Three role players who could swing the NBA season
The non-superstar X-factors on the league's biggest contenders, including Jaden McDaniels and Josh Giddey.
Every year, a select few role players surrounding the league’s stars make an outsized impact in the biggest games of the year. Consider Aaron Gordon’s physical dominance for the champion Nuggets, or the sudden emergence of Andrew Wiggins as the second-best player on the 2022 Warriors.
These elite role players fill out closing lineups, solve or create matchup problems, and dictate a team’s approach to strategy. On the other hand, a team’s role guys could prove a weakness in the pressure cooker of the playoffs.
Let’s take a look at some role players on high-level contenders who could prove important in big games.
Josh Giddey, OKC Thunder
Prediction: The fifth starter spot in OKC is going to see some controversy in the postseason. Coach Mark Daigneault has committed to starting Giddey — 42 starts in his 42 games played — but realizes that Giddey’s weaknesses make him hard to play in big spots.
Daigneault has gone with sharphooter Isaiah Joe more often than Giddey in closing lineups. Joe has logged 38 clutch minutes, per NBA.com, compared to Giddey’s 20.
The issues with Giddey start on offense. Opponents deem him a weak link and often place their rim protecting centers on him in order to put a wing defender on Chet Holmgren — allowing them to switch Holmgren’s pick and rolls with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. The plan is to let Giddey shoot threes.
Sometimes, he makes them pay. Take the Thunder’s marquee win over the Celtics in early January, when he hit four threes as Kristaps Porzingis sagged away. But more often, he turns down the shots and slows down OKC’s fast-moving offensive operation.
Centers who linger in the paint tone down Giddey’s strengths: crafty passing and interior shotmaking. They make him indecisive and unsure. Daigneault gets creative with spacing to use Giddey as a cutter and create dilemmas for rim protectors, but hasn’t often leveraged Giddey as a screen-setter.
It’s a delicate balance for Daigneault, who values Giddey’s connective passing, rebounding, and cutting. But consider that on 143 spot-up possessions (i.e., attacking a closeout), Giddey has scored just 0.87 points per possession — in the 18th percentile of all NBA players. Lu Dort is at 1.14, and Joe is at a remarkable 1.33.
Add in Giddey’s defensive weakness (he often guards the opponent’s least threatening player) and it becomes clear why Giddey gets phased out in big moments. The natural follow-up: is Giddey enough of a core piece to be immune to a playoff benching?
Much of OKC’s strategy in a theoretical playoff series against a fellow conference elite would revolve around what to do when, say, Rudy Gobert or Nikola Jokic guards Giddey. Why not erase that weakness and ride with a better shooter (Joe) or defender (Aaron Wiggins, Cason Wallace)?
That’s where the trade deadline dilemma comes in. It seems unlikely that OKC will push too many chips in, but that fifth starter/closer spot could prove a weakness if Joe or Wallace makes the group so small as to be untenable against Denver or the Clippers.
Jaden McDaniels, Minnesota Timberwolves
McDaniels, in contrast to Giddey, is not in danger of getting played off the floor. He is a crucial part of the Wolves’ league-best defense, and his budding offensive growth could be a swing factor in the playoffs.
Let’s start with the defense. He guards the opponent’s best perimeter player every night, shifting between quick, shifty guards and bulldozing power forwards. Minnesota’s defensive dominance, led by Gobert in drop coverage, depends on its perimeter defenders to skirt around screens and funnel their man into the trees around the rim. McDaniels is arguably the best in the league at it.
Explaining McDaniels through numbers is difficult. He is not a league-leader in steals and blocks — he does not take undue risks —and the Wolves technically have a higher defensive rating when he’s on the court than when he sits, likely a result of matching his minutes with opposing stars.
But consider the Wolves’ elite shot profile. They give up the second-most midrange attempts per game and the seventh-most shots in floater range — in the paint, but outside the restricted area. Opponents shoot just 39% in both of those areas, among the lowest in the league. With McDaniels sticking close to ball-handlers, the Wolves force opponents into tough twos instead of layups and threes.
Here’s something else: Opponents shoot five percentage points lower than their average when McDaniels is guarding them, an elite number that puts him in line with the league’s other dominant defenders.
His long arms envelop opposing stars, keeping him constantly in position to contest shots:
Jalen Brunson jab steps and tries to reject an Isaiah Hartenstein screen, but McDaniels doesn’t bite — instead, he forces Brunson back toward the middle of the floor, where Gobert lurks in the paint. When Brunson rises for a three, McDaniels affects the shot.
Watch him move his feet and keep Brunson out of the paint:
Brunson again rejects a screen, this time with the intent of avoiding Gobert. McDaniels runs with him and beats him to the spot, erasing the space. The cost is that Brunson has gained a little room for a pull-up, but McDaniels contests it well. The Wolves are happy to concede those all day as opposed to, say, a wide open kickout three.
He’s also elite at navigating screens:
He slides through an Anthony Davis screen like it’s not there, staying right next to LeBron James. Davis gets the offensive rebound, but McDaniels makes a second effort block.
In any playoff series, McDaniels will play a crucial role guarding the opponent’s best ball-handler. His versatility unlocks creative schemes. In a recent loss to the Thunder, for instance, McDaniels guarded Holmgren. Alongside Anthony Edwards and the vastly underrated Nickeil Alexander-Walker, he forms the league’s best group of perimeter defenders.
Keep an eye on his offense, where he has quietly showcased some new skills. He’s shooting 37% from three (including 43% from the corners) and looks more and more comfortable attacking closeouts from the corner. He’s shooting 55% on short midrange shots (between 5-14 feet from the rim). His Mikal Bridges-style pull-up twos are a nice source of late shot clock offense.
His connective passing and decision-making will continue to improve. As a fifth option, they don’t rely on him to score, but any time he makes a play off the bounce, it’s a nice bonus for a team without an elite offense.
Jrue Holiday, Boston Celtics
It feels a little weird to call Jrue Holiday a role player. But on this stacked Celtics team, with its wealth of offensive options, that’s where we are. Offensively, Holiday has settled into a much more secondary option compared to where he was for years in Milwaukee and New Orleans.
He’s sporting his lowest usage rate since his rookie year. He’s not shooting as many pull-up three-pointers as he did with the Bucks, and he’s running fewer pick-and-rolls.
That means he’s more of a floor-spacer and shooter on a three-point-happy Celtics team, which generates heaps of open looks. He’s shooting 45% on catch-and-shoot three-pointers and producing 1.21 PPP when he attacks a closeout. That’s great!
But opponents have decided that Holiday is the least threatening offensive option among the Celtics’ top six players, often stashing their weaker defenders on him. In some big recent games, teams have even put a ranging rim protector or big man (Giannis Antetokounmpo, Nikola Jokic) on him, betting that Holiday wouldn’t make them pay.
The bet seems a bit crazy in theory, considering Holiday’s All-Star pedigree, but his three-point volume is low (just two catch-and-shoot attempts a game) and his drives can be meandering — lacking the burst they had when he was younger. His game is also based more on bruising physicality, which doesn’t work as well against a guy like Giannis.
Coach Joe Mazzulla took the surprising step of benching Holiday down the stretch of a marquee game against the Thunder in early January in favor of Payton Pritchard, aiming for more shooting.
Defensively, of course, Holiday is one-of-a-kind. His skillset gives Mazzulla the freedom to try all sorts of creative schemes. Holiday has guarded Jokic, Joel Embiid, and Giannis as a primary assignment this season. Mazzulla has designed a 2-3(ish) zone that places Holiday in the middle as an all-seeing destroyer.
Holiday is also a big reason for the increased sophistication of the Celtics’ defense. They operate on a string. Holiday, for instance, will step away from his man on the perimeter and stop a ball-handler who maneuvered into the paint, with the original defender peeling away to Holiday’s guy. It’s advanced, playoff-level stuff, and Holiday’s defensive IQ and versatility is a big reason.
Mazzulla will surely design a defensive scheme around Holiday in the playoffs. But if teams commit to defending Holiday with a rim protector, putting a wing on Kristaps Porzingis, then Mazzulla might have difficult decisions late in games. A more trigger-happy Holiday from the perimeter could help this team.