Positionless Basketball
Positionless basketball refers to the idea that the old, traditional five positions (PG, SG, SF, PF, C) are no longer the best way to describe how players actually play on the floor. There are centers who bring up the ball, point guards who aren't specializing in playmaking, lineups with average height of 6'8, the landscape of the modern NBA is changing past positions. Instead of relying on a single position label, SimulNBA groups players by Role based on what they actually do in games.
The five traditional positions (PG, SG, SF, PF, C) describe where a player used to line up, not what they actually do on the floor. A stretch four who shoots threes and a bruising post-up four have almost nothing in common, even though a scoreboard would list them both as "PF."
A Role groups players by what they actually do on the floor, so it regularly pulls together players from completely different traditional positions. Here are three roles, each shared by a guard and a big.
The flip side is just as common: two players can share a traditional position and play completely different roles. Here's each player's play-type mix, pulled straight from their Player Card. Click a chart to see the full breakdown.
