Circling back to "NBA championships come down to perimeter defense"

How's my NBA space force theory holding up in year two?

Around this time a year ago, I proposed a “space force” theory equivalent for NBA basketball.

It was relatively simple, though counterintuitive, and my attempts to measure it went pretty poorly last year.

The idea was simply that modern basketball comes down to teams having long or otherwise athletic and highly effective defenders to guard the 2 and the 3. I think with a year of thought I’d reframe it as follows.

You want a terrific on-ball defender for smaller guards and one for bigger wings who are also effective off ball on close-outs and erasing space on the court. There are lots of different team constructions you’ll find across the league, but the teams that win tend to have terrific defenses. The path to consistently good defense is having the ability to match up against the other team’s point player, no matter his position and to have the ability to contest shots in rotation.

If you have one of each (someone who can guard perimeter smalls and someone who can guard perimeter bigs), you can always make life difficult for the other team’s main ball-handler and decision-maker (unless you’re facing Nikola Jokic) and you will generally be good at erasing space and recovering off-ball to shooters.

Let’s see how that idea is holding up in the 2025 playoffs and what it would suggest about the likeliest Finals participants and champion.

Measuring wing quality

Last year I tried to see if this theory would offer us a clear blueprint for what a winning team needed to look like in terms of size and measurable on the perimeter. It didn’t really hold up, but the broader theory laid out above did.

Boston won the title over Dallas and each team had a really good perimeter defender to put on an opponent’s top guard (Derrick Jones and Jrue Holiday) and another to use on a top wing (PJ Washington and Jaylen Brown or Jayson Tatum). Jrue Holiday wasn’t as big as previous examples suggested he needed to be but he’s unquestionably one of the better playoff defenders of the last decade, so while my proposed measurements didn’t hold up the principles of the theory did.

Because of this theory, I had a few suspicions heading into the 2025 postseason. I’ll lay them out in bullet form:

• The Cleveland Cavaliers would prove to be fraudulent when their backcourt tandem of Darius Garland and Donovan Mitchell was exploited on defense with very little help from the lack of wing depth on the roster. This aged like wine.

• The Warriors might have issues with finding enough perimeter defense in their small ball lineups that were dependent on Brandin Podziemski and Moses Moody in key roles while superior and bigger defenders Draymond Green and Jimmy Butler had to hold down the back end. I think this was a problem for GSW but a much smaller one than Steph Curry being injured and missing virtually the entire Minnesota series.

• Oklahoma City may have some issues finding a second perimeter defender after Lu Dort who could reliably check a bigger point forward. This has sort of been true but jury is still out because their biggest problem is that Jokic is a 7-foot-0 point forward and nearly everyone on their team looks like one of the airplanes taking on King Kong when he has the ball within 18 feet. I guess the airplanes won, we’ll see on the Thunder.

• The New York Knicks would surprise in the playoffs due to their absolute abundance of long, defensively excellent wings in Mikal Bridges, Josh Hart, and OG Anunoby and might be the team most likely to beat Boston. This has aged as well as my Cleveland doubt.

• The Indiana Pacers were probably undervalued as well because of their ability to play Aaron Nesmith on opposing perimeter threats and their high volume of dangerous perimeter scorers which would overwhelm teams that didn’t meet my criteria. This has been true.

• I figured Rudy Gobert would be a liability against small ball like every other year. He hasn’t, but the small-ball Warriors lost their heart in game 1 and appeared to be dicing his Wolves up before then.

• The Lakers lacked perimeter defenders but might make it work if LeBron James could dial it up on defense and be a Draymond Green for them. He did not, essentially gave up at the end of the series, then found an injury excuse for allowing Gobert to go 20-20 on them. Say what you will about Draymond Green, but he has a level of heart for playing defense that very few have ever matched.

So far, so good. If you doubt whether I actually believed any of this, you can ask Inside Texas members who frequent the NBA thread. At any rate, whether I was right about all this or not (I was) the theory was definitely right.

My Knicks belief is aging well, although Boston was recently able to force a game 6, and my Cleveland and OKC skepticism is about 50-50. Cleveland fell apart when facing Indiana’s ball pressure on defense and trying to match all the scoring the Pacers managed while attacking all the weak spots in the Cavalier defense. They also had injuries, but this is two years in a row now where a good regular season defense didn’t translate to the playoffs…because they don’t have length and skill on the perimeter on defense.

Oklahoma City’s lack of a big perimeter defender has pestered them somewhat in dealing with the mammoth Jokic, the bigger issue there is an inability to stop him with their bigs. Isaiah Hartenstein can only do so much and Chet Holmgren has been roadkill when he’s drawn the job.

Also, Aaron Gordon (6-8, 235) and Christian Braun (6-6, 220) have repeatedly made OKC look small on the wings in addition to being small in the paint.

Denver has out-rebounded OKC in four out of six games, often by very lopsided margins, and have erased SGA’s sidekick Jalen Williams in nearly every game with their size and length.

Perhaps we’ll see if it matters for OKC when facing Anthony Edwards or Julius Randle in the Western Conference Finals. They have several really good smaller defenders between Dort, Alex Caruso, Cason Wallace, and even Shai Gilgeous-Alexander but they’re all smaller and lack length (except SGA) to contest shots by the “apex predator” point forwards you tend to find in the playoffs. Of course they may not even get past the Nuggets.

I also have some questions about whether SGA is a great on-ball creator for the Thunder or “merely” an absolutely dominant scorer. Sometimes he seems like Michael Jordan in need of a point forward like Scottie Pippin to help convey his dominance to the rest of his teammates. That’s not our subject today though.

Moving forward…

Here’s how everyone left in the playoffs looks in terms of having wings who can guard positions from 2-4 and/or check a top on-ball point guard or ball-dominant wing.

Boston Celtics

Jaylen Brown: 6-6 with a 7-0 wingspan, 223 pounds.

Brown can guard multiple positions in addition to being a difficult matchup himself on offense. He’s exactly what you want in this regard, his effort on defense tends to wax and wane with what’s required though. He’s not a full-time lockdown guy, but he will need to be from here on out or the Celtics are doneso.

Jrue Holiday: 6-4 with 6-7 wingspan, 204 pounds.

Holiday is a proven defensive killer in the playoffs. He’s not the same guy he once was at 34 years old…but in their game 5 win the Celtics had him guarding Karl-Anthony Towns (7-0, 248) for stretches so he definitely still has some juice.

Derrick White: 6-4 with a 6-8 wingspan, 190 pounds.

White is a good defender of opposing lead guards.

There’s a world in which Boston is actually more dangerous without Jayson Tatum, even though he’s a two-way force and one of the best players in the game. Why? Because the Tatum-title Celtics formula doesn’t really include a true point guard (both White and Holiday are combo guards who don’t orchestrate their offense very often) and often turns into 5-out (five shooters spreading the floor) iso-ball with Tatum or Brown picking a matchup to attack.

Well the 5-out component isn’t there with Kristaps Porzingis battling whatever illness he has as the other Celtic centers don’t have the same three point range. In Game 5 they put Payton Pritchard in more, who’s too small to be good at defense but is a sharpshooter off the dribble that helps space their offense back out. We’ll see what happens in Game 6, probably they lose in New York, but this team still has a lot of winning pieces without Tatum. They still have the Holiday-Brown combo on defense is the main key.

Also, I kinda think Tatum just isn’t very smart and when he’s the main Celtic it makes them less flexible and adaptive, even though his skill set is theoretically super versatile.

New York Knicks

OG Anunoby: 6-7 with a 7-2 wingspan, 240 pounds.

Anunoby generally guards bigger wings and not smaller guys but can also play small-ball center to trap perimeter plays. His length is also terrific for getting out to contest perimeter shots.

Mikal Bridges: 6-6 with a 7-1 wingspan, 209 pounds.

My bud, the late great Jonathan Tjarks, didn’t love the Kevin Durant trade for the Phoenix Suns as he’d already written an article about how the true foundation of their run was the combination of Bridges and Devin Booker. Bridge’s perimeter defense combined with Booker’s capable efforts there and brilliant offense was the 1-2 punch he saw as the real power that could sustain the squad. Now Bridges has developed elsewhere and is a key piece with a different guard than Chris Paul or Booker.

Bridges is light and athletic enough to guard any position and smother them with length.

Josh Hart: 6-4 with a 6-9 wingspan, 215 pounds.

Hart can also guard multiple positions and is a menace due to his overall energy level and ferocity attacking the ball and chasing rebounds.

Between these three, the Knicks cover a lot of ground and get a lot of leeway despite often pairing them with the diminutive and defensively limited Jaylen Brunson and the massive and cognitively limited Karl-Anthony Towns.

I like the Knicks’ overall makeup. They can cover for hard-working Brunson on defense with all this length and with the use of terrific defensive center Mitchell Robinson off the bench. KAT gives them another offensive gear at times…he’s not super reliable though.

Indiana Pacers

Aaron Nesmith: 6-6 with a 6-10 wingspan, 215 pounds.

Nesmith gets all the difficult jobs in perimeter defense for the Pacers. If an opponent has more than one challenging perimeter threat, things get dicier.

Tyrese Halliburton: 6-5 with a 6-8 wingspan, 185 pounds.

Halliburton is actually capable of very good defense but it’s sporadic and he tends to conserve a lot of energy for driving the fast break and overall Indiana offense.

TJ McConnell: 6-1 with a 6-2 wingspan, 190 pounds.

McConnell is very good at applying ball pressure in the backcourt but anyone at this level of the NBA can shoot over him with ease if they can get into their offense. This is true for one or two other Pacers as well.

The Pacers don’t really have it here. They have loads of good perimeter players, kinda like OKC only less so, but most of them tend to have more of an offensive orientation rather than a defensive one. Nesmith is their ace defender, Pascal Siakam and Myles Turner play well defensively around the basket, and they are good at applying ball pressure but rely a lot on their pace and offense. If you can get into your offense, you will score in the half court with big perimeter threats.

They were perfectly built to give the Cavs fits but I think that’ll be it for them.

Denver Nuggets

Aaron Gordon: 6-8 with a 7-0 wingspan, 235 pounds.

Gordon can guard bigger wings and even plays center in the minutes when Jokic is on the bench. He’s not going to lock down a top perimeter threat but he can hang with and bother a bigger wing/forward.

Christian Braun: 6-6 with a 6-6 wingspan, 220 pounds.

Braun has really shown up in this series using his size to pester SGA and be a force on the boards. He has typical white man issues in which his wingspan and height correspond closely (longer limbs are not adaptive in climates with serious winters) but he’s still big enough to cause issues.

Russell Westbrook: 6-3 with a 6-8 wingspan, 200 pounds.

Westbrook giveth and taketh like the Good Lord above. Theoretically a menacing defender but also sometimes clueless on positioning. His shooting is a major problem but that’s not our purview here.

The Nuggets also have Peyton Watson (6-8, 7-0 wingspan, 200 pounds) and Julian Strawther (6-6, 6-9 wingspan, 205 pounds) who come off the bench but are both a little too young to be consistent parts in the machine. The more reliable minutes those guys offer, the more the Nuggets round into a potential title form, but at 22 and 23 it’s just not a given. Especially on the road.

Overall the Nuggets are mostly trying to make this work with a zone defense and their overall size and subsequent ability to grab rebounds. Neither Michael Porter Jr nor Nikola Jokic will ever be confused as a plus wing defender but they both try and Porter jr is 6-9 with a 7-0 wingspan and 218 pounds while Jokic is 6-11 with a 7-3 wingspan and 284 pounds.

My rules would almost say they cannot pull this off but if Braun and the zone hold up, Jokic may break the rules.

Oklahoma City Thunder

Lu Dort: 6-4 with a 6-9 wingspan, 220 pounds.

Some had Dort as DPOY in the NBA this season. He always guards the toughest opposing player and has good length but also outstanding strength and mass which is hard to move out of the way. He moves his feet well and plays hard on defense and people struggle to get to their spots when he’s on them.

He tends to be on opposing lead guards though. He can guard bigger wings but there can be an issue there with length.

Alex Caruso: 6-5 with a 6-6 wingspan, 186 pounds.

Caruso is tough as nails and sticks to people like glue…but there are diminishing returns to having him on the same team as Lu Dort who serves in the same function. You often see Caruso on secondary options while Dort takes the no. 1 scorer and if that secondary option is a bigger wing or forward, it just doesn’t quite work. He’s been asked to guard Jokic multiple times and ends up as ćevapčići.

Cason Wallace: 6-3 with a 6-9 wingspan, 195 pounds.

Again, more of the same. Great on-ball defender, limited size against bigger wings.

Jalen Williams: 6-5 with a 7-2 wingspan, 211 pounds.

Theoretically Wiliams would be the answer to all of OKC’s problems both in terms of offering a second option behind SGA and also to guarding bigger wings who need more length on them to bother their shots. This is a tough series for him as the Nuggets are all super tall and for the second year in a row he’s melted under the pressure.

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander: 6-6 with a 6-11 wingspan, 195 pounds.

SGA defensively is probably at his best covering up a smaller perimeter option, which he never has any need to do because of the four players I just mentioned above. That’s good for saving energy for offense but they may need more.

Chet Holmgren: 7-1 with a 7-6 wingspan, 208 pounds.

Holmgren is best as an off-ball defender. He’s too skinny to check bigger wings who have the power to go into him and the same is doubly true against Jokic who has been stuffing him under the basket every chance he gets.

OKC has endless length and the ability to apply serious on-ball pressure, but in the half-court they’re a pack of smaller guards (and Holmgren) who can all be overpowered. Speaking of packs…

Minnesota Timberwolves

Jaden McDaniels: 6-9 with a 7-0 wingspan, 195 pounds.

McDaniels is another of the guys that you worry about with small, lead guard/creators in the playoffs. He’s the sort of reason you have to take regular season success from a guy like Dame Lillard, Ja Morant, or Donovan Mitchell with a grain of salt.

“What happens in the playoffs when they face a team with a dude who’s fast enough to hang with them but also insanely long?”

That’s the question every smaller guard has to answer. The answer is never athleticism, it has to be outrageous skill like Curry’s shooting or Brunson’s footwork.

McDaniels is not the best in the league at this but he’s quite good. Despite his size, he’s actually better against guards than wings though because he’s skinny. The Lakers for instance hit him with big LeBron James and Luka Doncic. He held up but hardly shut them down. A smaller guard is going to have some issues against him.

Donte DiVincenzo: 6-4 with a 6-6 wingspan, 203 pounds.

DiVincenzo works hard on defense but he has limited length. His best value is in working within the team concept to deny the easy stuff and giving Edwards rest now and again from picking up a top wing. This is a good place to note that it helps all the Wolves that they can play ultra aggressive on the perimeter when Rudy Gobert is in the game because he can clean up anything that gets through to the rim. Unless he’s played off the court, which I think the Warriors might have done had Stephen Curry not been injured, his rim protection is a major game changer.

If you can’t pull him away from the rim somehow, everyone on the Wolves levels up on defense. There are a few ways to do this because he’s awful at so many things, but it has to be done.

Anthony Edwards: 6-4 with a 6-9 wingspan, 225 pounds.

Edwards is capable of outstanding defense but it’s usually in bursts because he also carries a heavy offensive burden for the Timberwolves. He has the length to bother bigger wings, the athleticism to hang with absolutely anyone, and the 225 pounds are also regularly put to good use in being hard to move off spots.

You can see that with a guy like Edwards or Dort when a perimeter player tries to build up steam and get to a spot only to find the defender waiting in their path and unmoving against a hard shoulder or bump.

I wondered last year if the Wolves would win the Finals based on this theory, then the Mavericks took it to them with their own defense and their ability to hunt Gobert with Luka.

Also for the Wolves, they present huge problems for opposing teams trying to find multiple defenders to handle them. Edwards is a difficult match up for opposing wings and then you need someone who can keep the 6-9, 250 pound point-forward Julius Randle out of the paint.

Many people think that if OKC can just finally kill and bury Jokic that it’ll be smoother sailing from there but Randle is going to create issues for them in the next round, as is Gobert, and the winner of the Knicks vs the Celtics is going to generate size issues as well.

I know the betting sites rank it very differently but if my paradigm is worthy anything (and thus far it’s been much better than Vegas which over values the regular season) then right now you’d have to make the Wolves the favorites because we already know they’re through the 2nd round to the WCF. The Knicks and Celtics I might consider the two strongest in terms of wing depth and quality, but only one will survive this series. Probably the Knicks but it’s not obvious to me.

The Nuggets are a little thin on the wings and they’re beat up and getting more beat up all the time while playing the starters 40 minutes nearly every game…and yet. Jokic is an absolute trump card. When he and Jamal Murray (btw, 6-4 with 6-6 wingspan and 215 pounds) are cooking on offense they have the firepower to present problems to anyone. Their zone is also confounding because they have so many tall people who can get a hand up or get a rebound it feels like trying to shoot through a forest.

We’re almost at the stage where everyone has the defensive wings to present a case for meeting my criteria but good defensive teams who may match my model for what works in the playoffs still don’t have an answer for a 7-foot, nearly 300 pound point-center like Jokic and Murray is also tricky to corral as a big point guard.

If we rated based on those defensive wings alone, I’d go:

1. Knicks

2. Wolves

3. Celtics

4. Thunder (missing the big wing piece, yes all their smaller ones are terrific)

5. Nuggets

6. Pacers

If we rated these teams based on the decision-making and overall prowess of their point-players?

1. Nuggets

2. Knicks

3. Pacers

4. Wolves

5. Thunder

6. Celtics

So I guess that makes the Knickerbockers the AWG favorites to take home the crown.

Photo by Chris Appano on Unsplash

We’ll see how it goes.