If the 2025 NBA Finals are any indication, the age of the superteam may be over.
Big Threes have dominated the NBA for the past 15-plus years. Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen joined forces in 2007 and immediately won a championship. Three years later, LeBron James and Chris Bosh joined Dwyane Wade in Miami and rattled off two titles and four straight Finals appearances. James then went back home to Cleveland, where he teamed up with Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love to dethrone the 73-win Golden State Warriors and win the first championship in Cavaliers history.
However, the NBA's latest collective bargaining agreement was designed to promote more parity throughout the league. It introduced punishing new restrictions for teams with expensive payrolls that will ultimately force them into making difficult decisions. Just ask the Boston Celtics, who went from winning the 2024 championship to staring down the prospect of tearing their roster down one year later.
Stars are still a critical component for any championship hopeful. The Oklahoma City Thunder have the league's reigning MVP in Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and another All-NBA selection in Jalen Williams. The Indiana Pacers are led by Tyrese Haliburton, who earned his second straight All-NBA nod this year, and three-time All-Star Pascal Siakam.
However, these playoffs have made it increasingly clear that depth matters more than ever in today's NBA. It's not just because of the new CBA, either.
Run, Run, Run
One of the biggest critiques of the modern NBA is the concept of "load management." Retired legends of the game often bristle when the topic comes up. However, there's a reason why teams have become proactive about buying players more rest throughout the grind of the 82-game regular season.
Citing NBA.com tracking data, Lev Akabas of Sportico noted that "players are running about 9% more distance per minute" on the court than they did a decade ago. Nevin Brown of the Above the Break Substack went a step further, creating a linear forecast model to estimate how much players ran in a season dating back to 1980. Teams went from averaging slightly less than 1,300 miles per season from 1980 through the mid-1990s to more than 1,500 these days.
The rapid increase in three-point volume and switch-heavy defensive schemes is forcing players to cover more ground than ever before. It thus stands to reason that fatigue could be a silent killer for teams that adhere to old-school rotation patterns in the playoffs.
Most teams keep nine or 10 players in their regular rotation during the regular season before beginning to whittle that down in the playoffs. As series progress, teams often shrink that down to seven or even six players.
To wit: In Game 7 of the 2010 NBA Finals, the Boston Celtics played only six players for more than five minutes. The Los Angeles Lakers went one player deeper, but Metta World Peace played a game-high 46 minutes (in a 48-minute game), while Kobe Bryant wasn't far behind at 45 minutes. On a related note, the two teams combined to shoot 33.8% in an offensive rock fight that ended in an 83-79 Lakers victory.
In this year's playoffs, both the Thunder and Pacers are playing nine players at least 10 minutes per game. Their depth helped them wear down the New York Knicks and Denver Nuggets, respectively, in the Eastern Conference Finals and Western Conference Semifinals.
"We definitely need it," Nuggets center Nikola Jokić said when asked about the importance of depth after his team lost to the Thunder. "It seems like the teams that have longer rotations, the longer benches, are the ones who are winning. Indiana, OKC, Minnesota."
Depth Is King
The new CBA may only accelerate this trend. Teams with three max contracts on their books—particularly those that begin at 35% of the salary cap instead of 25% or 30%—will find their hands increasingly tied by roster-building restrictions that are effectively designed to deplete their depth.
Under the previous CBA, there wasn't much of a penalty for crossing the first apron. Teams had a smaller mid-level exception (the taxpayer MLE rather than the non-taxpayer MLE) and couldn't receive players via sign-and-trade, but they were still able to take back 125% of the salary they sent out in any trade. Under the new CBA, teams can't take back a penny more in salary than they send out if they're over the first apron, nor can they sign someone off the buyout market who was previously earning more than the non-taxpayer MLE.
It's even worse for teams over the second apron. They lose access to any mid-level exception, can't send cash in trades, can't acquire players when they sign-and-trade their own free agents elsewhere and can't aggregate two smaller salaries to acquire a bigger contract via trade. In essence, they're limited to re-signing their own players and handing out minimum contracts in free agency.
The Phoenix Suns are the cautionary tale in that regard. They’re top-heavy with Devin Booker, Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal all on 35% max contracts, and they're woefully short on depth. When Grayson Allen suffered an ankle injury in last year's playoffs, they dropped to a seven-man rotation and got swept by the Minnesota Timberwolves in the first round.
In that series, Booker, Durant and Beal combined to take 191 of the Suns’ 303 shots. They were the only three Phoenix players to average more than eight points per game, while the Wolves had six players averaging double figures and Sixth Man of the Year Naz Reid chipped in 9.5 points per game off the bench. During the regular season this year, they Allen was their fourth-leading scorer with 10.6 points per game.
This year's Pacers had seven players in double figures during the regular season and six thus far in the playoffs. The Thunder also had seven in double figures during the regular season, although they have been more top-heavy in the playoffs with Gilgeous-Alexander, Williams and Holmgren accounting for a majority of their offense.
“We’ve preached depth this whole year,” Pacers point guard Tyrese Haliburton told reporters after they closed out the Knicks in the Eastern Conference Finals. “We keep talking about it, and it's not just a word we use for fun. This is our identity, and this is who we are, and I thought we did a great job of utilizing that. We had many different people step up.”
In that closeout Game 6, Andrew Nembhard erupted for 14 points on 6-of-12 shooting, eight assists and six steals after scuffling for most of the series. Obi Toppin chipped in 18 points and six rebounds in 25 minutes off the bench, which was only two fewer points than the entire Knicks bench scored. Those two helped the Pacers stave off a return trip to Madison Square Garden for Game 7 even though starting center Myles Turner and wing Aaron Nesmith both got into early foul trouble.
Timely role-player contributions are hardly unique to this year. Steve Kerr won five NBA championships with the Chicago Bulls and San Antonio Spurs while providing timely shooting off the bench. Seven-time champion Robert Horry earned the moniker "Big Shot Bob" due to his penchant for repeatedly rising to the moment in the playoffs.
But as fatigue sets in throughout a game or a series—particularly given the unique rigors of today’s NBA—depth will be more critical than ever before. Top-heavy teams built around three max contracts may find themselves at a clear disadvantage to those that better spread the wealth throughout their roster.
“I think it's a new blueprint for the league, man,” Turner said after Game 6. “I think the years of the superteams and stacking is just not as effective as it once was, you know? I mean, since I've been in the league, this NBA is very trendy. It just shifts. But the new trend now is just kind of what we're doing. OKC does the same thing. You know: young guys, get out and run, defend, and you know, use the power of friendship.”
Unless otherwise noted, all stats viaNBA.com,PBPStats,Cleaning the Glass orBasketball Reference. All salary information viaSpotrac and salary-cap information viaRealGM. All odds viaFanDuel Sportsbook.
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