Effectiveness of Small

Ball Lineups in the

NBA
Research Article
Matt
4/11/2016

The effectiveness of NBA small ball-Research Methodology

The topic of this research will be analysing the effectiveness of the trend of small
ball in the NBA at winning games using economic principles. Sportingcharts defines
small ball as A style of play where size is sacrificed in favor of speed and three-point
shooting, this basic definition will form the basis for this paper (Sportingcharts.com,
2016). This trend has increased as the perceived value of the three point value
increases as the league moves more towards perimeter player and away from
traditional big men. The trend likely began as the NBA introduced new rules to help
open up the game and speed it up such as the hand-checking rule and defensive three
seconds (Nba.com, 2016).
This new trend has really begun as the management put more of an emphasis on
analytics focusing more on the statistics behind the players. The behind it is simple if a
team can hit three point shots at a 40% rate for a predicted value of 1.2 point per
possession versus 50% on two point shots for a predicted value of 1 point per
possession they would want to shoot as many three point shots as possible. The speed
of the games is also increasing as playing faster allows teams to get shots up faster and
be able to fit more possessions into the 48 minutes available. Traditional big men can
often simply not keep up with this. They usually cannot stretch out to shoot the three
and are more slow and methodical which limits them in the modern NBA. The idea of
going big to punish teams going small as they will not be able to defend bigger players
does not really work as it goes both ways, the bigger players can score a two point shot
on one end only to fail to defend the smaller player on the other end giving up a three
point shot losing out on a net basis.

This paper will focus on analysing this trend of small ball where teams play
smaller in order to shoot more threes and play faster has any impact on winning games.
The null hypothesis will be that the small ball strategy has a negative effect on winning
games with the alternative hypothesis being that such a strategy benefits the team and
has a positive effect on winning games. Specifically the paper will look at the lineup the
using the strategy and compare them to lineups who do not, operating under the
definition that a small ball lineup is one that uses at least one big man who fits at least
two of the following; is below average height for his position, shoots an above average
amount of threes for his position and plays at an above average pace for his position.
The analysis will utilize economic methods to answer the hypothesis often utilizing a
form of methods used in other literature in Sports Economics that answer similar
questions either within the NBA or in another league.
There is a wide range of such research that has been conducted over the years;
perhaps the most relevant to this paper is the paper by David J. Berri, Who is most
valuable? Measuring the player's production of wins in the National Basketball
Association (Berri, 1999). This paper works on building an econometric model that can
predict the value a player contributes towards winning the game. It accomplishes this by
looking at several factors that will have an impact on wins; a regression is then
conducted using these factors as the independent variable and wins as the dependent
variable. He then goes on to formulate the marginal value of each factor and provides a
brief discussion about how the factors rank and what it means in regards to their
influence on wins produced. The two highest marginal values are offensive rebounds
and three point field goal made; one of which seems to support the notion of this paper

that small ball helps produce wins and one which seemingly does the opposite, though
this paper was written in 1999 so the numbers do not really reflect the modern NBA.
The marginal values are then to be used to determine each players per minute
production of wins then multiplying by their minutes played to give total wins produced.
Berri then uses his model to look at some of the top players at the time to see how they
rank within compared to conventional wisdom (Berri, 1999). The methods used in this
paper to predict wins produced for individual players can be used to try and predict wins
produced for lineups and how this may relate to small ball.
The article Is the small-ball strategy effective in winning games? A stochastic
frontier production approach by Young Houng Lee can be used to give some
background for this topic (Lee, 2010). This article focuses on a different kind of small
ball that was popular in baseball at the time and how effective it was towards winning
games. This small ball strategy was one that was popular in baseball especially within
Korea where tactics like fly balls, steals and bunts are used to trade out in order to
advance runners. The article uses data for the years from 1996 until 2007 looking at the
stats that relate to small ball in baseball. These stats are used to answer how effective
the strategies used by the coaches are. Lee does so by formulating a stochastic
production utilizing the factors that relate to the small strategy. Lees findings are
contrary to what may be traditionally be expected with the results indicating that the
small ball strategies used by coaches actually have a negative effect towards producing
wins (Lee, 2010). While this paper looks at an issue within a sport that is not very similar
to basketball there are still things within it that can be learned to then be utilized towards
the topic at hand. The methods used to analyze the effectiveness of a strategy in a sport

are useful in more than just baseball and be rather useful for the analysis of the small
ball strategy in basketball.
Other relevant research articles include Optimal End-Game Strategy in
Basketball by David H. Annis, Misses in Hot Hand Research by Jeremy Arkes, and
He Got Game Theory? Optimal Decision Making and the NBA by Matt Goldman and
Justin M. Rao (Annis, 2006; Arkes, 2013; Goldman & Rao, 2010). Annis takes a look at
what strategy is best when defending at the end of the game, intentionally fouling the
opponents or defending the straight up. Ultimately Annis finds that the optimal strategy
is foul the opposing team (Annis, 2006). Arkes analyses the notion of the hot hand in
basketball, where if one player is shooting well they have the hot hand and should be
given the ball as much as possible. Prior research suggests that this was a myth, while
Arkes research shows that the infrequency of a hot hand understates the estimates in
prior research and the hot hand effect likely exists (Arkes, 2013). Goldman and Rao
look at the shooting decisions of NBA players and see how closely they adhere to
dynamic and allocative efficiency when determining what to do in a position. They find
that NBA players are rather efficient and strongly adhere to allocative efficiency
(Goldman & Rao, 2010). These research methods used in these papers may not be
directly used within the topic at hand but they help to give an idea how research is
conducted and what methods are used within Sports Economics especially concerning
the NBA and basketball.
For this paper to analyze how effective the small ball strategy of smaller players
is methods similar to those used by Berri and Young will be used (Berri, 1999; Lee,
2010). Mainly looking at the stats as they relate to strategy being analyzed and

formulating some form of function related to the wins produced. Before getting into the
specifics of this the relevant stats and variables must be defined, which is done so in
table 1 (Basketball-Reference.com, 2016a).
Table 1-Variable Definitions
Team Performance
Field Goal Attempts (FGA)
Field Goal Percentage (FG%)

Number of both 2 point and 3 point shots attempted

Percentage of shots made for both 2 point and 3 point

3-Point Field Goal Attempts (3PA)

attempts
Number of 3 point shots attempted

3-Point Field Goal Percentage (3P%)

Percentage of shots made for 3 point attempts

Effective Field Goal Percentage (eFG%)

Statistic used to account for the fact that 3 point shots are
worth more than 2 point shots

Free Throw Attempts (FTA)

Free Throw Percentage (FT%)
Points (PTS)
Net Offensive Rebounds (Net ORB)
Net Offensive Rebound Percentage (Net

Free throws attempted

Percentage of free throws made
Points scored
Net rebounds grabbed while on offense
Net percentage of available rebounds grabbed while on

ORB%)
Assists (AST)

offense
Number of assists in a hundred possessions

Turnovers (TOV)

Number of turnovers in a hundred possessions

Opponent/Defensive Performance
Opponent Field Goal Attempts (Opp FGA)

Opponents number of both 2 point and 3 point shots

Opponent Field Goal Percentage (Opp FG

attempted
Opponents percentage of shots made for both 2 point and 3

%)
Opponent 3-Point Field Goal Attempts

point attempts
Opponents number of 3 point shots attempted

(Opp 3PA)
Opponent 3-Point Field Goal Percentage

Opponents percentage of shots made for 3 point attempts

(Opp 3P%)
Opponent Effective Field Goal Percentage

Statistic used to account for the fact that 3 point shots are

(Opp eFG%)

worth more than 2 point shots

Opponent Free Throw Attempts (Opp

Opponents free throws attempted

FTA)

Opponent Free Throw Percentage (Opp

Opponents percentage of free throws made

FT%)
Opponent Points (Opp PTS)

Opponents points scored

Net Defensive Rebounds (Net DRB)

Rebounds grabbed while on defense

Net Defensive Rebound Percentage (Net

Percentage of available rebounds grabbed while on defense

DRB%)
Steals (STL)
Blocks (BLK)

Number of steals in a hundred possessions

Number of blocks in a hundred possessions

Not all of these stats will be used to formulate the function with wins, but these
stats are still relevant in that they can be used to answer several smaller questions
about how teams play while using small ball; do they actually attempt more threes, do
they turn over the ball more, do they block less shots, etc. The main method is likely to
be rather similar to the one used by Berri, just with an update to fit the modern NBA and
be used for lineups rather than individuals (Berri, 1999). A regression will be performed
on the variables listed in table 1 using them as the independent variables and wins
produced as the dependent variable. This regression will use stats from individual
players on a more aggregate level and then using what is learned to link it back to the
lineups. This is done since it is difficult to link each lineup to wins only using the data
available. The coefficient values given by the regression then give an idea of how much
each statistic contributes towards winning a game. The estimated wins produced for
each lineup will be calculated where wins is a function of offensive performance and
defensive performance.
These results will be analyzed looking at both small ball and non-small ball
lineups, with the non-small ball lineups acting as a sort of control group. The average

wins produced for a lineup will be calculated with the null hypothesis that the average
wins produced by small ball lineups will be lower than the total average for all lineups.
The results will be formulated and then a significance test will be conducted to give a full
idea of the results.
All of the data will be taken from a basketball statistics site called
basketballreference which has extensive stats including stats for lineups and also
makes these stats publicly available allowing downloads from their site (BasketballReference.com, 2016b). Basketballreference has both more traditional stats like FG%
and 3FG% and more advanced stats like eFG% which accounts for the fact that 3 point
shots are worth more and has the formula, eFG% = (FGM + (0.5 x 3PTM)) / FGA
(Basketball-Reference.com, 2016a). For the purpose of this study only lineups that have
played a minimum of 100 minutes together in a season will be looked at, so as to weed
out lineups that played exceptionally well or poor in limited minutes.
The main issue will be with the sampling, taking numbers from all NBA lineups is
not exactly a controlled experiment and gives little control over the variables. Having a
defined control group can be difficult so there may be an issue with adverse selection.
Small ball has become a rather popular trend in recent years becoming rather
widespread to the point where the majority of teams use it to some degree. So looking
at stats from only current seasons will naturally have a bias towards small ball as the
top teams will likely use smaller lineups. To combat this, two periods will be looked at
one where the strategy is widespread in recent years looking at the 2012/2013 season
up until the current NBA season of 2015/2016 and a period where it was not as
widespread in the 2000/2001 season to the 2003/2004 season. The prior period stats

are for the first years basketballreference has stats available for lineups. The seasons
also coincides with the four years before the NBA introduced new rules that put more of
an emphasis on perimeter play and are predicted to have helped moved the NBA
towards small ball (Nba.com, 2016).
In a preliminary analysis of lineup stats in Table 2 the data seems somewhat
inconclusive but may point towards small ball having a more positive influence. This
table is summarized from data taken from basketballreference (BasketballReference.com, 2016b). The lineups listed are the top 10 when sorted by Net points
scored in a hundred possessions for the current season. The top three lineups are all
from the Golden State Warriors, who sit atop the NBA record wise and are having a
historic season. All of these lineups consist of at least Draymond Green at power
forward where he is relatively small for the position. Using Green allows Golden State to
accomplish a number of things as he can guard any position. Their top lineup consists
of him as the center and has been dominating, having Net Points per 100 possessions
that is over double that of lineups from any other team. The remaining lineups consist of
four that have more traditional big men. So the ratio of small ball to non-small ball is 6:4.
This preliminary analysis is far too limited as all of the lineups simply consist of the top
teams in the NBA and each teams lineups listed are either all small ball or all non-small
ball. The true analysis will come when looking at the lineups for all teams not just the
top ones. The effectiveness of these small lineups could simply be that they are used by
the top teams. They could simply be outliers and the remaining teams are ineffective
when using smaller lineups.

Table 2: NBA Lineup Data 2015/16

Rk
1

Lineup

Team

Season

Net PTS

GSW

2015-16

+44.5

H. Barnes | S. Curry | D. Green | A. Iguodala | K.

Thompson
S. Curry | F. Ezeli | D. Green | A. Iguodala | K. Thompson

GSW

2015-16

+31.8

A. Bogut | S. Curry | D. Green | A. Iguodala | K. Thompson

GSW

2015-16

+31.2

CLE

2015-16

+27.8

M. Dellavedova | L. James | K. Love | J. Smith | T.

Thompson
A. Bradley | J. Jerebko | K. Olynyk | M. Smart | E. Turner

BOS

2015-16

+21.0

J. Crawford | W. Johnson | D. Jordan | C. Paul | J. Redick

LAC

2015-16

+20.2

B. Griffin | D. Jordan | C. Paul | J. Redick | L. Stephenson

LAC

2015-16

+19.9

K. Durant | S. Ibaka | E. Kanter | D. Waiters | R.

Westbrook
B. Griffin | D. Jordan | L. Mbah a Moute | C. Paul | J.
Redick
B. Biyombo | C. Joseph | K. Lowry | P. Patterson | T. Ross

OKC

2015-16

+18.7

LAC

2015-16

+18.7

TOR

2015-16

+18.5

9
10

In conclusion this paper outlines the basis for how the analysis of the
effectiveness of small ball lineups will be completed. It will take examples from prior
research and formulate a function outlining wins produced. The wins produced for each
lineup will be calculated from this and make a conclusion regarding the null hypothesis
that small ball lineups hurt teams.

References
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Basketball-Reference. (2016). Lineup Finder | Basketball-Reference.com. [online]
Available at: http://www.basketball-reference.com/play-index/plus/lineup_finder.cgi?

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http://www.justinmrao.com/goldman_rao.pdf
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