Small lineups exist at every high level of basketball, but not because they are small. The hoops world has accepted this, that what’s termed as ‘small-ball’ is slightly misleading, if not a misnomer. It’s really ‘skill-ball,’ a designation that I cannot take credit for, a term that’s been thrown around for a while now when smart analysts break down what small-ball really means. I don’t exactly know who to credit.
The smallness of the players isn’t what matters in these lineups, when effective, but their skill, like wing-sized players bringing more 3-point shooting than most bigs, or guard-sized players bringing more ball-handling than more wings. A bunch of defenders who, because of their quicker foot-speed, can all defend on the perimeter. That gets you to the switch-heavy lineups we often associate with small-ball.
Yet, none of these attributes are mutually exclusive with size. They just don’t traditionally come in big packages. Now, the pendulum has shifted back to “well, size is preferable given you still meet these skill requirements,” because being big will never hurt you, now that we understand ‘big’ =/= ‘slow’ and ‘unskilled.’ I’m speaking pretty generally here, but we’re just re-discovering old truths. It’s good to be bigger than your opponent on a basketball court, just like it was in 2nd grade. And, just like then, you still have to be able to do something else besides be big; it’s the “something else” that has changed into a “something else” we don’t view as being compatible with size.
Size-advantages, then, become conditional on skill. Though a size-advantage will often manifest in the traditional sense all basketball fans recognize, like a bigger player pushing a smaller player out of the way for an offensive put-back, the line between size-advantages and skill-advantages is as blurry as ever. Think about the Rudy Gobert Discourse — please, just a second — back in 2021, when the Los Angeles Clippers played five guards and wings, spaced the arc, and torched his Utah Jazz in the playoffs.
Many correctly identified the real individual issue with Gobert, beyond the team-wide lack of perimeter defense; he couldn’t take advantage on the other end. The Clippers comfortably put guards on him, and Gobert wasn’t able to go down to the block and either post them up, work them in the dunker spot, or even grab enough o-boards to make them pay. A lack of skill begs the question: Did the Jazz really have a size-advantage, then, or just a big guy out there?
The New York Liberty are eighth out of 12 WNBA teams in offensive rebounding. The are sixth in blocked shots. The traditional indicators for a team that dominates with size aren’t fully there in their statistical profile, though they do rank second in defensive-rebound rate. And yet, the team boasting MVPs and All-Stars galore wins with skill that is often inextricable from their size, over and over.
The Liberty start Breanna Stewart (6’4″) and Jonquel Jones (6’6″) in the front-court, average wingspan of about seven-feet, and that alone makes them a chore to score on in the paint. No matter what defensive coverage they’re in, typically one of them is ready to get active at the basket. You can forget about it when both are around:
Jones has the first rotation, and it’s pretty simple before her size acts as a total shot-deterrent, but Stewie’s awareness ground-coverage to get back in the play is what really stands out. She’s moving like a small guard, but ultimately contests like a big, and you can see where I’m going with this, though two contests at the rim is not quite an example of a non-traditional size advantage.
How about this play, then, where New York forces a shot-clock violation from the Indiana Fever?
Stewie makes an impromptu switch onto a driver before doubling the post, and Indiana can never reverse the ball to the weak-side of the floor. Why? Mostly because Betnijah Laney-Hamilton, a six-footer with a plus-wingspan playing the ‘2’, comes to engulf Indiana’s 5’8″ shooting guard Kelsey Mitchell before Jonquel Jones swallows Aliyah Boston up on the baseline.
New York locks up the left side of the floor on that possession, which I’ll say is about 750 square feet here (30 x 25, half the baseline). The activity and perimeter defense from all involved is an execution of small-ball principles, but in practice, they win with size the same way a post player might seal a mismatch into oblivion: taking an area of the court and overwhelming you within it.
The Liberty, thanks to the active hands and feet of Stewie and Jones, feel just as big 30 feet from the basket as they do right under it. Their aggressive switching and trapping blows up opposing offenses, and Breanna Stewart in particular is a menace here:
Poor Caitlin Clark. On the first play, she doesn’t get rid of it quick enough, and Stewie takes her lunch-money (New York trapping near the sideline is a principle this season), and on the second play, she gets it out of her hands early, only for the two-time MVP to react and deflect it, leading to a shot-clock violation. Obviously, Stewart’s instincts and hand-eye coordination here are special, but she just towers over and envelops guards on the perimeter, even six-footers like Clark.
It’s not that Stewart is big and can guard and the perimeter, it’s that she’s big and it helps her guard on the perimeter.
This is the principle that carries New York’s elite offense. You’re about to watch a play where, 1) Betnijah Laney-Hamilton gets Kelsey Mitchell on a guard-to-guard switch and backs her down causing Indiana’s D to collapse. 2) She then swings the ball, and the Liberty end up with a wide open three for Stewart, mostly because Aliyah Boston’s perimeter rotations are less than ideal, but her matchup, Jonquel Jones, is shooting 42% from three this season, so she really has no choice:
Is that a size-advantage leading to a skill-advantage? Two size-advantages stacked on top of one another? Two skill-advantages?
Head Coach Sandy Brondello frequents Laney-Hamilton as a screener/sealer type who often posts up, especially as many defenses switch guard-to-guard actions willy-nilly. Do it, and you end up with your smallest player guarding a six-footer built like one big muscle.
But perhaps the biggest key to New York’s offensive structure this season has been Jones on the perimeter. At 6’6″, she frequently acts as a fulcrum at the top of the key, and it is just incredible to watch. She’s a career 38% 3-point shooter on three attempts per game, volume and efficiency higher since she arrived in New York last year, and my people, it gets scary when teams try to defend her pick-and-pops straight up:
Opposing centers not only don’t get to protect the rim, then, but are put in rotation. Often, defenses will pre-rotate to save their bigs from getting exposed, buy the problem here is that Jones is a quick, decisive passer from the arc:
This is what happens when you roster as much top-end talent as you can imagine, as the Liberty do. But this seems like more of a skill-advantage; the only argument being that opposing bigs pulled away from the basket opens up the paint for New York’s other players to drive and score. That doesn’t necessarily indicate a lack of size, but rather a reality of well-executed 5-out spacing.
But Jones is still the center who won MVP in Connecticut with a heavy post-up load, who shoots 10% better than league-average from two in down years, but 69.5% (I’m serious) this season, in a spaced-out Liberty offense while not dealing with a lower-leg injury, as she was last season.
While the Liberty do like to maintain 5-out spacing, they’re not rigid enough to miss laughing at an idea like putting smaller, quicker defenders on her to switch things up, I guess because you gotta try something, right? Worse comes to worse, you can still double, as the Chicago Sky and Los Angeles Sparks did in their matchups this season, when their 6’7″ centers in Kamilla Cardoso and Li Yueru, respectively, were injured or on the bench. Reader, if you click to play any one of these clips, make sure it’s this one:
It’s a traditional size-advantage won by posting up that leads to skill that makes you jump out of your seat, though the fact that Jones has the skill to finish 1-on-1 post-ups is a valid argument for another day. Still, what makes Jones one of the best, most unique players hooping today is, reductively, the combination of size and skill, and that’s the same thing that makes the New York Liberty tick.
Between Alyssa Thomas, DeWanna Bonner, and Brionna Jones, the Connecticut Sun have a long, big front-court that is physically imposing in a more traditional sense. They’re third in the league in rebounding, both offensive and defensive. They’re 11th in 3-point attempts per game and last in pace. Their spacing is not always ideal, but they brutalize their way past those problems on most nights anyway, and entered Wednesday’s game vs. the Liberty their equal, at 17-4. A quick look at the stats would suggest a finesse-vs-power matchup, and in the first half of the game, Bri Jones gave Jonquel legitimate problems down low, sealing and posting and making layups rarely made against Jonquel.
But these three straight possessions illustrate that all size isn’t equal.
- Stewie helps off a non-shooter to take away the roll on a pick-and-roll, as Connecticut’s lack of outside shooting in their front-court lets New York stack the paint.
- Jonquel Jones beating Bri Jones for a contested board, sprints the floor, seals her off, and makes a layup off a great entry pass.
- CT runs their infamous inverted-PnR action for Alyssa Thomas, but now it’s Bri Jones’ lack of outside shooting that allows Jonquel to help in that paint. Harmless 20-footer.
You feel New York’s physicality more in those three clips, even though Connecticut isn’t physically overmatched. Jonquel Jones rebounding, running the floor, and sealing off her matchup is traditional big stuff, and she excels at that too, but there’s no help in the paint given the shooters around her on the floor. Connecticut cannot say the same, and thus, the Liberty bigs are taking up the paint, contesting shots, and grabbing boards.
Though much of that sequence is about off-ball shooting and spacing, that’s just one factor in how New York’s immense skill and smart coaching allows them to play to their size. Sandy Brondello’s team is bigger than you in the paint when they’re helping off non-shooters, sure, but they’re bigger than you on the perimeter too. They shrink you.
The New York Liberty are modern giants, with a size-advantage indistinguishable from their skill. They use the threat of paint-domination to get up the most 3-pointers in the league, and despite falling from 1st in 3-point percentage to fifth this season, they still are within decimal points of having the W’s highest offensive rating, thanks to shooting over 54% from two. Their size isn’t just for show.
But then again, neither is their skill.
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