To put that in context: The league-leading Lakers defense allows 106.5 per 100. The Murray-Mills-Gay-Vassell-Poeltl lineup has vise-gripped opponents to the tune of 80 points per 100 possessions in its limited run. This year’s model, though, has been whooping ass on the defensive end-before four positive COVID tests put the whole team on ice for a week, anyway.
You might recall him turning to a Mills–Marco Belinelli–Davis Bertans–Bryn Forbes unit a couple of years back to shake the Spurs out of the starters’ midrange morass with an infusion of ball movement and 3-point bombing. We’ve seen Gregg Popovich use his bench as a change of pace to lift San Antonio out of holes before. (As I mentioned in my All-Star reserves column, those ugly splits hang largely on Aldridge, whose declining speed and quickness have made him a glaring defensive minus.) (Having that Ginobili guy around didn’t hurt.) Nor is it breaking news that San Antonio’s recent starting fives built around veterans DeMar DeRozan and LaMarcus Aldridge have struggled: Lineups featuring that tandem were outscored in 2019-20, and have been rinsed by nearly 10 points per 100 non-garbage-time possessions this season. That’s been one of their calling cards since before Vassell was born: San Antonio has finished in the top 10 in bench net rating every season since 1998-99, with 16 top-five finishes and seven seasons leading the league. To be fair, it’s not exactly shocking that the Spurs have a good bench. And sometimes it’s one that makes you do a double take, refresh the page a couple of times, and make sure you really read that right. Sometimes it’s a five-man lineup that suggests a team is starting to find its identity, like the Kings’ small-ball lineup that runs De’Aaron Fox, Buddy Hield, and rookie Tyrese Haliburton alongside Harrison Barnes and Richaun Holmes. Sometimes it’s a unit propped up by the heroics of a singular superstar, like an injury-wrecked Blazers lineup that rests on the shoulders of Damian Lillard. This season, for example, the lineups that have outscored opponents by the largest number of points are the preferred starting fives of the 76ers, Jazz, Clippers, and Lakers-the teams with the four best records in the NBA. These carefully curated five-man units represent the cream of the league’s crop-all marquee names and central-casting role players anchoring teams with a real shot of hoisting the Larry O’Brien Trophy. The list of the NBA’s best lineups often maps fairly neatly to the top of the standings.