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Big Three not all it's cracked up to be?
By John Hollinger
ESPN.com
Three stars, right? That's the formula for a championship, supposedly.
Never mind that teams have won titles in all sorts of ways, from Dallas' lone-star approach with several not-quite-star-caliber players surrounding Dirk Nowitzki, to the Kobe-Shaq tandem that won three straight rings earlier in the decade, to the Pistons' essentially starless champions in 2004. Doesn't matter: "Three stars" still resonates in the minds of teams and fans alike as the surest path to the championship.
Tonight we get to see the pitfalls of that approach, because three of the four teams playing on ESPN are built on the three-stars model, and only one of them is having much success with it.
Two of the culprits are well-known. The Knicks hoped a trio of Carmelo Anthony, Tyson Chandler and Amare Stoudemire would lead them to glory, but stand at a disappointing 11-15; they're only that good because a scrap heap pickup has gone unexpectedly, completely berserk over the past three games. And the Lakers, despite the holy hoops trinity of Kobe Bryant, Andrew Bynum and Pau Gasol, stand at 15-11 and are in danger of missing the playoffs entirely.
The third team has fared a little bit better, although nobody quite thinks of them as emulating the three-stars approach: Oklahoma City. The Thunder have the league's second-best record at 20-6, and while I'd argue that their record flatters them considering how fortunate they've been in close games, there's no question that this team is the favorite to win the Western Conference.
What's strange is that the Thunder have been arguably even more dependent on their Big Three than the Knicks or Lakers. OKC's is the only one of the three with a combined PER above 70, and the Thunder are the league's only team that get more than 65 percent of their points from just three players (65.97 percent, to be exact). Yes, even the Lakers (64.2 percent) pale beside the Thunder's dependence on three players for offense. Oklahoma City is also one of only two teams with three players averaging at least a point every two minutes; Miami is the other.
Wait, it gets better. OKC gets nearly the same proportion of its assists from the same three players, meaning that in the odd event the Thunder's Big Three don't score a point, they probably set it up. (Stat of the year: Russell Westbrook has 150 assists. Every Thunder player aside from Westbrook, James Harden and Kevin Durant has 142).
And it's not like the Thunder are sending out a stifling band of role-playing defenders in support of their star trio. Oklahoma City ranks behind half the league's teams in defensive efficiency … including both the Knicks and the Lakers. While it's true that Nick Collison and Thabo Sefolosha are among the best defenders at their position, Oklahoma City is also getting little from Kendrick Perkins, and its other role players aren't defensive stalwarts.
What should be apparent from all this is that the devil is in the details. For starters, the magnitude of the stars matters. Durant is one of the five best players in the league, Westbrook one of its top five point guards, and Harden is the game's top sixth man. You can win big with players like that as long as the supporting cast isn't terrible. New York has half as many wins because it's trying to do the same thing with Melo, Chandler and a diminished Stoudemire … a far less imposing star trio, even if the names on the marquee are more familiar.
Which, conversely, takes us to the Lakers. Their stars nearly match those of OKC shot-for-shot; Gasol and Bynum aren't as dynamic offensively but dominate the interior like no other frontcourt. Alas, L.A.'s production from its supporting cast can charitably be described as pitiful. Only one other Laker (Matt Barnes) has a PER above 11; of the 10 other Lakers to play at least 100 minutes, only two average as much as 10 points per 40 minutes. Their two most frequently utilized contributors, Metta World Peace and Derek Fisher, both are shooting 41 percent on 2s. Yuck.
Compared to that, the Thunder's supporting cast looks like a veritable juggernaut. All of their role players except Perkins average at or around 10 points per 40 minutes; forward Serge Ibaka has a PER above the league average and Collison is shooting 69 percent from the floor.
New York, meanwhile, has something of the worst of both worlds.* The Knicks don't have the stars of OKC or the Lakers, but their supporting cast is just as putrid as L.A.'s. Of their six most-frequently used players after the "Big Three," only Landry Fields and Josh Harrellson have double-digit PERs, and Harrellson is injured.
(* - All discussion of the Knicks presumes that Jeremy Lin will eventually resume his place among mere mortals. Alternatively, my PER Diem a week from now will compare his career to Oscar Robertson's.)
These differences are subtle, but they matter a lot in the big picture. Oklahoma City entered Thursday's games ranked third in offensive efficiency, while the Lakers were 13th and the Knicks just 22nd. All three are operating on the Big Three model, but only the Thunder have combined enough star power with competent enough role players to make it click.
And even in the Thunder's case, I'd argue they were hoping for a more even scoring distribution. Perkins was supposed to provide them some low-post offense, and they were looking to Eric Maynor as a source of bench points before his season-ending knee injury. Ibaka has also taken a step back as a scorer after averaging 14.6 points per 40 minutes and flashing a nice midrange game a year ago.
So maybe that Big Three model isn't all it's cracked up to be. It's going to be hard to shoot that notion down if Oklahoma City and Miami square off in the Finals with their top-heavy approaches, but not all paths to the title are paved with the holy trinity approach. Fans of each team can just look back to the franchise's last championship for proof -- Miami with a two-pronged Shaq-Wade attack in 2006, and the Thunder when they were still the Seattle Sonics and employed a superstar-less ensemble cast in 1979.
On to the Harbingers
Deng
• I'm outraged by the lack of outrage over Luol Deng making the All-Star team. Setting aside the fact that he arguably wasn't even the most qualified forward on his own team -- Carlos Boozer has gone gangbusters lately -- I'm more puzzled by the seeming double standard Eastern coaches applied to injuries. Somehow, Eastern coaches considered Rajon Rondo missing eight games a dramatically worse offense than Deng missing seven, even though Rondo has outplayed him by a fairly wide margin for a fourth straight season, and is arguably an even better defender.
Given the small samples this season, I don't blame coaches for going on history with their vote -- what they effectively did in putting Joe Johnson, Dirk Nowitzki and Deron Williams on the teams. But Deng's history was just the opposite -- there's nothing in his track record that suggests he's one of the 12 best players in the Eastern Conference, and he'd done nothing different this season.
Instead, this was one of the classic "rewarding winning" All-Star selections. Unfortunately, nearly all of these have looked completely ridiculous within two years. Deng is a great guy and an important cog in the Chicago machine, but this one will take its rightful place alongside Wally Szczerbiak, Otis Thorpe and Dale Davis when history looks back on it.
• I'm less troubled by some of the other selections. Joe Johnson hasn't played as well as Brandon Jennings this season but has more career value; I can understand the decision even if I don't agree with it. Marc Gasol is unquestionably the second-best Gasol this season, but if the coaches were that determined to avoid putting three Lakers on the team this was the least-bad mistake they could have made. Similarly, the coaches' willful blindness to Tyson Chandler made the selection of Roy Hibbert inevitable.
And finally, Tony Parker made the team over Paul Millsap even though I suspect that might have been an accident. As I noted on Twitter on Wednesday night, it was likely that Steve Nash and Parker would split the backup guard vote in such a way that both would get more votes than the final stragglers at forward, even if no individual coach had both players listed on his ballot.
Incidentally, the fact that we had so much trouble coming up with Eastern Conference All-Stars that Deng, Johnson and Hibbert all made the team should pretty much put to rest any notion of expanding the rosters for at least the next several decades.
• Here comes Boston. The Celtics might have lost to L.A. last night, but their defense bared its teeth once again by holding the Lakers to 88 points in an overtime game. After an ugly start, Boston has moved to second in the league in defensive efficiency, fueled in equal parts by a return to health of their best players and a spate of home games against terrible teams (L.A., obviously, is excepted from that comment).
While the Celtics are going to face some rougher sledding after playing 17 of their first 25 games at home, there are some encouraging signs that their rediscovered D will travel well. Rajon Rondo is back, the bench rotation is falling into place after being a shambles earlier in the season, and Kevin Garnett seems to have recovered some of his mobility after clearly laboring through the opening weeks of the season. None of this yet adds up to a contending team -- especially if the scorching-hot Paul Pierce will cool off at some point -- but it's a considerable upgrade on how they looked just three weeks ago.
Lin
• OK, Jeremy Lin. I'll bite. He's second in the NBA in PER at the moment, and if he keeps this up for another week or two his importance in the world will be rivaled only by that of Oprah Winfrey.
So here's what I'd be looking for if I'm a Knicks fan: whether he can keep the turnovers down and make enough jump shots. That, historically, has been what held him back, including in a 20-game D-League stint a year ago. Lin is 1-of-11 on 3s as a Knick, and as opponents scout him they're going to start going under every pick-and-roll and daring him to beat them from outside. Meanwhile, his turnovers may go up if he can't keep defenses honest, because he'll be driving into crowds much more often.
Alternatively, if he can make a few J's and keep making good decisions offensively, his recent burst of brilliance may have some staying power. Lin has shown a knack for rebounds and steals, gets to the line, and has the size and ball skills to man the point guard spot. He just has to prove he can keep doing it once the element of surprise is gone.
ESPN Insider John Hollinger
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2/10/2012 1:50 PM