if you force your opponent to react, he is at the mercy of your attack. that is, his reaction is determined by your action. any tweaks in your action will immediately have an effect on his reaction. with a properly executed action, the opponent is in your hands, any adjustment in your action will cause a predictable adjustment in his reaction. if properly executed, it is possible to foresee his movements based on how you manipulate your action. you basically have him on strings, like a puppet.

now, the catch is that it has to be executed properly. there is no room for dissent, lack of effort, and all this extra entropy that is a way of life for most teams. mda's phoenix teams, under steve nash, minimized active entropy and were able to successfully run through the league. each team will have some entropy in executing it's game plan, so some level is given. the key execute as close to perfect as possible, so that your own entropy doesn't exceed the opponent's.

so when you see small line ups, this is the reasoning behind it. it's just that we lack the quality to execute.

It might work a bit better if it wasn't the same small line up every night. I don't think there is any element of surprise to what D'Antoni does as his line ups are pretty consistent. If you scout the Knicks I think you could really burn them if you had talented bigs like most teams do. Look at what Chris Wilcox was able to do against the Knicks. I think if it was a really good idea to play small to force teams to adjust then more teams would do it.