Switch 5 (Part 2): Why is Switching Better? Or is it?
Part 2 of a 4 part series. Read Part 1 here.
Takeaways from Part 1, in short:
We’ve established that switching has become significantly more popular, it happens much more often in the playoffs, teams likely started switching more to mitigate the advantages that ball screens created, and while switching may result in giving up better shots, teams are having a hard time playing any defense successfully in the NBA.
How do we define a Switch 5?
In my opinion, the most difficult aspect of studying the switching trend is classifying who qualifies as a switch 5. Looking at how often a player switches doesn’t necessarily indicate they are good at it. There’s no metric I’m aware of (at least publicly) that tracks how often a ball-handler gains an advantage on his defender.
So for the sake of analysis, I made some subjective delineations. An important consideration here is that I want as much playoff data as possible, so these selections are largely from teams who have played multiple playoff series since 2017 or so.
Traditional: Joel Embiid, Nikola Jokic, Rudy Gobert, Jusuf Nurkic
Hybrid: Anthony Davis, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Jaren Jackson Jr., Bam Adebayo
Switch 5: Draymond Green, PJ Tucker (mainly in Houston), Marcus Morris/Nic Batum (whoever you consider the center in those Clipper lineups), Maxi Kleber
In short, the classifications are as follows:
Traditional = Undoubtedly a center — mainly plays some form of drop coverage
Hybrid = Plays PF & C — can take on either the traditional center defense role or the Switch 5 role
Switch 5 = A PF masquerading as a center in switch-everything lineups
The Data
Given these delineations, I pulled data from pbpstats.com to determine the statistical shot profile difference between lineups with “Traditional” centers and lineups with a “Switch 5” or “Hybrid” playing center.
Based on these stratifications, Switch 5/Hybrid lineups give up slightly more 3’s and slightly less mid-range shots than traditional lineups — this is usually not good, but…
- The issue here is that teams hit those long mid range shots pretty well against traditional centers
- Additionally, traditional centers give up four percentage points better shooting on above the break 3’s
- This is the conundrum with drop centers vs. switching: from a frequency perspective, the shot profile looks good, but NBA players have gotten so good at making pull-up jumpers that drop coverage gets attacked ruthlessly
Let’s look at a couple more stats:
As expected, Switch 5 lineups are not as good at rebounding, but the difference on the defensive glass is pretty small — which is encouraging. Offensively, it would make sense that having a big traditional center would allow you to take advantage of the offensive glass.
On the other hand, with less conservative defense and more ball pressure, Switch 5 lineups make a real difference in the turnover department, which are much more valuable than a missed shot from a statistical perspective.
Important to note we also get selection bias from a couple different aspects here:
- The hybrid/switch players I’ve selected are generally pretty good at their jobs — that’s why their coaches played them at center in the playoffs (again, I wanted a decent sample size). This represents the tippy top of NBA small-ball efficiency. As you move down the spectrum, you’ll see more PF types playing small-ball center to pick up offensive slack rather than for defensive reasons. These players (and frankly, teams) aren’t usually good enough to be playing in May or June.
- Since these stats are playoff-only, the competition these centers are going up against is better than league average, which is probably going to manifest itself in the shooting efficiency numbers the most. Averaging this out over the course of an 82-game regular season… more on that in Part 3.
Can True Bigs Take Advantage?
Typically, discussion around punishing small lineups involves using size and strength to power through a smaller player and score inside, sometimes as a result of an offensive rebound.
We’ve already covered rebounding, where the difference mainly shows up on the offensive end, but let’s talk about post-ups. Since the start of the tracking era, post-ups in the playoffs have plummeted:
In the 2013–14 playoffs, there were 1,347 direct post-ups compared to 754 in last year’s postseason. I tend to assume NBA coaches and teams are smart, so the decline in post-ups speaks for itself, but we can also back it up with stats, first using the traditional/hybrid/switch delineations defined earlier:
As we see here, the traditional centers I singled out faired better defending post-ups, but not by much. To hedge against my imperfect stratification of these players, here’s those same numbers, but instead using Second Spectrum’s “# of centers in lineup” filter:
The two big/small delineations track pretty similarly, with a clear advantage given to the traditional centers in guarding post-ups, but a pretty small one across the board.
When you take into account that small-ball 5’s often add an offensive element like spreading the floor (per Dunc’d On, the positional average of 3P% for centers is 23% compared to 33% for power forwards), the offense/defense trade-off of playing a big guy becomes an increasingly difficult choice for coaches, especially in the playoffs.
Per NBA.com/stats:
- Only 23 players in the league this year posted up more than twice per game, and only 10 of those players scored better than 1 point per possession on those post-ups
- Combining P&R Ball-Handler and P&R Roll Man possessions, teams utilized these play-types roughly 30 times per game, on average, compared to 4 post-ups per game
Given these stats, coaches would want to formulate their lineups to be able to defend the most used and most efficient offensive strategies, neither of which is the post-up. More frequently, teams are forcing the opposing center to figure out how to guard a ball screen.
Where we go from here
Ok, so Switch 5 lineups are…
- Maybe better at guarding mid-range and above-the-break 3’s, but shooting percentages can be so fluky its hard to draw conclusions
- Not as good at rebounding, but the difference on the defensive glass is pretty small
- Better at forcing turnovers
In regards to post defense, NBA teams have concluded there are more efficient play types than the post-up, and while small lineups are not as good at guarding the post-up as ones with traditional bigs, the advantage gained isn’t enough to “expose” these types of lineups.
Another takeaway? This data is exceedingly difficult to aggregate. While the increase in data available through tracking stats have given us more to look at, much of this is still subjective, which is why this type of analysis is often better researched through watching film and on a case-to-case basis. I’ll leave that to the coaches.
Next, we want to study the gap between regular season and playoff switching frequency — stay tuned for Part 3.