The Hidden Equation That Separates Stars From Winners

Daniel Waddleton

Nov 24, 2025

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THE EARLY 2020s rivalry between the Memphis Grizzlies and Golden State Warriors has apparently leaked into Dallas, where Warriors legend Klay Thompson is finishing out his Hall of Fame career in a situation far less glamorous than he bargained for (thanks, Nico!).

If you missed it, during the November 22 matchup between Memphis and Dallas, Ja Morant -- in street clothes, from the bench -- approached Thompson during a timeout, and the two exchanged words. Morant seemed eager to double down later that night during teammate Cam Spencer’s postgame interview:

“Tell ’em who the best shooter in the house was. It wasn’t bro from Golden State.”

Thompson, for better or worse, has never backed down from an altercation. So when ESPN’s Tim MacMahon lobbed him a question about Morant afterwards, he didn’t mince his words.

“He’s a funny guy… he has a lot to say all the time, especially for a guy who rarely takes accountability,” Thompson said. “It was really just running his mouth, and he’s been running his mouth for a long time. It’s funny to talk like that when you’re on the bench -- it’s kind of been the story of his career so far.”

While it doesn’t appear this feud will stretch much beyond this moment between the players, it immediately sparked an NBA Twitter debate. The discourse machine wasted zero time jumping straight into the “who’s better?” conversation.

I came away shocked by some of the reactions. Sure, plenty of fans pointed to Thompson’s résumé: four championships, first-ballot Hall of Famer, one of the greatest shooters ever. However, I saw a disturbing number of people argue that none of that mattered, because Ja Morant is the better individual player. And then it got even worse, with some claiming that if you swapped Ja onto those Warriors teams, the same success (if not more) would’ve followed.

Reading those threads was… alarming.

I understand the internet is full of trolls and engagement farmers, but the number of people who seemed to genuinely believe an early-2020s Ja Morant is a better basketball player than peak Klay Thompson stunned me.

Assuming these are real, breathing human beings, I landed on one explanation. I think this debate goes deeper than the surface of Ja vs Klay. I believe it reveals a widespread misunderstanding of a concept that matters more at the NBA level than anywhere else in basketball.

This leads me to the question I'll attempt to answer today:

Why is scalability so overlooked in basketball discourse? Why don't people see this as one of the key parts of a players game?

In basketball, scalability (sometimes referred to as portability) is a qualitative measure of how well a player fits into different team contexts, particularly championship-level rosters with multiple other stars.

It essentially asks: how well does a player's skills retain their value as the talent around you increases.

This matters because even as basketball has become more positionless, it’s still fundamentally a game of roles. Only one player can have the ball at a time. If one guy is dominating possessions, what are the other four doing? You can’t play five rim protectors at once because then who's going to defend the perimeter.

Unless you’ve discovered a lineup of five players who are A+ at every single basketball skill, roster construction is about balance. Redundancy of skillsets can kill even the most talented of teams. Of course you need high-volume shot creators, you aren’t a contender without them. But you also need players whose skills don’t overlap with those engines, players who make sure the machine doesn’t break down.

This is where scalability separates players.

The great Ben Taylor of Thinking Basketball once illustrated this idea with a chart that you can see below.

"Floor-raisers" are your high-usage offensive engines. These players tilt the floor, draw two to the ball, force rotations, and just overall manufacture offense against set defenses. You can’t win four playoff rounds without at least one.

Upgrade your primary creator on a bad team and you’ll see immediate results. A better engine can exponentially improve a weak roster. However that impact doesn’t scale forever. Once a team reaches a certain level of quality, stacking more of the same archetype produces diminishing returns.

No matter how innovative offenses get, there will still always be only one ball. High-usage engines are naturally harder to scale because many aren’t optimized for lower-touch roles. They’re often not great catch-and-shoot or movement shooters, accustomed instead to shooting off a live dribble. They aren’t instinctive cutters or screeners. Defensively, intensity and instinct may suffer because of previous roles where energy has always been reserved for offense.

That's where "ceiling raisers" come into the picture.

Highly scalable players usually can’t drag a 20-win team into relevance. They are often incapable of driving offense on their own, or at least for long sustained stretches. But they’re the ones who turn very good teams into great ones.

Their value increases with talent because their skills don’t compete with stars, they complement them. They convert half-court advantages into points as elite catch-and-shoot threats or vertical finishers. They move without the ball as cutters and relocation shooters, straining the defense without ever touching the ball.

Defensively, the most scalable players often guard multiple positions, giving coaches lineup flexibility. Some can both defend on the perimeter and protect the rim, creating a stronger defensive infrastructure where the defense never feels upside down. They allow stars to conserve energy by absorbing difficult assignments.

They make the machine hum because they’re impactful without getting in the engine’s way. They are force multipliers in every sense of the term.

So back to our original question, if this attribute is so important, why is it consistently undervalued?

The answer starts less with basketball and more with psychology.

The first culprit is the availability heuristic: a mental shortcut where we overestimate the importance of the loudest, flashiest, most memorable examples. In basketball, fans have seen these less scalable heliocentric players work at the highest level. James Harden winning an MVP with 40% usage. Luka Dončić hogging the controller while dragging elite offenses out of defensively slanted rosters. LeBron and Kobe shouldering massive offensive burdens on championship winning teams long before “heliocentric” became a buzzword.

These are unicorn outcomes. But because they’re memorable, our brains treat them as normal. The failures fade. The graveyard of less scalable players who tried to replicate that role and couldn’t win at the highest level gets ignored. So when someone posts big numbers in a heliocentric environment, people assume they’re doing the same job as the greats without ever looking under the hood.

If you can’t be a Luka-level engine on a playoff offense, if it fair to ask how valuable your big numbers with the ball all the time actually are?

The second issue is narrative simplicity -- and this is where we attempt to land this plane at the Ja vs. Klay airport.

Narrative Simplicity supports the idea that fans love clean stories. One protagonist. One central figure. One guy with the ball deciding everything. Ja Morant fits that mold perfectly: huge scoring nights, heavy usage, absurd highlights. It’s easy to watch that and conclude, “He’s better.” The box score aligns with the eye test, and the conversation ends.

Understanding scalability requires engaging with what you don’t immediately see. Off-ball gravity. Defensive versatility. Possessions you don’t hijack. That kind of value makes people uncomfortable because it doesn’t announce itself. Many fans want this sport to function like golf or tennis, where success is singular and obvious -- the face on the pamphlet decides winning and losing, and the story is complete.

That’s where Klay Thompson enters the conversation.

Klay’s prime often didn't fit the hero narrative. His value lived in the margins. Guarding opposing point guards so Stephen Curry didn’t have to. Endless off-ball movement warping defenses without touching the ball. Never stopping the offense to get his numbers.

People love to say, “Well, those early 2020s Grizzlies would’ve been worse with Klay.”

Sure. Probably. But who cares?

Memphis won eight playoff games in three years of Ja’s peak. They weren’t contending. They weren’t close. Arguing that Klay couldn’t drag that roster to a second-round exit misses the entire point.

Recall Ben Taylor’s chart. Ja is the floor-raiser. Klay is the ceiling-raiser.

The question isn’t who can singularly drive the 10th-best offense to 50 wins. The question is whose game holds up when you already have great players, who can scale back and be the second or third best player on a team that plays in June. And no, the 2015 Warriors don't win a championship if you swap Ja Morant in for Klay Thompson.

Ja’s game doesn’t scale that way. His value is maximized when he’s the system itself. As talent increases among the roster, his role has to shrink, and that’s where the cracks appear. Limited shooter. Below-average defense. Positional size issues. His archetype requires usage and runway, and his game would likely be a clunky fit next to real superstars.

Unless you’re Luka Dončić -- someone who can wield a 35% usage rate and drive a 120-plus offensive rating no matter who’s around -- you need to be great next to other stars. Those Grizzlies teams offensive ratings often plummeted compared to their regular season efficiency in this Ja-centric system when the postseason came around.

Klay is the opposite archetype, his value grows with talent. Despite all his individual talent, his career was built on scalability.

He could scale his offensive game up and down based on what the team needed night to night. He could defend multiple positions to give Steve Kerr more lineup flexibility. He fit next to every archetype of player the Warriors cycled through -- Steph, Draymond, KD, Iguodala, Livingston, Looney, Wiggins, Poole -- because his game was designed to complement, not consume.

This debate was never about who looks flashier on a Tuesday in February. It’s not about who averages 28 in a heliocentric environment. It’s not about who can drag a lottery team into the postseason.

The only question that matters is this: who can you plug into a championship-level roster and trust to elevate everything around them? Whose game survives -- and more importantly and thrives -- in a winning context?

And yes, there’s a difference between somebody like Danny Green and Klay Thompson. Nobody is suggesting that a player of Green's caliber is better then Ja because he's scalable, so relax.

Scalability doesn’t automatically make someone better in every context, there’s always nuance. But Ja Morant vs. Klay Thompson? We’re talking about an All-NBA-caliber player at this peak who was also a scalability king. A 20PPG scorer. An All-Defense-level wing. A player whose value was equal whether he had 37 in a quarter or six.

Scalability is one of the most misunderstood and under-discussed aspects of basketball evaluation. If you don't have a LeBron-level impact -- a walking 120 offensive rating just by having the ball -- what can you do without it, next to other great players, to enhance winning at the highest level?

That’s why smart basketball people love Derrick White and Andrew Nembhard, yet can go cold on Julius Randle or Zach Lavine. Why Lauri Markkanen is one of the most coveted assets in the league, while Karl-Anthony Towns remains polarizing despite superior raw talent. Why combining players with lofty box-score numbers don’t always translate to postseason -- or even regular-season -- success (hello, 2024-25 Suns).

That’s scalability (I promise I won't say the word again). Until we start valuing it properly, we’ll keep having the same broken debates. If you genuinely believe Ja Morant is a better overall player than peak Klay Thompson in an NBA context, it’s probably time to rethink your foundational basketball philosophy.