OKC led the NBA in 2025-26 defensive rating by a wide statistical margin

Without five-man lineup tracking, the best available answer compares team defensive ratings to league average and each player's on-court defensive number — and Oklahoma City stands out as a clear outlier.

Published: September 7, 2026 · Figures as of September 7, 2026

Asked: What are the best NBA lineups by relative defensive rating?

Oklahoma City had the league's best defense by a clear margin, but "lineups" isn't a stat we track

We don't have five-man lineup data (which specific units of five players took the floor together) — only team-season defense and each player's "on-court" number (the team's defensive rating while he personally was on the floor). So the honest way to answer "best lineups by relative defensive rating" is at those two levels: which teams defended best relative to the rest of the league last season (2025-26, which wrapped April 12, 2026), and which individual players anchored the standout defensive environments.

Team level. League defensive rating averaged 113.5 points allowed per 100 possessions last season (stddev 3.4, across all 30 teams). Measured against that spread, Oklahoma City's 105.7 sits 2.32 standard deviations better than average — the clearest outlier in the league and nearly two-thirds of a standard deviation clear of the next-best team, Detroit (107.6, -1.76 SD). San Antonio (109.4, -1.22 SD) and Boston (110.4, -0.93 SD) round out the group that separated meaningfully from the pack; everyone from New York on down (-0.79 SD and shallower) is closer to ordinary variation than to a real standout.

A caveat on precision: San Antonio and New York show 83 regular-season games rather than 82 — both reached the NBA Cup championship game, which our regular-season figures normally exclude but haven't been stripped out here, so their ratings carry one extra game each. It won't move either team off this list, but their exact decimal is slightly off official.

The closest thing to "lineup" evidence we have is on-court defensive rating — the team's defense with one specific player on the floor. The leaders there confirm the same cores: Chet Holmgren (102.4) and Ajay Mitchell (102.5) anchor Oklahoma City's floor units, Victor Wembanyama (103.6) anchors San Antonio's, and Ronald Holland II (104.5) and Javonte Green (105.5) anchor Detroit's, with Neemias Queta (105.7) doing the same for Boston. That's not a measurement of those individuals in isolation — it credits each of them with what their four teammates and the opponent did — but it's consistent with OKC, Detroit, San Antonio and Boston being where the league's real defensive strength was concentrated.

Confidence: High on the team ranking — full 82-game samples, a nearly 2.5-SD outlier at the top, and a second-tier that's genuinely separated from league average rather than clustered near it. Read the "lineup" framing as a reach for data we don't hold in that grain; the team and on-court numbers above are the nearest honest substitute.