In the grand scheme of things, a team’s opening night starting lineup doesn’t have to be all that important. The starting lineup doesn’t play the whole game, after all. And coaches regularly change that lineup as a season progresses for dozens of possible reasons. Who you are on opening night isn’t necessarily who you’ll be at the end of the season.
But there’s something symbolic about a team’s starting lineup. It may not represent who the team actually is so much as who a team wants to be. It can represent a stylistic declaration. Are we a big team or a small one? Do we emphasize offense or defense? Are we putting our five best players on the floor or the five that fit best together? The season is a months-long process of exploration. By April, the teams that hope to be playing into May and June have hopefully used that process to figure out who they are and what they need to be to win at the highest level. The players you put on the floor to begin the season are your starting point.
So with the season fast approaching, let’s look at some of the teams that seemingly haven’t settled on starting lineups, examine the possibilities, and try to figure out where they should begin the 2025-26 season.
New York’s broken starting lineup was one of the major topics of the 2025 postseason. From Jan. 1 through the end of the regular season, the five-man unit of Jalen Brunson, Karl-Anthony Towns, Mikal Bridges, OG Anunoby and Josh Hart allowed nine more points than it scored. The playoffs were worse. By the time Tom Thibodeau accepted defeat, it was too late. The Knicks were already down 2-0 in the Eastern Conference finals. He’s now out of a job in part because of that lineup’s issues.
The first four players are seemingly locked in. The question is the Hart spot. The early favorite for it seems to be Mitchell Robinson, who missed most of last season but shined in the playoffs. The appeal is obvious. Robinson covers Towns’ limitations as a rim-protector. Playing the two of them together elevates New York’s offensive rebounding to where it was in 2023 and 2024, when it was at the top of the league. As Hart was rarely guarded on the perimeter anyway, the notion that playing two bigs would stifle New York’s spacing is a tad overblown.
The real concern for Robinson is durability. He’s played 70 games once in his career and has appeared in just 48 over the past two seasons. If he’s playing meaningful minutes with the starters and serving as the center when Towns rests, it’s going to be hard to keep him below, say, 26 to 28 minutes per game. If the goal is to get him to April healthy, such a workload seems dangerous. He’s never played 28 minutes per game in his career. Part of what facilitated last year’s dominant postseason was the fact that he didn’t play until the end of February. He just didn’t have much time to suffer another injury. It probably isn’t realistic to assume he can last six months as a starter.
For this reason, a large slice of New York’s fandom has advocated an alternative: Deuce McBride. It was a look Thibodeau practically never went to. McBride played only 82 possessions with the other starters last season. There are two reasonable holdups to boosting that figure. The first, and the one Thibodeau was probably most concerned with, is size. Playing two small guards with a center that doesn’t protect the rim is potentially quite dangerous on defense. The other is balance. Bringing Hart and Robinson off of the bench forces a total non-shooter and an iffy shooter to play most of their minutes together. That compromises the spacing of bench units.
But the benefits are potentially enormous. Offensively, McBride is too talented a shooter for opponents to guard him with a center as they did Hart. That prevents defenses from using three defenders against the Brunson-Towns pick-and-roll, which never quite gained traction last season largely because of Hart. If properly spaced, that’s a potentially lethal play. Defensively, while McBride is small, he’s a ferocious point-of-attack defender that’s eager to get physical. Bridges is not. At this point in his career, he’s more comfortable as an off-ball playmaker. Playing the two of them together would therefore pay dividends for Bridges, who has slipped significantly from his former All-Defense form.
There’s no perfect answer here. Whether it’s Robinson or Hart or McBride, every option comes with drawbacks. The best-case scenario for the Knicks would probably be to mix and match. Mike Brown has 82 games to see how all three versions of the starting lineup work and how each starting lineup affects the bench units that would be attached to them. That was Thibodeau’s biggest failing in New York. We don’t know the right answer today. We just need to figure it out by April.
If Fred VanVleet were healthy, there’d be nothing to talk about here. He’d be starting alongside Amen Thompson, Kevin Durant, Jabari Smith and Alperen Sengun. Now that he isn’t, the Rockets have some soul-searching to do.
Ime Udoka barely used Reed Sheppard last season. Rafael Stone’s front office took steps to ensure that he’d have to this year. Sheppard, VanVleet and Aaron Holiday are the only real guards on the team. But jumping from “barely plays” to “starting on a team with championship ambitions” is a pretty significant leap. If Holiday were a bit better or they had more immediate access to their contracts from a trade perspective (many are locked until Dec. 15), they might not feel comfortable giving Sheppard the ball. As it stands, they may not have a choice.
Fortunately, Sheppard’s theoretical fit is strong. The Rockets just ranked 21st in 3-point attempts and percentage. They badly needed shooting regardless. Sheppard brings quite a bit of it, yet he won’t need to monopolize the ball. If Houston wants a point guard who will get out of the way while Kevin Durant and Alperen Sengun work, Sheppard can do that. He can space the floor as Amen Thompson soaks up more ball-handling possessions. That might be the silver lining to all of this. Without VanVleet, they’ll have a far better idea of who Thompson and Sheppard are going to grow into when this year is done. Sheppard’s size is a problem on defense, but he was an elite defensive playmaker in college. On this roster, with a nearly limitless supply of long wings, he’ll be able to gamble a bit more frequently.
Yet starting a player so young and so unproven would be fairly out of character for Udoka, especially given the defensive question marks that come with him. This is a coach who built around two centers that don’t shoot last season. If he feels he has to start another wing like Tari Eason or Dorian Finney-Smith (when he’s healthy), he’ll do so. Sheppard is only going to start if he proves in camp that he deserves to. The Rockets badly hope that he will. Durant’s individual offense was obviously a godsend, but this roster badly needed a low-maintenance deadeye shooter as well. So many of their bigger and defense-first lineups were just begging for an inch of breathing room. If Sheppard can bring it, Houston’s championship hopes may not be as dead as many assumed once VanVleet went down.
We can say pretty safely that we know four Laker starters when everyone is healthy: Luka Dončić, LeBron James, Austin Reaves and Deandre Ayton will start. Offensively, you’re in great shape with that group. Defensively? Well, it might not be quite as bad as it seems. Ayton was far better at his Phoenix peak, but it’s possible a change of scenery reinvigorates him. James may be 40 (and will miss the start of the season for the first time in his 23-year career), but he showed last year that he’s still a strong defender when he wants to be. Dončić is at least in shape. But still, that’s two players who were liabilities last season, a quadragenarian and Ayton, who hasn’t consistently tried on defense for several years. Logically, you probably want the fifth starter to be a defender.
But who? If Marcus Smart is healthy, he’s a former Defensive Player of the Year. But at this stage of his career, he’s far better at defending bigger players than he is at hounding guards. He might also be better in a role that limits his minutes, purely from a health perspective. Jarred Vanderbilt can obviously defend guards, but he’s such an offensive liability that the Lakers may view the tradeoff as a net negative. Remember, their strength is ball-handling more than spacing. Putting a total non-shooter like Vanderbilt on the floor neuters that ball-handling because it means forcing them to operate with far less room.
The alternative here is to just embrace the offense and start Rui Hachimura. Good luck stopping that five. There’s no difference between wins in the 100s and wins in the 120s. Starting Hachimura might also be necessary from a roster-building standpoint. He’s on an expiring contract. Starting him pumps up his value if the Lakers plan to trade him to preserve cap flexibility. It also keeps him engaged while he’s playing for a contract. The last thing they need is for him to grow uncomfortable in a lesser role. Hachimura was a full-time starter last season. Asking anyone to take a demotion, regardless of team needs, can make things uncomfortable in the locker room.
This might be a fluid situation. Starting Hachimura early, while they evaluate what Smart still has in the tank and how they can milk any offensive value out of Vanderbilt, might make sense. The Lakers have a real history of making trades during the season as well. Their hope is that Smart or Vanderbilt eventually becomes their top defender. It’s also possible that they find that player midseason, and starting Hachimura in the interim maintains continuity from last year’s team. For now, that seems like the likeliest approach.
Donovan Clingan is presumably going to start for the Blazers at center. One position solved. The other four, at least once everyone is healthy, should be relatively straightforward. Portland has a 21-year-old guard it drafted No. 3 overall (Scoot Henderson) and a 22-year-old guard (Shaedon Sharpe) it drafted No. 7 overall. They should probably be the starting backcourt. It also has a 24-year-old forward (Deni Avdija) it traded for and a 25-year-old forward (Toumani Camara) it traded for that were the two best players on the team last season. They should also probably start. Again, this should be simple.
But Portland also traded for Jrue Holiday over the summer. Holiday, at this stage of his career, probably did not want to join a team competing for a Play-In berth, and he certainly wouldn’t want to come off the bench for such a team after starting for multiple champions. His stature around the league is such that bringing him off of the bench could create issues in the locker room, though Holiday is the consummate professional and likely wouldn’t cause them intentionally. There is at least an argument to start him early in the season while Henderson recovers from an injury. But further complicating matters is the presence of the declining Jerami Grant, who said at media day that he doesn’t expect to come off of the bench either.
The logical play for a team in Portland’s position is to emphasize the youth. They aren’t ready to compete for a championship yet, but there’s talent in the building here. They just need to find a cornerstone player or two. Those four younger players all have chances to fill such a role, but their best hope of getting there involves starting. Henderson has started only 42 games in two years. Sharpe was removed from the starting lineup for a stretch last season. Yes, there’s something to be said for forcing younger players to earn their keep, but at a certain point, an organization’s priorities need to be in order. It’s time to see what they have with these guys. Doing so is far more important than chasing a Play-In berth.
Anthony Davis is a center. I know that. You know that. Everyone but the Dallas Mavericks seem to know that. Unfortunately, the Mavericks are the ones making the decision here, so the expectation here is that Davis will start alongside a center, either Dereck Lively or Daniel Gafford, immediately giving Dallas two big men who aren’t real threats from 3-point range. Cooper Flagg will be the small forward, and fortunately, he doesn’t really take anything off the table. However, if the Mavericks are going to have a functional offense, they are going to have to start offense-centric guards.
So let’s say that’s D’Angelo Russell and Klay Thompson. Five years ago? You’re feeling pretty good about that backcourt. Today, Thompson can really only defend big forwards, and Russell can’t really defend anyone at all. So in order to even hit the bare minimum from an offensive standpoint, Dallas would probably have to accept an inability to defend the point of attack unless Flagg, as a rookie in a power forward’s body, is capable of consistently defending guards. That feels like an unfair expectation. Dallas does have point-of-attack guards it could use. Max Christie, for instance, or against bigger players, Naji Marshall. But with offense at such a premium, removing Russell or Thompson would get iffy. Again, there’s a possibility that Flagg just solves this. There have been some rumblings about him playing point guard, and if he can do that, it solves some problems for Dallas. But it’s likelier that him doing so is a developmental tactic that helps down the line than an immediately beneficial short-term strategy.
The Mavericks could address all of this by playing Davis at center. He and Flagg as the front court would still be a dominant defensive pairing. Thompson could defend forwards. Russell could play point guard on offense. The fifth starter could defend primary opposing ball-handlers. This is the best version of the current Dallas personnel. But to be frank, if the Mavericks knew how to optimize their roster, they’d still have Luka Dončić. They’re committed to this double-big alignment. That’s going to create deficiencies elsewhere on this extraordinarily unbalanced roster, and which deficiencies they choose to address and ignore will say quite a bit about what kind of team they’re trying to put around Davis and Flagg.