By Todd Whitehead

For the past few seasons, the Warriors have been the vanguard of the NBA’s small-ball revolution, ushering in a new brand of basketball that emphasizes skill and agility over plodding brute strength.

During the transition period, the Warriors have sometimes found themselves at a size disadvantage — a veritable huddle of scraggly shepherd boys slinging rocks in a league full of Goliaths. To some, they’ll always be just “a very small team.”

But this offseason, amid a series of lavish big-name re-signings, the Warriors quietly added two reserves who will allow the team to grow a little bit taller. The Warriors upgraded their 6-foot-3 guard Ian Clark with a 6-7 replacement, Nick Young, and they swapped out their 6-7 forward Matt Barnes for the lankier 6-9 Omri Casspi.

So, will the Warriors still be considered small this season? Were they ever really small to begin with? And what role does height actually play in the success or failure of a modern NBA lineup?

Don’t call it small ball

Coach Steve Kerr bristled at the term “small ball” when discussing the origins of the Warriors … uh … nontraditional lineups with Tim Kawakami prior to the 2016 NBA Finals:

“Again, you can say you’re going ‘small’, but like for us last year in Game 6 (of the 2015 Finals) down the stretch, we had Steph (Curry) who’s 6-3, Shaun (Livingston), Andre (Iguodala), Harrison (Barnes), Draymond (Green) … those are all long, active players. Saying ‘going small’ sometimes is deceiving, you know? That’s not really small. That’s pretty big at four positions, switch everything, and then you can play-make from all five spots.”

That is pretty big, and the Warriors small-ball lineups got even bigger last year with the addition of Kevin Durant. But how do these Warriors small-ball units measure up next to other more conventional NBA lineups?

Across the league in 2016-17, there were 135 five-man combinations that played at least 100 minutes together; that’s about four or five core units per team. The Warriors had six heavily used lineups, including the Death Lineup of Curry, Klay Thompson, Iguodala, Durant and Green.

As you might expect from a unit without a traditional center, the Death Lineup was smaller than most of the opponents it faced (6-foot-6½, on average); its 16th percentile rank in height indicates that only 16 percent of the league’s other most-used lineups were shorter. Interestingly, the Death Lineup had a relatively tall average standing reach (49th percentile), thanks to the longer-than-usual arms of Iguodala, Durant and Green. So, in terms of functional height the Warriors small-ball unit was not especially small; in fact, its standing reach was smack-dab in the middle of the pack.

Rather, the defining feature of the Death Lineup — and the Warriors’ other favorite units — was not a lack of height, but a lack of variance in height; that is, all the players in any given Warriors lineup were basically the same size as each other. Based on their listed heights, the Death Lineup had the fifth-least variance in player heights among the 135 most-popular NBA units. Another Warriors lineup — with Livingston at 6-7, Thompson at 6-7, Iguodala at 6-6, Green at 6-7 and David West at 6-9 — was the No. 1 most-evenly sized.

As explained by Kerr, the beauty of being “pretty big at four positions” is that the Warriors can “switch everything” on defense. For example, watch how four Warriors expertly negotiate three consecutive screens here and stifle the Spurs offense by repeatedly switching defensive assignments to track the path of Manu Ginobili:

Initially, Ginobili was guarded by Matt Barnes near the right block. Ginobili exchanged positions with Kawhi Leonard on the wing via a perfunctory pin-down screen; Barnes anticipated the movement and switched his defensive responsibilities with Iguodala. Iguodala shadowed Ginobili for only a few steps before he too was obstructed, this time by a dribble handoff from Danny Green. Ginobili gathered the ball from Green and continued to the top of the key; Iguodala switched with Thompson, who followed Ginobili.

At the same time, David Lee shuffled up to set a high screen for Ginobili; the Warriors switched assignments for a final time, as West slid out to impede Ginobili at the 3-point line. Ginobili was forced onto his back foot by West’s hard hedge and Thompson was able to recover into the passing lane to steal the ball, which Ginobili had floated toward the rolling Lee.

The key to the effectiveness of this defensive approach is flexibility. For all of this switching to work properly, the Warriors must be comfortable with West guarding Ginobili and, in turn, with Thompson guarding Lee (as well as being willing to embrace a few other nominal cross-position matchups). These free-wheeling switches feel a lot less tenuous when your entire lineup is basically the same height.

So, maybe, size doesn’t matter?

Intuitively, we expect taller lineups to be better on defense. To test this hypothesis, I compared the defensive rating of each of the 135 most-used NBA lineups to its average height (range: from 6-4 to 6-9). Did height matter? No. At least for the 2016-17 season, there was no relationship between a lineup’s average height and its defensive effectiveness (quantified by the number of points the opponents scored per 100 possessions).

Empirically, standing reach was a more meaningful measure of functional height. There was a statistically significant relationship between defensive rating and average standing reach, with higher reaches yielding lower scoring rates for opponents. Predictably, average height and average standing reach were both related to the pace of play, as big guys tended to slow things down for everybody.

But, more so than average height or reach, variance in height was the best indicator of a lineup’s defensive capabilities last season — that is, units that were comprised of players who were of similar size tended to allow fewer points.

In the plot, I’ve highlighted the Warriors’ top-used lineups in orange. You can see they’re all bunched up in the bottom-left corner with the groups who were both homogeneously sized and good at defense. On the other end of the spectrum were lineups unbalanced by small point guards like Isaiah Thomas and Tyler Ulis, which tended to be porous defensively. The Warriors’ most stingy unit — Livingston, Thompson, Iguodala, Green and West — was also the most evenly sized; they gave up just 94.4 points per 100 possessions and had a range of heights spanning only 3 inches.

Watch here as Iguodala and West create a long-armed, double-teaming monster to torment C.J. McCollum and force him into a bad pass.

Portland tried to free McCollum for an open look at the basket by having Noah Vonleh set him a down screen. The action was successful in delaying McCollum’s defender, Iguodala, by a step, but West deftly moved his feet to stay in front of the Blazer guard and neutralized his advantage. Iguodala quickly recovered and collaborated with West to prevent a pass to the wide-open Vonleh in the post. Again, this switch-happy defensive approach is predicated on the Warriors’ stable of tall, long-armed wings.

Two more tall wings

So, how will Young and Casspi fit in? Well, as I mentioned above, at 6-7 and 6-9 these two new reserves will make the Warriors a bit taller. Weighting the Warriors by their projected playing times for the 2017-18 season (provided by Kevin Pelton), I calculate an average height of 6-7½ next year, which would make the Warriors the 10th tallest team in the league. Likewise, I estimate that the Warriors will have a minute-weighted average standing reach of 8-foot-9, which would be the fifth highest team average for functional height.

More importantly, the coaching staff will now have a glut of interchangeable tall wings, with 13 different guys sized 6-6 to 6-9 who are fighting for a position on the final roster. Curry will be the only Warrior left standing under 6-6. That will mean more lineup combos who can switch everything and a Warriors defense that will continue to be one of the best in the league.

(Top photo: Zhong Zhi/Getty Images)