Small ball is a strategy of using smaller, faster, more skilled lineups, often without a traditional centre, to gain advantages in speed, spacing, and switching.
Small ball trades size for everything else. A small ball lineup replaces the traditional centre with a forward, sometimes with five perimeter players, accepting worse rebounding and rim protection in exchange for five shooters, five ball handlers, and a defence that can switch every screen without a slow big man being stranded on a guard.
Its famous proofs of concept anchor modern history. Don Nelson's run and gun experiments ran small for decades, the 2015 Warriors' small lineup, with a six foot six forward at centre in the Finals, became the strategy's championship monument, and the 2020 Houston Rockets pushed the idea to its extreme by trading away their centre and playing entire games with nobody taller than six foot seven on the floor.
Small ball is now less a gambit than a phase of every game, since most teams close important minutes with a small unit. Quiz questions use it as the strategic signature of the spacing era, the answer to why centres shoot threes, why power forwards became wings, and why the tallest lineup no longer wins by default.
In use"Down a centre, they went to small ball and ran the bigger team off the floor for six minutes."