How the West Is Built
A data-driven look at player archetypes for the top 10 Western Conference contenders including the Lakers and Mavericks
With no games, less drama, and no Shams bombs flying across the timeline, the NBA offseason is the perfect time to have fun with deeper breakdowns and data-driven analysis.
After a recent three-part deep dive into league-wide trends (Part I., Part II., Part III.), a Cooper Flagg pre-draft breakdown, a look back at how to build a defense around Luka Dončić, and a ranking of the topp bigs in the West, it’s time to repeat an exercise I did a couple of seasons ago: use data to build player clusters, define key archetypes, and see how the top teams in the West stack up.
A lot has changed. The Lakers (see my Deandre Ayton, Jake LaRavia, and Marcus Smart deep-dives), Nuggets, Rockets, and Clippers all made major moves to reshape their cores. The Mavericks, following the Dončić-for-Davis trade and the drafting of Cooper Flagg, are heading in an entirely new direction. The Warriors’ next steps are still pending. And the Thunder and Spurs? Two young teams nobody wants to face for the foreseeable future.
With all that in mind, this is a deep-dive into how the top teams in the West are built—and how they’ve changed compared to last season.
Breakdown highlights
Methodology, clusters, and how this works
Five offensive archetypes
Overview of player archetypes for the top teams in the West
How the West’s top 10 are built (and what changed in the offseason):
Lakers, Mavericks, Thunder, Rockets, Nuggets, Timberwolves, Clippers, Warriors, Grizzlies, Spurs
1–Methodology, clusters, and how this works
This exercise is all about offense. I focused only on offensive roles and archetypes—not because defense doesn’t matter (it obviously does), but because offensive roles are much easier to define and cluster using available data. Defensive archetypes are more difficult to build as they are much more context-dependent. That may be its own project down the line.
To group players, I used a K-means clustering model. I tested a bunch of variables—usage, shot distribution and profile, scoring rates, free-throw frequency—but in the end, I went with a simple three-metric input: usage rate, unassisted field goal share, and assists per minute. Sometimes simpler models work better as they are easier to interpret.
I pulled data from last season and applied basic filters to get a meaningful sample: players with at least 500 minutes played, at least 15 minutes per game, and at least 10 games. That gave me 332 players, spread across five offensive archetype clusters.
Finally for the purposes of this deep-dive, I zoomed in only on the top 10 teams in the West.
2–Five offensive archetypes
Below are the five offensive clusters I ended up with after running the model. If you're curious about how I decided on five (and how to think about the right number of clusters in general), feel free to reach out via Chat or direct message—always happy to talk methodology. For now, here’s a quick breakdown of the five archetypes that emerged from the data.
It’s also important to note that this is a classification of roles, not a ranking or evaluation of how good a player is at that role. For example, Luka Dončić, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Josh Giddey, and D'Angelo Russell all fell into the “primary creator” cluster—but the difference in their production and effectiveness is obvious and not the point of this classification. I did, however, dig into that nuance in the team-by-team overview at the end of this article.
3-Overview of player archetypes for the top teams in the West
Below are the results of the player classification for the top ten teams in the Western Conference. Some players were omitted because they didn’t meet the minimum thresholds of 500 minutes played, 15 minutes per game, and at least 10 games. I’ll still touch on their roles and potential fit in the team-by-team overview later in the article. That includes rookies like Cooper Flagg, whose development into one of these archetypes will be one of the key stories to watch next season. And as with any clustering exercise, a few players sat right on the margins between groups.
But I think the overview provides an interesting look at how the teams are built and what the strengths and potential gaps are in their offensive firepower.
4-How the West’s top 10 are built (and what changed in the offseason)
Los Angeles Lakers
Primary creators: Luka Dončić, LeBron James
Primary scorers: Austin Reaves
Secondary playmakers: Marcus Smart
Secondary scorers: Deandre Ayton
Low usage role players: Jake LaRavia, Rui Hachimura, Gabe Vincent, Jarred Vanderbilt, Jaxson Hayes
Offseason changes and 2025–26 outlook: I included both the 2024–25 Lakers playoff roster and the current 2025–26 version in this overview because the team’s offseason changes feel significant. The obvious issue last postseason was a lack of size, but an equally important—and less discussed—flaw was the lack of skill around their three main stars. Every role player who logged meaningful playoff minutes landed in the low-usage role player archetype, mostly specialists limited to catch-and-shoot or rim-rolling duties. That kind of one-dimensionality is increasingly out of step with where the league is going. Today’s contenders are leaning into a “generalist” model—role players who can check more than one of the following boxes: shoot, pass, dribble, drive, or create something off the bounce. Deandre Ayton is a much more skilled and versatile scorer than a one-dimensional lob threat like Jaxson Hayes. And Marcus Smart adds a level of toughness and secondary playmaking that Gabe Vincent and Jordan Goodwin simply couldn’t provide in the playoffs. In my player deep-dives, I described both Smart and the third offseason addition, Jake LaRavia, as connectors. And while LaRavia technically fell into the low-usage role player cluster, a closer look at some of the advanced stats from that deep-dive—and from this classification—shows he has a more diverse offensive game than players like Dorian Finney-Smith, Gabe Vincent or Rui Hachimura.
Both Ayton and Smart come with big question marks and plenty to prove next season, including how their more well-rounded offensive games will fit into a Lakers ecosystem built around three ball-dominant stars. But that challenge isn’t just on them. J.J. Redick, along with Dončić, James, and Reaves, will need to find a better balance—ideally moving toward a more egalitarian offense that doesn’t box newcomers into narrow specialist roles.
