Jack-of-All-Trades: Is Alex Caruso the Best Role Player of His Generation?

Alex Caruso continued
his impressive playoff run with a great Game 4 of the NBA Finals.
How does he stack up against the best role players in recent
postseason history?

The deep rounds of the NBA playoffs give us the opportunity to
explore interesting storylines that often get missed in the rat
race of the 82-game regular season. 

One example of this is the recent surge in appreciation for Alex
Caruso.
For years, Caruso has been the leavening agent powering the
defenses of teams like the Los Angeles Lakers, Chicago Bulls, and
now, Oklahoma City Thunder. 

But there is more to Caruso than just defensive excellence. In
the Thunder’s Game 4 victory over the Indiana Pacers that evened up
the NBA Finals, Caruso starred with 20 points on 7-of-9 shooting to
go along with five steals and a blocked shot.

He also had 20 points in Game 2, giving him two 20-point games
in the series after having none the entire season before then.

Caruso’s ability to wear so many different hats for the teams he
plays on has some people putting him in rarified air. Namely, the
question around Caruso has now become: Is he the greatest role
player of his generation?

What Does It Mean To Be A Good
Role Player?

We’ve highlighted the
play of outstanding role players quite often here in the past.
But what exactly do good role players do?

With today’s financial constraints brought along by the new
Collective Bargaining Agreement
(CBA), you can no longer merely stack stars and hope to compete
for championships (sorry, Phoenix Suns). 

Nowadays, having two stars and flanking them with well-rounded
role players is a much more sustainable model (see the
Indiana Pacers).

Ideally, those role players should be able to knock down
open/semi-contested 3s, attack closeouts, move the ball quickly,
and fulfill multiple duties on defense (guard the point of attack,
create turnovers, offer secondary rim protection, etc.). 

Caruso Checks All The
Boxes 

Even at the age of 31 with so many young and
up-and-coming defenders to compete with, Caruso is still in the
97th percentile in our catch-all
defensive DRIP metric. And it’s because he can do literally
everything on the defensive side of the ball. 

At the point of the attack, he may as well be the NBA equivalent
of Darrelle Revis – sending players to a desolate wasteland never
to be heard from again. For instance, during the regular season,
Caruso held Luka Doncic, Anthony Edwards, Kawhi Leonard, Ja Morant,
and Jamal Murray to a combined 7-for-32 shooting from the floor
(21.9%), per NBA.com.

Caruso can also fit players of all different shapes and sizes
into his torture chamber. This postseason alone he’s handled
assignments against Nikola Jokic, Jaren Jackson Jr., Julius Randle,
Naz Reid, Jamal Murray, Anthony Edwards and Pascal
Siakam. 

When he’s not keeping the ball from piercing the Thunder’s
defensive shell, he’s making things happen off the ball. This
season, he ranked in the 99th percentile in steal rate – the sixth
consecutive season he’s placed in the 94th percentile or higher in
this category.

His rim protection is also surprisingly stout for a guard. He’s
placed in the 78th percentile or higher among all players (this
includes professional fly-swatting centers) in block rate in each
of the last three seasons.

Being able to provide paint protection isn’t a must for his
possession, but it gives the Thunder so much more flexibility from
a team-building perspective – unlocking their coveted small-ball
lineups in which Jalen Williams (another
swiss army knife defender) mans the center position. 

He also adds timely help rotations, masterful on-court
articulation skills, or advanced understanding of opponent
tendencies (that allowed him to trip up even the Joker
himself).

Caruso doesn’t give anything back on the offensive end, either.
His offensive DRIP (minus-0.1) sits well-above the league average
(76th percentile), thanks to his contributions as a shooter,
cutter, and connective tissue passer.

Caruso hardly ever gets the credit he deserves as a spot-up
marksman (probably because his defense already gives people so much
to adore), but his strength as a shooter (41.6% from 3 and 80% from
the free-throw line this postseason) shouldn’t be dismissed.

When he’s not burning defenses for overhelping on Shai
Gilgeous-Alexander, Caruso is roaming around the dunker spot
searching for layup passes that he can convert into easy points
(68th percentile efficiency, per NBA.com) or continuing/completing
advantages with his underrated ball skills (people forget he played
guard all throughout his four-year career at Texas A&M).

Overall, you have the ideal mixture of the perfect role player
for the way basketball is played in 2025.

Is Caruso The Best Role Player
Of His Generation?

Okay, enough raving about Caruso’s genius. Now, time to answer
where he ranks among the best role players of this generation.

This postseason, Caruso has a WAR per 36 minutes of 0.09, which
is impressively high for a role player. We’ve defined role players
as players who hadn’t made an All-Star team at the time of their
postseason run and averaged fewer than 18 points per game.

Caruso isn’t at the top of the list.

The list of role player seasons since 2012-13 ahead of Caruso
includes includes DeAndre Jordan, Pablo Prigioni (this one deserves
further examination at a later point), PJ Tucker, Danny Green, Tony
Allen, Trevor Ariza, Otto Porter Jr., Joe Ingles, Nicolas Batum,
George Hill, Serge Ibaka, JJ Redick, Derrick White, Nikola Mirotic,
Al Farouq Aminu, JR Smith, Derrick Favors, Klay Thompson, Seth
Curry, Christian Braun and Dorian Finney-Smith.

We can quibble about whether all of these players are truly
better than Caruso is right now. However, the fact that there are
this many player seasons ahead of him tells us that he is not
unequivocally the best role player of this generation (a different
finding from what we got when
we analyzed clutch players). 

But – yes, there is a but – if you change the search to only
include players that did not start a single playoff game (like
Caruso this postseason), Caruso was the top name on the list. So,
one could argue that he is the best bench role player of this
generation. 

Regardless of where you would rank Caruso among role players of
the last decade plus, there is no debating that he is a special,
special player, and this postseason has provided him the perfect
platform to showcase his splendor for the world to see. 

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