pick up the slack, and an egalitarian lineup becomes a big three.

2010 MEM (+3.2)	2014 MEM (+2.4)
Zach Randolph 24% Rudy Gay 22% O.J. Mayo 20% Marc Gasol 18% Mike Conley 16%	Zach Randolph 25% Mike Conley 24% Marc Gasol 22% Courtney Lee 16% Tayshaun Prince 14%

Look at these examples from the 2010 Grizzlies and the 2014 Grizzlies. 2010 ran with an egalitarian lineup of Randolph (24%), Gay (22%), Mayo (20%), Gasol (18%), and Conley (16%) for an relative offensive rating of +3.2. By 2014, Conley had bloomed as a playmaker, while Gay and Mayo were shipped out for Tayshaun Prince and Courtney Lee. Memphis shifted to a big three with Randolph (25%), Conley (24%), Gasol (22%), Lee (16%), and Prince (14%) for a relative offensive rating of +2.4. As Conley and Gasol handled more offense, they could swap out the original two wings for two stronger defenders. As the availability of talent and player development increases, this shift has become more common.

Player Mobility

With an increase in player empowerment, stars and scorers have sought out the best opportunities. And as I mentioned above, an egalitarian lineup can easily become an SwS or a big three lineup with the insertion of a lead player.

2018 TOR (+0.1)	2019 TOR (+3.1)
DeMar DeRozan 25% Serge Ibaka 21% Jonas Valanciunas 20% Kyle Lowry 20% Norman Powell 14%	Kawhi Leonard 29% Serge Ibaka 22% Pascal Siakam 18% Kyle Lowry 16% Danny Green 14%

In 2019, the Raptors added Kawhi Leonard. Despite DeRozan’s scoring prowess, this 2018 lineup qualifies as egalitarian — four players have usage rates over twenty percent! An average lineup overall, the Raptors kept Lowry and Ibaka, swapped Powell for Green, and Siakam made enough offensive improvements to take up Valanciunas’ often overlooked offensive workload. Kawhi comes in and takes some shots away from the supporting cast to build an SwS lineup. Kawhi was frustrurated with his situation in San Antonio, identified a quality egalitarian lineup looking for a star, and forced his way to a great situation. Talent isn’t sitting around toiling away in a lone star lineup. It either improves or moves to another situation to turn egalitarian into star with support.

Intentional Roster-Building by GMs

Could this also be a product of front offices? Did general managers or coaches unlock some secret that changed how they built their rosters? 2015 was the first year that saw a shift away from egalitarian lineups. The season before, 2014, saw a massive improvement to the offensive efficiency of SwS and big threes, about 2 points per 100 possessions for each. At the same time, egalitarian lineups continued a multi-year decrease, culminating in a 1.5 point dropoff in 2014.

Perhaps general managers recognized that evenly sharing the ball was not quite working. Instead teams should focus on upgrading from an egalitarian lineup by acquiring additional talent or by developing players into stars. This is reminiscent of today’s Nets, who build a strong culture and organization before adding players that could carry usage rates north of 27%. Miami did the same thing before it added Jimmy Butler, and the Clippers did to draw Paul George and Kawhi to the West coast.

Why not go after two-star lineups?

Two-star lineups consistently perform above the league average, why chase that? It comes down to this: a team can build the other four lineup types, a team cannot find two players that can each carry a 27% usage rate. Take a look at the six most-used two-star lineups in 2018 and 2019:

2018 CLE (+10.2)	2018 MIL (+4.3)	2018 WAS (-0.1)	2019 GSW (+17.9)	2019 OKC (-0.3)	2019 OKC (-2.1)
Kevin Love 31% LeBron James 29% Jae Crowder 17% JR Smith 12% Jose Calderon 11%	Giannis Antetokounmpo 31% Eric Bledsoe 25% Khris Middleton 21% John Henson 14% Tony Snell 9%	John Wall 31% Bradley Beal 27% Otto Porter Jr.  16% Marcin Gortat 14% Kelly Oubre Jr.  13%	Stephen Curry 34% Kevin Durant 29% Klay Thompson 15% Draymond Green 12% Andre Iguodala 10%	Russell Westbrook 28% Paul George 28% Steven Adams 18% Jerami Grant 15% Terrance Ferguson 10%	Russell Westbrook 29% Paul George 28% Steven Adams 16% Dennis Schroder 14% Jerami Grant 13%

These lineups seem to result from having two superstar talents rather than innovative front-office planning. Of the two “stars” in each lineup above, only Eric Bledsoe fails to carry the superstar label, and he has a usage rate on the low end for two-star lineups. Every other star among these lineups is on a max contract. I am sure that teams want to emulate these lineups. Just tell them how to draft, trade for, and sign two max players, and then we’ll see more of them.

Conclusion/Actionable insight

What does this mean for teams and coaches? Look for new inefficiencies and try to get ahead of trends. As teams move away from egalitarian, even though SwS rises in popularity, more quality starters are likely available that can bolster a team’s roster, like the 76ers moving on from JJ Redick and Boston letting Marcus Morris head to San Antonio. Additionally, as big three’s become more common, try to find players that can handle a bigger offensive load before other teams do, we may have seen it this offseason with the Jerian Grant and Christian Wood signings.

League lineups are changing. I do not have all of the answers as to why. An increase in talent, player mobility, and front office decisions could all have an impact on the changing offensive composition of lineups. I hope to dig into more details to uncover some interesting tidbits and competitive advantages buried within lineup data.