WNBA: Are double-big lineups still effective?

The recent explosion of skill in the WNBA has been well televised. From A’ja Wilson’s historic scoring season to Angel Reese smashing rebound records as a rookie, players are undeniably better than ever. WNBA basketball is ascending, but coaching and development lag a step behind talent. The WNBA is a young league, and teams are too comfortable existing within a conservative brand of basketball.

To put it plainly, double-big lineups are on their last legs in the WNBA, and it isn’t because of a lack of personnel. An influx of generational post prospects hasn’t been able to catalyze a tangible second wind for a genre of basketball which should have been left in the 2010s. The 3-point revolution has captivated hoops worldwide, and double-big lineups are just too contradictory.

Uncomfortable questions about post-player coexistence plague the roadmaps for young teams. Can Reese and Kamilla Cardoso coexist for the Chicago Sky without one of them developing a perimeter skillset? Can the Washington Mystics or the Los Angeles Sparks invest a top-three pick on USC senior Kiki Iriafen, who’s only attempted seven 3-pointers in her college career, knowing that non-shooting bigs already comprise the pillars of their young cores? Does redundancy become dangerous?

Where do double-big lineups stand today?

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Although it introduces subliminal subjectivity, my definition of a “big” is derived from a combination of height and generally-accepted positional archetype. The height threshold I’m using for the WNBA is 6-foot-3, with four exceptions. Alyssa Thomas and Nneka Ogwumike both fall short, but have skillsets more akin to a traditional big than a wing; therefore, I will be considering them bigs. Breanna Stewart and DeWanna Bonner both exceed the threshold, but are indisputably wings. Those four are far from the only league-wide exceptions, but they’re the only four who appear in the lineup stats being referenced.

Using the 6-foot-3 threshold, with noted exceptions, eight out of the 12 WNBA teams’ (66.7 percent) most played lineups in 2024 have featured two bigs. Had Cameron Brink not gotten injured, it can be reasonably assumed that the Sparks would fit the double-big criteria as well. Brink started alongside Dearica Hamby every game that the two were available. Accepting that the Sparks most used lineup would feature Brink and Hamby sans injury, nine out of the 12 teams have favored double-big lineups this season. The teams, and the bigs, can be found below:

Las Vegas Aces: A’ja Wilson, Kiah Stokes

Los Angeles Sparks: Dearica Hamby, Cameron Brink

Dallas Wings: Teaira McCowan, Monique Billings

Washington Mystics: Stefanie Dolson, Aaliyah Edwards

Connecticut Sun: Brionna Jones, Alyssa Thomas

Indiana Fever: NaLyssa Smith, Aliyah Boston

Seattle Storm: Nneka Ogwumike, Ezi Magbegor

Chicago Sky: Angel Reese, Kamilla Cardoso

Atlanta Dream: Tina Charles, Cheyenne Parker

The three teams who haven’t favored double-big lineups are the New York Liberty, the Phoenix Mercury and the Minnesota Lynx.

If so many teams are dead set on deploying big lineups, surely they must be the most efficient, right? Not exactly. Out of the 12 teams, only five have a most efficient lineup (based on net rating, minimum 30 minutes played) that features two bigs. Seven teams have a most efficient lineup that features only one, or zero, bigs. So why do teams swear by post players, and where are they coming up short?

The temptations of paint dominance

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Anyone who’s held even a passive interest in basketball analytics is probably familiar with Dean Oliver. Oliver wrote the 2002 book Basketball on Paper, championed by many as the Magna Carta of hoop analytics. He joined the Seattle Supersonics front office in 2004, becoming the first ever full-time statistical analyst employed by an NBA team.

One of Oliver’s many theses states that basketball games are won and lost through four main factors: shooting (measured by eFG%), turnovers (measured by TOV%), rebounding (measured by OREB% and DREB%), and free throws (measured by FTr%). These “four factors” have become so popular in basketball analysis that the WNBA and NBA have dedicated pages in their databases for their tracking.

So, if double-big lineups are seemingly inefficient, where do they fall short in the four factors? To answer that, let’s first eliminate the obvious. Rebounding is out of the question—double-big lineups clearly boost both offensive and defensive rebounding rates across all iterations of the sport.

Shooting efficiency proves to be the first noticeable hitch for double-big lineups. Of the top-50 two-player lineups, ranked by team-wide effective field goal percentage when both players are on the floor, only two are double-bigs: A’ja Wilson and Megan Gustafson (No. 5) and Natasha Howard and Teaira McCowan (No. 48). All 48 other spots are occupied by perimeter duos, or one perimeter and one post player. This shouldn’t deface the reputation of post players as efficient scorers; it instead highlights the spacing puzzle of double-big lineups. Post players clog up spacing, making it difficult for their teammates to score while multiple bigs are on the court.

Similarly, double-big lineups aren’t getting to the free-throw line at a remarkable rate. Only three of the top-25 two player lineups, ranked by team-wide free-throw rate when both players are on the floor, feature double-bigs. This can be easily chalked up to the same spacing paradox as before. Defenders who don’t have to worry about guarding the perimeter are granted too much freedom to roam and block shots. If you don’t put defenders in jeopardizing positions, they don’t have to foul.

Turnover ratio doesn’t seem to have a statistically significant connection to double-big lineups, but that isn’t to say that they’re advantageous in terms of ball-security. If anything, they are about the same as more modern guard-heavy lineups.

Some may conceivably argue that the benefits of double-big lineups present themselves on the defensive end of the floor, and that discourse about offensive inefficiency is oversaturated and missing the point. While it’s true that big defenders are necessary to deter shots at the rim, it can be reasoned that such lineups only survive on defense to the extent that they are being championed on offense. The moment you pit a double-big lineup against a five-out (all five players on the perimeter) lineup, defensive advantages are voided. What good are shot blockers when they’re glued to the perimeter? If they stray from their matchup to contest a shot at the rim, they concede an open 3 to a capable shooter. In modern basketball, the defensive prowess of double-big lineups is relatively meaningless. Deprived of offensive efficiency and defensive authority, double-big lineups are well past their expiration date.

A pace & space future?

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When teams embrace “four-out, one-in” lineups, constructed of only one post player, they reap the benefits of spacing. When the lone post player can shoot the 3, that spacing manifests tenfold.

NBA teams began to experiment with stretch-big lineups in the 2010s, ushering in what’s frequently referred to as the “pace & space” era. Pace & space basketball is all about speed, fluidity and separation. Teams don’t need elaborate pick-and-roll schemes to create offensive advantages when bigs can spread the floor with shooting. If the defense is stretched to the perimeter, one crossover is all it takes for an offensive player to get downhill into the empty paint. If someone helps recover to the drive, they leave a shooter open. Spacing enables speed.

The Liberty may soon become the blueprint of future WNBA offenses. They lead the league in offensive rating and shoot more 3-pointers than any other team. Jonquel Jones has evolved into the prototypical stretch-big—a 6-foot-6 center who shoots four 3s per game at a 38.9 percent clip. Because Jones can coax post defenders outwards, she vacates driving lanes for the likes of Breanna Stewart and Sabrina Ionescu, who have both become incredibly efficient inside the arc.

Players like Jones enable their team to maintain a shot-blocking anchor on defense without forfeiting offensive spacing. It’s never easy to facilitate 0-to-100 shooting development, but teams should view 3-point shooting as a necessity for modern player development at all positions.

Comparisons between men’s and women’s basketball can be admittedly untelling at times, but league trends should still be examined for the sake of interest. While the WNBA is trying to preserve paint dominance, the NBA is continuously straying from traditional post-play. The average height of an NBA player in 2024 is 6-foot-6.3, the lowest it’s been since the 1985 season. What happens if we look at NBA lineups in the same way we looked at WNBA ones? Using a 6-foot-11 height threshold, with the same aforementioned positional archetype knowledge, only five out of 30 NBA teams had a most played lineup that featured two bigs. That’s 15.6 percent, compared to 75 percent in the W. Shifting to the efficiency perspective, only two of 30 teams had a most efficient lineup (once again based on net rating, minimum 60 minutes played) that featured two bigs.

It should be expected that WNBA teams begin to shy away from double-big lineups, and shift towards developing forwards into floor-spacers. However, the NBA is also at the forefront of basketball innovation, existing more than one “phase” ahead of the WNBA. The NBA has deviated from their own stretch-big chapter, steadily flowing into an era where there are almost no bigs at all. The most sought-after archetype of NBA player is the two-way wing: big perimeter players who can shoot the 3, drive, and wreak havoc on defense. To continue to harp on the blueprint being woven by the Liberty, Stewart is the closest thing to a modern NBA superstar in the WNBA—a 6-foot-4 wing who can shoot, drive and block shots.

Of course, WNBA teams shouldn’t get ahead of themselves. Once teams plug their own misguided desires for double-big dominance, maybe then they look towards the two-way wings of the future. Basketball nirvana may resemble ten Breanna Stewart’s running up and down the court with reckless abandon, but until then, some decent spacing will do just fine.