The Oklahoma City Thunder’s three-guard lineup of Chris Paul, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is the most dominant trio in the NBA.
That three-man lineup has a net rating of 28.6, the best in the league.
Looking at clutch time stats alone — A score within five points with less than five minutes to go — all three guards are in the top seven net rating in the league, among athletes who have played at least 10 games and average three minutes in such moments.
Yet that group averages less than seven minutes per game together. With the five-man lineup that includes Danilo Gallinari and Steven Adams — the best five-man lineup in terms of net rating by a large margin — that falls to 4.3 minutes.
The Miami Heat’s trio of Jimmy Butler Bam Adebayo and Duncan Robinson and the Los Angeles Lakers’ group of LeBron James, Danny Green and Anthony Davis, both of which have net ratings above 10, average about 20 minutes per game on the court together.
Why doesn’t head coach Billy Donovan put his guard-heavy lineup on the floor more often?
“You have to look at whole 48 minutes,” Donovan said. “If you do do that quite a bit for really extended periods — and I’m not saying that I’m against this — but what you’re doing is you’re going to have points in time in a game where you’re not going to have two of those three of those guys on the floor at all times.”
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Behind those three guards, Oklahoma City doesn’t have any lead ball handlers. Outside that five-man lineup, nobody on the team averages more than 1.0 assist per game.
Playing Paul, Schroder and Gilgeous-Alexander together for more minutes would in turn break up the two-guard lineups and force two of them to be seated as guys like Lu Dort, Terrance Ferguson and Darius Bazley run the floor with one point guard and a center.
All three of those wings are fine contributors, but when a lineup is devoid of multiple of playmakers or 3-point shooters, that offense stalls, no matter how dynamic the guard is.
“I get what the numbers look like with those three guys … (but) you get to it earlier, you’re going to have different segments of time in the game where it’s going to be Chris or Dennis or Shai out there by themselves,” Donovan said. “And you’re going to have two of those three guys on bench.”
That’s something that has made the team special. When two of those guards can be on the court at all times, there are always multiple playmakers. Defense can’t key in on one specific player and ignore the others.
“I’m not opposed to doing it more, but you have to look into the pairings of who’s out there, and the playmaking ability of different players,” Donovan said.
“If you have one of them out there, does Steven or Gallo need to be out there with them to create another playmaker or ballhandler or somebody you can run the offense through? There’s a lot of things you’re looking at when you have either Shai or Dennis or Chris on floor by themselves.”
Donovan has limited Paul to 31.8 minutes per game this season and Schroder to 31.0.
But both have played more minutes in playoff games in the past.
Paul has averaged about 32 regular season minutes each of the last three years, but he saw relatively sizable jumps in the playoffs: 34.5 minutes per game in 2017-18 and 36.1 last year.
Schroder has not averaged more than 31.5 minutes per game in his career, but in the playoffs three years ago, he averaged more than 35 with the Atlanta Hawks.
Star players regularly get more playoff minutes than they do in the regular season, and while Donovan did not say this, it would be reasonable for Paul and Schroder to get a few extra minutes per game and get closer to Gilgeous-Alexander’s 35.1 minute average.
With that, more minutes for the three-man lineup would naturally arise, and it could be extended from the usual closing minutes of halves.
“We’ll get those things evaluated. We’re certainly very, very much aware, I am, of the numbers of what those guys have done together,” Donovan said. “We’d like that to continue, but we also understand too, it’s a 48-minute game, and we’ve gotta to look at the entirety of the game, too.”
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