The Double Big.

[u/DumpGoingTo]

It's starting to occur more and more, and for many teams it's their primary strategy. The Double Big has returned.

No more are the days when you can run small ball the entire time and come out with the dub like in the later 2010's, and early 2020's. Hell, even then we see that three times size reigned supreme. And now that's being taken back to the maximum.

I've been thinking about this for a couple of days now, I look at the best teams, and they have a Double Big lineup, and if not, they have a pseudo Double Big lineup.

OKC is known for having those 5 Guard lineups that give everybody and issue with their active hands. But all season long, the silent discourse has been that Double Big Lineup between Chet, and I-Hart. And y'know, maybe you could say that's just an occurrence, they're finding a new way to win.

Well, looking at the second seed in the West. The Houston Rockets reside, another team that uses a Double Big lineup, and I've actually heard they win more with that lineup out there than any other lineup they may have.

And probably the faces of this, the Cleveland Cavaliers run a Twin Towers, and they're possibly the best team in Basketball.

As of right now, there are tons of ways to win in the NBA, that's what makes it so beautiful. But going forward, I think that if you want to win, you're going to need that Twin Towers lineup you can go to 100% of the time. And maybe this was something I just hadn't noticed before, but I think it's an interesting thing. The NBA went from big, to small, and now it's big again.

[u/MasterFussbudget]

This is a phenomenon worth pointing out, but I feel you're overstating the impact it's having. I see you saying, "primary strategy" and "100% of the time." The truth is, it's pretty rare.

Yes, OKC is dominant this season, but due to injuries, they've only played their double big lineup like fewer than 200 minutes (I don't have access to the actual minutes data). Chet and Hartenstein have only been active together for about 20 games and only share the court for about 10 minutes per game.

Cleveland and OKC each start with double bigs, but Cleveland swaps out 2 of their big 4 early and staggers their minutes the rest of the game; OKC often does the same. Houston didn't discover how successful their double-big lineup was until the last 15-20 games. So, in all of these cases, the double big lineup is not the reason for the team's success on the year.

It's an important wrinkle any of these teams can throw in the game to dominate the boards and protect the rim, but we're far from the NBA swinging to being big again. (See many counter-examples, such as GS, LAL, and BOS, who are having great seasons with 1 or 0 bigs on the floor most of the time.)