NBA Study: How to know if you have a Championship caliber lineup

Key Highlights:

• In the playoffs, depth increases your floor. But to unlock that championship ceiling, you need your own version of the “Death Lineup.”
• 18 of the last 20 NBA Champions have had a regular season lineup featuring most/all of their best players, that has played at least 300 non-garbage time possessions together, and posted a point differential of at least +9 per 100 possessions.
• As it stands, eight legitimate title contenders field a lineup that meets this criteria.

With the NBA Trade Deadline behind us and All-Star Break on the horizon, the league is gearing up for the stretch run of the regular season.

From here on out, a big part of the discourse will be centered on the playoffs – particularly focusing on who is a contender and who is just a pretender.

And while we ultimately won’t know the definitive answers to these questions until the postseason plays out, we can use history to inform our opinion on the future. So, for this edition of NBA Study, we looked at the lineup data of past champions to see which teams today have lineups that look similar to the champions of the past.

Why Are We Doing This?

As we said, we are looking at the past to help predict the future. But why lineup data specifically?

In the playoffs, depth is important. Having a deep bench that is rich in players with different skill sets is useful for navigating the various types of teams you are bound to face during a postseason run.

However, arguably even more important than depth is the velocity on a team’s fastball. How strong is your best five-man lineup? Depth can increase your team’s floor. But what ultimately gives you that championship ceiling is fielding a five-man unit that can do battle with any foe.

Last season’s NBA Champion, the Denver Nuggets, only had eight guys in their playoff rotation. But they went 16-4 en route to their first-ever NBA title because they had their own version of the Death Lineup.

According to Cleaning the Glass, during the regular season, the lineup of Jamal Murray, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Michael Porter Jr., Aaron Gordon, and Nikola Jokic played 1,469 possessions together and posted a +12.7 point differential per 100 possessions in that time.

(Sidebar: For those wondering, if a team played at a +12.7 point differential for the entire season, they would win 71 games in an 82-game season.)

What We Will Be Using

We kind of alluded to this with the way we cited the numbers about the Nuggets’ lineup. But for this study, we will be using Cleaning the Glass’ lineup data. The reason for this is that they filter out garbage time possessions (to see how they define “garbage time,” click the hyperlink here). Using this database helps us eliminate some of the noise that is inherent of small sample sizes like this.

The downside to this approach is that their database only extends back to 2003-04. So, we can only evaluate the last 20 NBA Champions.

What We Found

Of the 20 NBA Champions we looked at, 18 had a five-man lineup that featured most/all of their best players, played at least 300 non-garbage time possessions together, and posted a point differential of at least +9 per 100 during that time. You can see an Excel sheet with all those lineups by clicking on this hyperlink here.

The only two teams that didn’t meet these parameters were the 2017-18 Golden State Warriors and the 2021-22 version of the organization. The 2017-18 Warriors had a lineup of Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Andre Iguodala, Kevin Durant, and Draymond Green (aka the “Hamptons Five”) that posted a point differential of +10.5 per 100. But they just did it in 275 non-garbage time possessions. So, they barely missed our cutoff.

Meanwhile, the 2021-22 Warriors dealt with a ton of injuries. Curry missed 18 games, Green missed 36, and Thompson missed 50. Therefore, they never had a chance to get all their best players together for an extended stretch of time until the postseason.

The other big thing to note here is that both of these teams had already won titles with their core guys. They had already proven that their best lineup was good enough to run the gauntlet.

Who Fits This Criteria Right Now?

To summarize, the team needs to have a lineup with most of their best guys that have played at least 300 non-garbage time possessions together and have posted a point differential of at least +9 per 100. Here are all the lineups that currently meet that criteria:

2023-24 Best NBA Lineups*

*Data Provided by Cleaning the Glass

What Does This Mean?

In total, we have 12 lineups (across 11 different teams) that meet the requirements we’ve outlined above. However, the Indiana Pacers’ lineup can be thrown out as Buddy Hield is no longer with the team. And while the Chicago Bulls’ best five-man lineup is impressive on paper, they are still 26-28 with the 22nd overall point differential (per Cleaning the Glass). So, we can safely throw them out of the title contention conversation, too.

Unfortunately, we’ll also have to do the same for the Philadelphia 76ers, who will be without Joel Embiid for the foreseeable future. The good news there is that if he comes back and returns to full strength, the 76ers have arguably the best five-man lineup in basketball.

The other eight teams with “championship-caliber lineups” are all teams that have been mentioned as title contenders at one point or another this season. Their presence on this list makes sense. What’s really interesting, though, is the teams who are not on this list.

The Oklahoma City Thunder, New Orleans Pelicans, Sacramento Kings, Dallas Mavericks, Los Angeles Lakers, Miami Heat, and Warriors are all teams with deep playoff run aspirations. But none of them currently boast a “championship-caliber lineup.”

Now, there are still two months left in the regular season and plenty of time for these teams to put together a lineup that fulfills the criteria we’ve carved out. For instance, the Warriors’ five-man lineup of Curry, Thompson, Andrew Wiggins, Jonathan Kuminga, and Green has a point differential of +15.9 per 100 in 251 non-garbage time possessions. If they keep that current pace up, they will have a lineup that meets the championship-caliber threshold.

But as of right now, there are only eight teams with a fastball hot enough to win it all.

If you enjoyed this edition of NBA Study, be sure to check out our other articles like this one. For instance, here is our study examining the return of the old-school big man.