It’s surprisingly not too often that a team is able to win an NBA championship by deploying the same starting five for the majority of the regular season and the majority of the playoffs, and even less so that said team returns and uses the identical starting five the next season.
Generally, the most common starting unit shifts at one or two positions between the regular season and playoffs, whether due to injuries or otherwise. Or a starter becomes a free agent the ensuing offseason. Someone new has to start out of necessity.
But the Nuggets’ biggest salary cap casualty was their sixth man. They’re a somewhat rare case in that regard: Jamal Murray, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Michael Porter Jr., Aaron Gordon and Nikola Jokic were the five leaders in games started, in both the regular season (62 or more each) and the postseason (same five, all 20 games). And now they’re all back, reprising the unit that won the championship. That’s been difficult to achieve in recent years.
From 2021-22 to 2022-23, the Warriors mostly used the same top-six configuration, but who started and who came off the bench was always shifting based on health. Ten players started double-digit regular-season games during their championship season, and nine players started multiple playoff games. Jordan Poole was the more frequent starter in the regular season; Klay Thompson replaced him in the playoffs. Then during their title defense, both were among the five most common starters while Andrew Wiggins was sixth.
P.J. Tucker took over for Donte DiVincenzo starting the most games during the Bucks’ playoff run to the title — then both were gone from Milwaukee the next season. The Lakers lost Danny Green, Avery Bradley and JaVale McGee after 2020. Toronto had to replace Kawhi Leonard and Green with Fred VanVleet and O.G. Anunoby in their starting lineup. DeMarcus Cousins joined Golden State after 2018.
The question is: Is post-title starting five consistency generally a good thing? Is a team like Denver right to run it back, operating under “if it ain’t broke” conventions? Or is it an act of stagnation while the league gets better around you?
For the most recent defending champs to do this as cleanly as Denver is attempting to, the results have differed wildly.
Start with Kevin Durant’s first year in the Bay: He, Thompson, Steph Curry, Draymond Green and Zaza Pachulia each started 60 or more regular-season games and 15 or more playoff games en route to the championship. The next year, all five started 50 or more in the regular season. The Warriors won nine fewer games but repeated as champs. (Not even that was a seamless replica of the previous year: Pachulia got benched toward the end of the regular season, and Andre Iguodala replaced him as a starter for most of the playoffs.)
The pre-Durant Warriors example was pretty much equally successful, except for their botched ending that had more to do with a starter’s self-inflicted absence.
That team, in 2015-16, ran it back with Curry, Thompson, Green, Harrison Barnes and Andrew Bogut. Nobody else on the roster started double-digit games in 2014-15, and when it came to the playoffs, four of the five started all 21 games. (Bogut started 18.) Golden State finished a historic 73-9 and was minutes away from repeating.
The Warriors’ western counterparts haven’t been as successful. In 2014-15, San Antonio relied on the same five most common starters — Leonard, Green, Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, Tiago Splitter — that ended the Heat superteam era, albeit with average minutes being divided more evenly both seasons. (Boris Diaw and Manu Ginobli played heavily off the bench.) The result: A first-round exit, courtesy of Chris Paul’s Game 7 dagger.
The Lakers changed the first time they won a title in 2009 then didn’t change so much after repeating. That 2010 team was a new iteration with Trevor Ariza out and Metta World Peace in. Los Angeles used the same Kobe-led starting lineup for all 23 playoff games. Unlike today’s Nuggets, the Lakers kept the same starting five and their sixth man in 2010-11 for the three-peat attempt. Dallas swept them in the second round.
But Boston might be the most accurate representation of Denver’s upcoming challenge.
After winning 66 games and a championship in 2008, the Celtics ran it back with Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, Rajon Rondo and Kendrick Perkins, all of whom started a staggering 97-plus games between the regular season and playoffs (108 games total). Boston was prepared to rely that intensely on those five again, and it was working until Garnett’s season-ending injury. A 62-win team fell to Orlando in the second round.
The lesson? With great dependence on five players comes great injury-prevention responsibility. Unlike all the examples listed, the Nuggets’ starting five last season were also their five leaders in minutes per game through both the regular season and playoffs. They play a beautiful brand of basketball together, but health in the NBA is a fickle matter. No doubt the perception of Denver’s chances would alter dramatically if Christian Braun had to start most of this season.
There wasn’t much the Nuggets could do but run it back, and they were helpless to counter the offer that lured Bruce Brown away. But for a team with a cliff separating Porter’s playoff minutes (32.7) from Braun’s (13), the sanctity of the starting five must be protected at all costs.
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