Debunking the "Role Player" Myth

One of the most frustrating things to come out of yesterday's horrific "Dream Team" announcement has been the mass of people falling over themselves to doubt whether the Miami Heat can actually compete for championships (at least quickly).  There are two sides to their doubt.  First, they question whether James, Wade, and Bosh can peacefully coexist.  Admittedly that's a balancing act the league has never seen attempted.  But these guys (1) have rather complementary skill sets; (2) launched this idea while playing together on Team USA; and (3) seem to have thought this whole brothers-in-arms act out pretty thoroughly.  Let's say I'm intrigued by how they'll mesh, but not exactly dubious.**

But the maddening part is the second of the naysayers' arguments.  That one goes: By "wasting" all of their cap space on 3 of the leagues 10 best players, the Heat have crippled their title hopes by pricing themselves out of what really matters: quality "role players."  With only Mario Chalmers and about $8 million keeping the Superfriends company, people are in a panic about how the Heat can possibly fill out  the roster to compete.  In essence, how does James Posey get paid?

I, as much as anyone, want the Heat to fail.  But that question is asinine.

First let's breakdown the mythical "Role Player."  He's a team-first, hardworking, limited skill-set player who fulfills a particular—get this—role (defense, shooting, energy, etc.) that every roster needs.  The key to the role player is that he stops there: he maximizes his limited role, because that's all the team needs from him.  In other words, he's not that good.  Stars are stars in the NBA (like many other sports) because they  excel in a certain aspect of the game while not being a liability in others.  It's what separates Joe Johnson from Jamal Crawford.  And while you can find any number of elite shooters, scorers, rebounders, or defenders scattered throughout the NBA, it's rare to find elite ones who are also competent in the other areas of the game.

So the "Role Player" exists on championship teams not because he is rare but because he is so common.  More to the point, championship-caliber teams find a good balance of role players because they have the luxury of plugging specific holes, not because they unearth the most diamonds in the rough.  Meanwhile, bad teams (typically) founder because they can't find the elusive core to build around in the first place.  When you run the Charlotte Bobcats, you can't get out of the basement by signing a couple of energy players and a three-point specialist.  You have to find the two or three players that are going to do all of the other work first.  We see a lot of a bad teams filled with mismatched role players because they're searching for the one who will break through and be a real star.  We don't see many collections of stars fail because they can't find a Malik Rose.

The problem is that people conflate the need for a supporting cast for a single star with the need for a supporting cast for a core of stars.  The former is the hard part, and it's what has doomed so many players (LeBron in Cleveland, Garnett in Minnesota, Wade these past couple of years in Miami).  When a star can't reach the pinnacle on his own and people clamor for roster support, they don't mean Bruce Bowen and Robert Horry.  To win, an NBA team needs a superstar and a complementary supporting star as the second option.  Cleveland is a perfect example.  They've had a well-rounded roster for the past several years, but no real #2 option to carry the team when James is slumping.  They've got shooters, defenders, and energy guys to spare: Mo Williams, Anderson Varejao, J.J. Hickson, etc. are role players.  What they don't have is anything else.  And they've never reached the pinnacle because of it.

Conversely, look at the recent Big Three in Boston.  Once the Celtics had assembled their star core of Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen, and Paul Pierce, the rest fell into place immediately.  They won right off the bat, because guys like Kendrick Perkins, Big Baby Davis, Tony Allen, James Posey, etc. are not difficult to find.  The same is true for Duncan & Parker; Kobe, Gasol, and Odom; Shaq & Kobe; etc.

People forget that, relative to other sports, basketball is played with very small teams.  Three stars account for 60% of a team's starters, and, if they each average 36 minutes per night, by themselves, bring in 45% of their team's total minutes.  (For the record, James has played 40 mpg for his career, Wade 38 mpg, and Bosh 37 mpg.)  Then remember that these three stars are all among the top ten players in the league (and two of the league's top three).  Imagine giving a baseball team five of the league's best hitters, three of its best starting pitchers, and a handful of its best relievers.  Or give a football team an elite quarterback, running back, and receiver, three top offensive linemen, and half a dozen of the league's best defensive starters.  When there's only half a game left take care of, it shouldn't be surprising that teams find sentient beings capable of filling those other minutes.

After the jump, I'll look at some recent championship rosters (and some fabled championship "role players"), and compare them to what the Heat stand to get this off-season.

Because teams must fill an array of roles, championship rosters end up with an array of role players: the interior defender/rebounder (5-time champ Dennis Rodman), the outside shooter (5-time champ Steve Kerr), the perimeter defender (3-time champ Bruce Bowen), and so on.  Sometimes there's an "energy guy" who pretty much runs around a lot (3-time champ Devean George).  And people often reserve a "role" for a wholesome veteran who's not particularly good at any one thing, but competent at several.  We'll call him the "glue guy" or "Robert Horry."

So with the requisite superstar and one or two all-star types (who we assume are going to take care of most of the ballhandling, scoring, rebounding, and leadership), that leaves the typical championship team with a slate of around eight or nine real contributors, about five of whom are the lauded "role" players.

To illustrate, here's some relatively recent champions and their top 9 rotation players (based on minutes played).  I chose the teams mostly at random, but I tried to find consistently great teams with somewhat different cores.  The charts show the players, their playing time, scoring, rebounding, and assist averages, outside shooting percentages, and maybe most importantly their efficiency rating (PER) as formulated by John Hollinger:

Despite the relatively different cores, we see some commonalities.  Outside the central stars, all of these teams fill the same roles.  All have a bench player dedicated to outside shooting (and little more)—Kerr, Barry, and House.  All have plenty of energy players and the proverbial "glue" veteran.  And where the stars don't provide it, all have dedicated interior or perimeter defenders (Rodman, Bowen, Perkins, etc.).  But the main point is that all fill the necessary roles with someone in their top 9 rotation. 

But another thing is clear:  The role players are almost unanimously less efficient than the league average of 15.0 PER.  This is surprising both because so many of these players are the most celebrated role-fillers in history and because it is typically easier to play efficiently for  limited minutes as a reserve rather than the for 30+ as a stater.  Even more, we'd assume that no-nonsense guys filling their roles would be some of the most efficient players around.  In any event, they're not.

Now let's see where the Heat 2.0 stand:  They've got a do-everything megastar in James, a superstar scorer in Wade, and a star inside presence in Bosh.  So off the bat, they are loaded at the top more than any team in recent memory—and loaded at every key aspect of the game with perhaps the exception of outside shooting and defense (if we don't want to tire our superstars out in the first half).  They also have Mario Chalmers (our first role player!).   If Chalmers were only three years older, we'd comfortably call him a glue guy.  He's a pretty good defender, can create his own shot, and finds his teammates, well, adequately.  As a rookie he had a campaign very similar to Rondo's first year—just without the sophomore improvement or upside to go along with it.  Fortunately on this team, he's not going to have to run the offense too much, so he can focus on perimeter shooting (which he is pretty good at) and defending.  We'll call him an energy guy.

Now that they've dumped Michael Beasley for nothing, we're told the Heat are also in line to sign swingman, deadly shooter, and flat out scorer Mike Miller.  On other teams, Miller is the second or third scoring option.  Here, he's the fourth, and a role player.  So now the Heat have an outside shooter—one of the best in the game—and a killer bench scorer.  It's kind of like when Ron Harper first came to the Bulls, only Miller doesn't even need to start.

So there's five players, and the Heat will need to fill the rest of the roster with minimum contracts.  Lucky for them, their primary need at this point is toughness and energy—in other words, second round draft picks.  Even being conservative with who's available, they have an easy path to the top of the league.  Here's what they're looking at:

Interior Defenders:  The Heat have a unique luxury.  Whoever they start up front with Bosh doesn't need to be capable of scoring a single point.  Etan Thomas, Shelden Williams, Ben Wallace, D.J. Mbenga, Joel Anthony, Kurt Thomas, Adonal Foyle, Brian Skinner, and many others are currently available and probably not looking to bring much more than the minimum back.  The Heat are already bringing back above-average defender Joel Anthony, so I'll choose randomly and say they get Etan Thomas to provide some toughness alongside of him.  Rookie Dexter Pittman can score on the block while Bosh catches his breath, so I'll leave it there for now.

Perimeter Defenders/Energy Guys: We've got another long list of potentially interested players:  Raja Bell, Trenton Hassell, Devean George, Ime Udoka, Damien Wilkins, Bobby Simmons, Marquis Daniels, and more.  Bell would be a perfect addition, but I'll be conservative and say they get Ime Udoka and Devean George—hardly a stretch.  

Outside Shooters: The thing about Steve Kerr is that everyone has a Steve Kerr.  Hell, this Heat team already has a Steve Kerr++ in Mike Miller.  There's a handful of other guys available who might be interested, lead by Eddie House, but I'll be conservative and say that Chris Quinn returns to Miami where he's already played meaningful minutes as the Kerr role.

Other Bodies:  Throw in someone like Jason Williams as a backup point guard, the Heat's two other second round picks this year (Jarvis Vanardo, and Da'Sean Butler), and Jonathan Bender or someone to sit at the end of the bench, and there you have a full roster.

Here's the purely hypothetical Heat Roster:

First, none of the three sample teams has a trio even resembling Miami's new core.  The closest is the Celtics' Big Three, but those guys were all over 30, beginning the twilights of their careers.  James, Wade, and Bosh meanwhile are coming off the best seasons of their careers and only Wade is older than 26.  Second, of my list, only the Bulls had a bench scorer as dangerous as Miller (Toni Kukoc).

As for the remaining pieces, they're largely a wash.  Mario Chalmers and whoever starts alongside Bosh are the weaknesses of the starters, but they compare favorably to the 4th and 5th starters on all of the other rosters.  And the bench is right in line with the others'.  This shouldn't be too surprising.  Even at the league minimum, it's not too hard to find a handful of guys who can play 20 minutes and give you half a dozen points and some consistent effort.  Moreover, judging by PER, the only true weaknesses of the (hypothetical) Heat's bench are Ime Udoka and Joel Anthony.  But a few responses: (1) those are conservative estimates of who the Heat can convince to sign; (2) they are both primarily defensive players and defense doesn't translate well to PER (Bruce Bowen started and played 30 minutes at a sub-10 PER); and (3) all of the championship rosters had similar weak spots in their top-9 (let alone top-12).  Even more, the most comparable team, the 2008 Celtics, had a (sticking with PER as the metric) terrible bench.  Not a single player on that Celtics bench team managed a PER above 13, and three of the top four couldn't climb above 12.

Of course the roster listed above is purely conjecture.  But the point is who cares? Maybe I am wrong and the Heat get Kurt Thomas, not Etan Thomas.  Maybe they get Bobby Simmons and Damien Wilkins, not Ime Udoka and Devean George.  Maybe its Eddie House not Chris Quinn.  Hell, maybe it's an even better scenario and they get Udonis Haslem and Derek Fisher.

But they could take virtually any assortment of the names mentioned, fill them into the gaps listed, and come away with a championship team.  Because a rebound here, half of a PER point there, and you still have basically the same team.  The Heat can have whatever journeymen they choose and, so long as they sign the right balance of skill sets, they'll come out perfectly fine.

Championship teams win because they fill the right roles—not because they fill them with the right people. 

** There's of course more to the concern over the Big Three meshing than I care to take up here.  Bill Simmons, if we were "buddies" who hung out in Vegas, would say to me: "Who's the Alpha Dog?"  But if these guys are taking slightly less money and substantially less (individual) prestige to work this out in the first place, I'll assume that they're prepared to share a last shot or two.  Sure James and Wade might erupt into Kobe and Shaq, but until I see them actually headed that way, I'll hold off my doubt.  I am actually somewhat excited to see James in his new role, because if he embraces it, he could be the most exciting point guard in my basketball-viewing lifetime.