So Ime and Stone have essentially looked at what OKC has done and duplicated it in some aspects. Length is the rule. You can't make your players on your bench miraculously taller, so this roster creates many mismatch problems for teams that focus on guards or who have weak players at the PF and C positions. This seems to be the trend that the league is going in until it can be beat. SGA makes it even more difficult to beat them as a team, because there is length at the PG position too with him. So, future NBA teams will likely look like this. Every player will be 6' 5" and taller and the players that are only 6' 5" will only be 3-4 per squad. That is until the league finds a cheat to that cheat and the cycle starts all over again.
Skill is more important but skill plus length is an advantage. In cases of equal skill always take the taller player. OKC would not be near as good without SGA. DD
This wasn't an OKC thing - this has floated around the league for a while with the "point forward" roles guys like Lebron, Magic, and Lamar Odom creating mismatches had but when you apply it to a team - it became a strategy a young Milwaukee Bucks team used when it drafted players like John Henson, Thon Maker, Larry Sanders, Jabari Parker, and some kid named Giannis. To be clear - the secret isn't length alone. The secret is SKILLED players with length. The goal is to find the tallest collection of players who can dribble the ball, shoot 3s, guard many positions, create offense, pass, etc. You are looking for versatility AND length. Wemby and Giannis are probably the best at that thing but Houston is applying it to the whole roster. The irony here is, this is effectively increasing the size of the shortest players who can play in the NBA and oh by the way, we drafted Reed who was already very short by NBA standards but increasingly looks like a kid who ran out from the stands when playing next to Durant, Jabari, Sengun, and Amen.
In the late 80's the lakers started Kareem, Worthy, Cooper, Magic, and Byron Scott. with the exception of the latter, all were 6' 7" or taller, average was almost 6' 9". i recall someone at the time remarking that the ideal NBA lineup was 5 guys 6' 9". or maybe just five Magic Johnsons.
100% Skilled players with body control. Magic, Harden, and Luka all come to mind. But now it is also to the extreme of having your SGs 6' 6" to 6' 8" and then having all of your other player just damn big.
Ime didn't take this from OKC. The league has been going this direction for a few years now. One of the reasons is taller guys are getting more skilled, in general. Whereas a 6'5"+ guy was not often a PG but rather a SG or an undersized SF in the past, now you have 6'5"+ guys handling the ball more. If you look at a lot of drafts, there are tons of these guys out there, too, but the question is whether or not they'll actually pan out or how long they'll take to do so. In many cases, they won't have the IQ that Ime seems gung-ho about. In other cases, they show they just don't have enough skills once they get to the NBA. Cooper definitely wasn't 6'7" and it's debatable Magic Johnson was 6'8" or 6'9", (he wasn't) but that's another story. lol.
I’m just loving our monster lineup guys. Once they’re getting comfortable with each other, they will be hard to beat. Aqua Man is going insane on the offensive board now, 31.1 percent the first 4 games. Number one in the league.
Yeah, and Hakeem was always listed as 7'0". It's been speculated for a while that Magic Johnson wasn't really that tall. People have been arguing about it forever. Even standing next to Bird, he was probably 1-2" shorter in many pics (there's one where they're fighting over a championship trophy where Larry's not standing up straight and he still looked 2" taller.), but then I think Larry was probably at least an inch taller than he was listed (6'9"), too. But anyway, I once read someone post that Magic said in one of his books he was something like 6'7" or 6'8", but I never verified. Magic also said he was 6'9" once to Conan O'Brien while they were standing next to one another. Conan is 6'4" and it sure didn't look like there was 5" of height difference between them. Even if a quote from one of his books says he was shorter, he's also said he was 6'9", too. In the end, it's a who knows - that's why I was saying it was debatable.
I've actually thought a perfect team would consist of nearly all 6'8" guys for 25 years. Seems to be more of those guys who are very skilled all the way around than the 6'9" guys.
