NBA Trends, Part III: The Rise of Skilled Size

Playoff lessons, counters to pressure, and the evolution of offense

Photo by Justin Casterline / Getty Images

This is the third part in the NBA Trends series, where I focus on playoff storylines and bigger-picture league trends. Part I was about the rise of speed, aggressiveness and athleticism, especially on the defensive end. Part II looked at the return of offensive rebounding as a weapon.

I get it. Once the season wraps, most fans want to dive into team needs, roster questions and especially possible upgrades through trades or free agency. And we’ll get there. But I’ve always preferred a structured, top-down approach. Before we get to concrete names, I think it’s important to understand the context — the trends shaping the league and influencing how teams are built. That’s what this series is about.

Reflecting on Part I got me thinking. If defenses are getting faster, longer, more aggressive and athletic, what’s the best way to counter? I went back to the data, looked for key themes from the playoffs, and talked to a few friends who follow the league closely and whose opinions I really respect. What follows in Part III is a mix of what I found and how I see it—but as always, I’d love to hear your thoughts too.

As always, I will add Lakers and Mavericks context by examining where they stand in all of this and how these trends could influence their team-building decisions. For this series, I have parsed the last 20 years of game logs, covering more than 50,000 regular season and playoff records, including box score, advanced, and four factor data. I also went through the last 12 seasons of available tracking data.

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Today’s highlights:

1. Fight speed with speed 📈

2. Drives replacing the simple and slow entry passes 📈

3. Fight length with size, Sam Presti's blueprint

4. Decision making moving up 📈

5. Adapting or falling behind? Are the Lakers and Mavericks built for it?

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1-Fight speed with speed 📈

In Part I, I wrote about the new era of speed, aggressiveness and athleticism. It was mostly in a defensive context, watching teams like OKC, Indiana and Minnesota pressure the ball and fly all over the court, disrupting with their length and/or speed.

One of the counters to beat aggressive half-court defenses that make it so difficult to score is to not get there in the first place. The rise of pace was another trend I wrote about, and now the two fastest teams in the playoffs (second and third to be exact, since Memphis was first) will clash in the Finals. Indiana is killing teams in transition and early offense, pushing the ball at every opportunity, while pressing full court on the other end. OKC’s historically stifling defense is forcing turnovers, which unlocks their transition game.

These playoffs are a win for pace, for early offense attacks, for deliberate and fast ball movement and passing. The physicality that’s allowed, along with the rise of zone defenses, has made set defenses very difficult to beat. Forcing switches and relying on stagnant isolation play doesn’t work as well anymore. The best way to attack is before the defense gets set.

Ball movement and passing is another way to beat speed. I remember one of the coaches here always saying, “the ball is faster than the fastest player.” Teams that swing the ball fast, from side to side, and have a high assist ratio—like Indiana, Denver, Cleveland and OKC—have been among the best offenses this season, both in the regular season and the playoffs.

2–Drives replacing the simple and slow entry passes 📈

Now, if we look at passing in more detail, there are two interesting trends. One I already mentioned: overall assist rate (AST%) is going up. But at the same time, the total number of passes per 100 possessions in an NBA game is actually going down.

However, if we look more closely at the Second Spectrum passing tracking data, we see that slower, lower-tempo passes such as post entries, elbow entries or simple perimeter passes are in decline. On the other hand, outlet passes, skip-aheads, handoffs and kickouts, the ones that create tempo, have stayed at similar levels or even increased.

If you listen to NBA coaches talk, you’ll often hear about paint touches as one of the most important metrics they track on offense, and how possessions with a paint touch are usually much more efficient. In today’s pace-and-space era, the way to get the ball into the paint and force the defense to shift isn’t by throwing it into the post. It’s by attacking off the dribble—either with a drive in early offense or out of a quick handoff in the flow of the offense.

The ability to drive the ball and get into the paint has become a premium skill in the modern NBA, with players like Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Tyrese Haliburton, Jalen Brunson, Donovan Mitchell, Anthony Edwards, Luka Dončić, Cade Cunningham and T.J. McConnell leading the charge.

3–Fight length with size, Sam Presti's blueprint

Another way to generate easier or extra looks on offense against physical and aggressive defenses is offensive rebounding, a rising trend I wrote about in Part II of this series.

However, more size inside and on the glass is not the only shift. What we’re seeing is an ongoing increase in size at the primary, secondary and even tertiary levels of creation and decision making (more on secondary and other levels in the next point).

OKC Thunder GM Sam Presti spoke about the combination of size and decision making after last year’s draft, and in my opinion, the rise and spread of skill across all positions in today’s positionless basketball is one of the key trends and themes of these playoffs.

The themes are pretty consistent with other nights that we've had draft-wise. High processing on offense, high skill level with regards to vision and passing...and that's combined with big players…People that can handle the ball, make decisions with the ball, are pretty big for their position [and] are interchangeable.

Guys that are big for their position that process the game well, those guys can play pretty much all over the floor in different combinations. So we value those skillsets probably more than trying to replicate a specific role or anything like that… I don’t think you can have enough people that can make decisions on the court, and when you combine that with size, it definitely increases the effectiveness or the probabilities of those decisions being good. — Sam Presti

A big decision maker—someone who can shoot and/or pass over long defenders—is not a new concept, but it continues to shape how offenses are built. Players like Gilgeous-Alexander, Haliburton, Dončić, Cunningham and Edwards are all examples of primary creators who stand 6-foot-5 or taller. These are the engines of their offenses, and their size allows them to see over the defense, absorb contact, and make plays under pressure.

Jalen Brunson and Donovan Mitchell are two smaller guards who had incredible success scoring the ball in the playoffs, compensating for their lack of size with strength and footwork in Brunson’s case, and strength and explosiveness in Mitchell’s. But we’ve also seen how long, physical defenses can make life much more difficult for shorter guards in the playoffs, affecting their passing even more than scoring. Players like Darius Garland, Trae Young, Ja Morant, and even Kyrie Irving against the Celtics in last year’s Finals struggled at times against that kind of length and pressure.

4–Decision making moving up 📈

Photo by Matthew Stockman / Getty Images

Presti’s 2024 draft comments were primarily about his 12th pick, Nikola Topić—a tall, 6-foot-6 ball-handler and yet another scary reminder of how stacked the Thunder are for the future. But he also emphasized something broader: the goal is to have as many long decision makers on the court as possible.

The rise of skill across all positions has been on full display in the last two playoffs. The Celtics’ model featured two wings, Tatum and Brown, surrounded by two do-it-all bigger guards in Jrue Holiday and Derrick White, along with two skilled bigs in Al Horford and Kristaps Porzingis. This year’s finalists feature wings playing primarily at the four, Pascal Siakam and Jalen Williams, who can act as secondary drivers and consistently put pressure on the paint. Julius Randle and Karl-Anthony Towns are two more examples of bigs on Conference Finals teams who filled similar roles by attacking off the bounce and forcing the defense to shift.

But the best teams don’t just feature one or two players who can drive and score. They build well-balanced lineups where multiple players can at minimum attack closeouts—by shooting, driving, or passing—and at best, do some combination of all three. Last year, the Thunder struggled against Dallas, but they’ve since upgraded the roster by adding a defensive difference-maker in Alex Caruso and a big who can pass, make the floater on the short roll, and make good decisions in Isaiah Hartenstein.

Chet Holmgren is another example of the new era of skilled, versatile centers and big forwards, in a league that’s now full of them. LeBron James, Siakam, Randle, Aaron Gordon, Draymond Green, Victor Wembanyama, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Zion Williamson, Evan Mobley, Jaren Jackson Jr., Paolo Banchero, Franz Wagner, Jalen Johnson, OG Anunoby, Obi Toppin and P.J. Washington all have unique skill sets and the ability to drive the ball while primarily playing the four.

Photo by David Berding / Getty Images

Meanwhile, bigs like Nikola Jokić, Joel Embiid, Alperen Sengun, Anthony Davis, Bam Adebayo, Naz Reid, Hartenstein, Towns and Myles Turner are examples of centers who can consistently do at least two of the following: drive, punish a mismatch in the post, shoot or pass. With more space on the floor, bigs are increasingly moving higher up and taking on roles as decision makers and passers—whether it’s at the elbows, or as early offense hubs, and facilitators in delay and split actions.

The chart below, showing the development of median assist rate by position over the years, highlights the shift from a centralized, point guard–heavy model of decision making to a more decentralized approach, where every player on the floor needs the skill set to at least keep the advantage alive.

5-Adapting or falling behind? Are the Lakers and Mavericks built for it?

The Mavericks reached the NBA Finals last season, built around defense and two dynamic creators and decision makers in Dončić and Irving. However, a great Celtics team—skilled across the board—exposed the limitations of the Mavericks’ less dimensional role players.

That team is now history, and the “new” Mavericks raise some interesting questions. When, and if, can Irving return and be the primary creator for a title contender, despite concerns about his size and age? However, a healthy Davis (another question mark) and especially Cooper Flagg—who looks like a prototype for the modern tall, athletic decision maker—could make Dallas one of the more well-balanced teams built for today’s era of length and speed. Naji Marshall, who took an incredible leap this season as a paint attack menace, along with P.J. Washington and the rest of the improved depth, makes the Mavericks’ offseason even more fascinating.

If the Mavericks’ short-term (or if you want a Nico Harrison’s win-now) challenge is whether they have the guy who can be the best player in a series or on a title team, then the Lakers face a nearly opposite question. The Lakers have the big, primary creator role filled with Dončić, and James—even at 40—still seems capable of being another decision maker with size and strength. But beyond that, there’s little infrastructure in place when it comes to length, athleticism, speed and skill. The Lakers ranked near the bottom in playoff pace (third slowest) and were dead last in paint pressure, measured by the percentage of possessions with a paint touch. Outside of James, they lacked any versatility needed at the big positions.

How the Lakers recalibrate around Dončić, and how the Mavericks do the same around Flagg, will be something to watch. Not just this season, but in the years ahead. The NBA is a copycat league, and it will be fascinating to see if, or how, both teams adapt to the trends explored in this series—and to the ones Sam Presti and the Thunder, and to a lesser extent the Pacers, have not only identified but helped shape across the league.