NBA Lineup Patterns: The West
Thunder's Three Quarters, Ant-Man and Randle, Derailing Injuries, and More
As promised, this week I’m covering some observations on lineup patterns from around the Western Conference. The breakdown for the East is here if you missed it, and I also posted a tutorial showing how to make charts the charts below - thank you for not stealing my thunder by posting your own “West Lineup Patterns” before me. You are now free to do that :) Speaking of Thunder…
The Oklahoma City Thunder are 24-2, and their second best player has only played seven games. That’s the headline from anyone who talks about the Thunder’s nearly unprecedented dominance; they simply add another win or two to the record each time they bring it up. They’ll also probably mention the fact that this team is outscoring opponents by over 16 points per 100 possessions - as Neil Paine recently half-joked
As a result, by the time a Thunder game reaches the fourth quarter, the margin is already 15 on average, and their stars - namely Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, but also Chet Holmgren to an extent - barely have to play in the final frame. Before the Thunder’s recent Cup Semi-Finals loss to the Spurs, Shai had only played in 11 of the Thunder’s 25 fourth quarters, averaging just over three minutes on the court in the fourth. Incredibly, he’s still the second leading scorer per game in the entire league, in basically a third of the possible time.
This also gives the Thunder’s younger (relatively, they’re all young!) bench players more experience on the court, valuable development minutes which will make this team even scarier in the future. Ajay Mitchell has gotten a lot of the spotlight, and is one of the favorites for Sixth Player of the Year, but a number of other guys - including Aaron Wiggins, Isaiah Joe, Jaylin Williams, Kenrich Williams, and even Ousmane Dieng and Branden Carlson are getting minutes. 14 different Thunder players average 10 or more minutes per game.
In many analysts’ opinions, the only team that stands in the way of the Thunder repeating as NBA champions is the Denver Nuggets. They currently sit at 19-6, with a +9 net rating that would be wildly impressive if it wasn’t just over half of the Thunder’s record-setting mark. Nikola Jokić does have to play most fourth quarters, but he is getting more rest than last season, thanks to the acquisition and solid play of backup Center Jonas Valančiūnas. That’s why I wrote this.
Jokić had one of the strictest substitution patterns last season, playing the entire first and third quarters, and I mean that almost literally. He played an average of 23.4 of the possible 24 minutes in those quarters a season ago. This year, Val is keeping the ship afloat in the oft-discussed “non-Jokić minutes”, allowing David Adelman to keep Jokić on the bench for longer (the yellow and purple in the chart below). This season, Jokić’s first and third quarter minutes are down to 22.8, which may not sound like much of a drop, but over the course of an 82 game season, that’s 48 fewer minutes, an entire regulation game.
Jokić’s All-Star(?) teammate, Jamal Murray1 typically stays on the court with the backup big while Jokić rests. However, Denver’s offseason additions at the Guard position, notably Tim Hardaway Jr. and Bruce Brown, have allowed Adelman to rest Murray for longer stretches as well; his minutes are down 1.4 per game from a season ago.
That means the best two-man game in the league gets to play even more together, especially as the season has gone on.
Jokić and Murray are playing their ninth season together in Denver; the only2 longer tenured teammates are Steph Curry and Draymond Green of the Golden State Warriors. Those two still play a lot together, though less than they used to.
This whole series of lineup patterns, and the visualizations specifically, were inspired by a 538 (RIP) article by Jared Dubin and Julia Wolfe from 2021. That season (which Klay missed with his ACL tear), Curry and Green played almost exclusively with one another.
The drop-off in time spent together this season is likely due to a mix of:
Aging, leading to reduced minutes and less opportunity for overlap. Both Curry and Green averaged three more minutes per game in 2020-21 vs 2025-26
Steph may just be fed up with Draymond’s antics (I would be, so I may projecting here…)
The addition of a third star in Jimmy Butler, whose averaging 31 minutes per game and provides the older Warriors more rest (the yellow in the chart below)
With Steph and Draymond sharing the court less, a new duo has emerged as the star pairing who share the court most often. In just their second year together in Minnesota, Anthony Edwards and Julius Randle are nearly inseparable.
Edwards seems to need Randle’s calming presence out there: when they play together, they are equivalent to the second best lineup in the NBA, but when Ant-Man plays without his Luis the Timberwolves post a -13 net rating.
Gobert is the other factor in Minnesota of course, and he’s the one who often stays on the court when Edwards and Randle are both off of it. In fact, the Timberwolves have played just three total minutes all season without any one of these three.3
Gobert doesn’t always finish games though. Head Coach Chris Finch may have seen plays like this one too many times, and he sometimes opts to finish with Naz Reid, Minnesota’s beloved perennial Sixth Man of the Year candidate. In any case, the Wolves late game execution has been an Achilles heel, and something they’ll need to figure out before the Playoffs.
The Los Angeles Clippers are also experimenting with a non-starter finisher. Bogdan Bogdanović plays most of his minutes to finish games, after seeing limited court-time in first halves. Putting some numbers behind it. Bogi is ninth on the team in first half minutes, at 10.5; in fourth quarters he plays 9.4 minutes on average, first on the team.
Of course, Bogdan Bogdanović is not the main Clippers story. The main Clippers story is Kawhi’s fake tree-planting deal, the unceremonious dismissal of Chris Paul, Bradley Beal’s injury, their age, the toilets in Intuit Dome, Kawhi Leonards’ never-ending string of “DNP: Injury”.
When Kawhi does play, he’s able to give James Harden extended rests, notably at the start of fourth quarters (yellow below). Unfortunately for the 36-year-old James, who is averaging the seventh most minutes in the league despite being a decade older than anyone playing more,4 that’s not often. Kawhi has already missed 10 of his team’s first 23 games.
The Clippers’ cross-town rivals, the Los Angeles Lakers, have been dealing with even more injuries to their stars. LeBron missed the first 14 games of the season with sciatica, while Luka Dončić and Austin Reaves have missed another 8 early season games, making their overlap chart a little sad.
When Luka and Reaves are able to play together, JJ Redick gives them each time to shine. Eyeballing this chart, about half of Luka and Austin’s minutes are together while the other half are played without their friend.
JJ may want to consider playing them together more, closer to the Anthony Edwards-Julius Randle pairing in Minneapolis. When Dončić and Reaves are both on the court, the Lakers post a +11 net rating. With just one of them they are about neutral. Of course, the tradeoff becomes resting them both at the same time,5 and with neither on the court, the Lakers are a miserable -13.6 points per 100 possessions, exactly the same as the four-win Wizards.
I wanted to dive deeper into Sacramento’s Big 3 and and the Wemby-Fox pairing in San Antonio, but they’ve been hit the worst by injuries.
Domantas Sabonis has missed the last 12 Kings games with a partially torn meniscus in his left knee, and Zach LaVine has been out for a couple as well. The only interesting observation I have in these bars is a good chunk of DeMar DeRozan-only time in the first and second periods (bright red), and a sprinkling of LaVine-only time (yellow). With all three in trade rumors for the schedule-tanked Kings, we may not see many more minutes from these three together.
Meanwhile, at the time of writing, Victor Wembanyama and De’Aaron Fox had played just four games together this season, as both have sustained serious injuries. That comes after playing together just four games last year as well, before Wemby’s season-ending deep vein thrombosis diagnosis.6 When they do both suit up, they play almost entirely together. It will be interesting (and scary for the rest of the league) to see how this pairing develops with more and more minutes.
Let’s close out7 with the one other team that may stand a chance against the Thunder, the Houston Rockets. They have a pretty established pattern for their top-eight rotation guys, with Thompson, Şengün, Durant, Smith Jr, and Okogie starting then Tari Eason, Reed Sheppard, and Steven Adams providing shooting, more shooting, and Kiwi muscle off the bench.
As I’ve written about a few times, the Rockets play multiple bigs in basically all of their lineups. Their three most important bigs provide very different skillsets though, that should map together nicely.
Kevin Durant is probably the best pure scorer the game has ever seen, Alperen Şengün is developing into an elite passing hub in the image of Nikola Jokić, and Steven Adams is the best offensive rebounder of his generation. The three play together in every combination possible, though not often all together.
Due to the fractal nature of the minutes, sample sizes are still small for each combination, but when all three share the court the Rockets are even with their opponents, vs Houston’s +10 overall net rating. The best combo of these three bigs? Steven Adams on an island: +61 points per 100 possessions!!
Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed these lineup breakdowns, please share them and/or let me know if you’d like to see them updated as the season goes on.
It would be a travesty if the only reason Jamal doesn’t make his first All-Star team this year is because the league needs to replace him with an American for the USA vs the World format.
Couldn’t confirm but I think it’s right. Fact check me if not!
For what it’s worth, which is nothing, the Wolves are -46.5 per 100 possessions in those three minutes.
He’s currently playing the 16th most minutes per game of anyone in their age 36+ season in NBA history. Wilt Chamberlain played a laughable 43.2 minutes at age 36.
Or going full Nick Nurse with Tyrese Maxey and VJ Edgecombe, and just playing them both all the time.
I know this is a serious issue, but do you think doctor’s ever chuckle internally when they say “thrombosis diagnosis”.
Apologies to Phoenix, Portland, Utah, Memphis, Dallas, and New Orleans for being boring.