The number of players on the court can change.
Not literally, though Vivek Ranadive might have something to say about that.
That's sort of the point with having more categories. Sometimes there will be two ball handlers, occasionally 3, other times one.
Three?! But you touch on the question of whether or not a changing role on the court also changes a player's designation (for example Horford is obviously a big - but is he not also a wing, and even a ballhandler?).
...and between 1-4 wings (maybe even 5 if a couple of them are capable ballhandlers.)
Truly positionless ball is a wonderful ideal for the true fan, but I'll believe it when I see it. I'm confident that there will be NO lineups with five wings in 2017-18.
Stevens has vacillated between breaking what we call wings into two subcategories -- wings and swings. In this definition, guys like Marcus Morris, Jae Crowder, and last year Jonas Jerebko would be swings -- perimeter players on offense who can guard wings and bigs on defense. Last year's prime example of a wing was Bradley -- this year, Hayward is one also.
I think that the experiment with Jonas as a wing was a failure; in any case we didn't see the experiment repeated last season.
Stevens now has a lot of bigger wings, even in his wing/swing subcategory, so even tho Hayward and Brown won't match up on bigs on defense, they're capable of switching onto them for short stretches.
Yes, pretty clear.
Accordingly, this year the wing/swing definition will be much more muddled, because they're all the same size.
I wouldn't say so, though if the point is that there is more versatility in the roster, I'd agree. In fact, I'd say that if there's one category that there's more of this upcoming year, it's swings. Tatum, for instance, at a long 6'8", and Morris, at 6'9", are swings (at least potentially, in the case of Tatum), while Brown cannot. On the other hand, Brad made a point of putting Brown on all sorts of players throughout the season - except bigs.
Hayward - at a long 6'8", with 7' wingspan, has got the size to be a swing. But will you see many lineups with him guarding pf's/swings? I doubt it. You yourself have him pegged as a non-swing.
Is Jerebko a swing? I suppose so - but guarding wings was a big problem for him. Like Bradley, who had trouble guarding bigger wings, he was less versatile. I think that he falls into an older slightly pejorative category: a Tweener.
I don't think there's any "best" combo. What's best is the versatility that allows Stevens to put out combinations of players that play to each other's strengths, minimize each other's weaknesses, and take advantage of what the other team can or can't do. He experiments with a ton of lineups throughout the year, just to see how they work.
I agree. In fact, you'd expect that getting more versatile players would translate into more versatile lineups.
There could be 0-2 bigs
I'm sure he'll go with a Hayward-Brown-Tatum-Crowder-Morris lineup occasionally just to see what it can do.
Here I'm doubtful, though pre-season 2016 featured some lineups with Jerebko as the biggest player.
By far the most common lineups last season had two bigs. There were no meaningful minutes given to lineups with two swings.