by John Levasseur
To an average basketball fan, basketball can look helter skelter and some people would even be surprised to realize what some NBA teams do is even considered a structured offense. I have been coaching for a few years now, and playing organized competitive ball for almost two decades, and proper execution of an offense combined with proper fundamentals is the absolute easiest way to win games. Players know where each other will be, they know when their teammates are cutting, they know where to look on the outside for a three point shot.
To an average basketball fan, basketball can look helter skelter and some people would even be surprised to realize what some NBA teams do is even considered a structured offense. I have been coaching for a few years now, and playing organized competitive ball for almost two decades, and proper execution of an offense combined with proper fundamentals is the absolute easiest way to win games. Players know where each other will be, they know when their teammates are cutting, they know where to look on the outside for a three point shot.
But understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the most commonly used NBA offenses is important for us as fans as well. In order to know whether a player just committed a turnover because he is unskilled, or whether that turnover was actually a result of one of his teammates not properly executing, is very important to watch and understand basketball on an intelligent level. One quick note in the event one of my fellow coaches do read this, this is written for the common fan and the basic strengths and weaknesses to each offense. If you want more in-depth breakdowns, feel free to ask and I will be sure to oblige, especially during the season.
Understanding offenses requires that we understand the main objective of an offense is to generate mismatches, some coaches will try and create this magical system that gets people wide open for uncontested shots and layups or dunks on every posession. I know when I first started coaching I was naive enough to attempt to do that myself, but honestly if you are playing a team that is on your level or better, you will not get those wide open looks very often. Yes, they will happen occasionally, but more often than not your players will still be forced to make a move in order to score points. Because of this, most offenses are specifically engineered to take advantage of a mismatch like height or speed, or to rely on players who possess special offensive talents in order to run their system. A great example of this is the triangle offense designed by Phil Jackson and Tex Winter.
The way the triangle is typically set up is with the center on the block, that powerful scorer on the wing on the center's side, and then the other two players on the opposite side. Typically, to maintain the spacing that is so important (15-18 feet in the NBA), the power forward and other guard stay on the perimeter on the opposite side of the court to keep the lane free. Generally, the point guard also goes to the same corner as he just passed the ball (i.e. Fisher passes to Kobe on his right, he goes to the right corner) and this creates a baseline three point opportunity, the most efficient and shortest three, if the defense collapses on the star guard and center. This is called the sideline triangle and it's the basic formation for most teams that run a triangle system. What separates this offense from most, and what made it so special, is that with the dominant scorer on the wing it allows a team to run a two-man game on either side of the court really and gives them space to work. Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant were able to do so much damage in that system because you had arguably the best shooting guard and center in the NBA on the same half of the court, with room to work. Additionally, if the defense swarms to those special players, the players are spaced out enough that a quick pass leads to a wide open shot or a nice back cut for a layup.
However, the triangle has its pitfalls as well. Without a scorer like Bryant or Jordan, you generally are not only unable to generate the offense from that pivotal position that gets such a high usage rate in the triangle offense. This is in no small part to the fact that because the ball is going to that non-dominant scorer and stopping, you create a lot of contested ISO-heavy sets that ask too much of a player without skills on the level required to make the offense function. Some teams in the NBA do have players on that level with those skills though. Teams like the Rockets, with Harden and Dwight Howard, would be perfect candidates for an offense like this. However, I have long been a proponent of quicker ball movement and preferring to avoid a ‘star-centric’ offense. This is in large part because it can shift the defense and the ball never ‘sticks,’ or stay in one player's hands for too long or allow a defense to focus on one player. Teams like the Spurs run a system that adheres fairly strongly to those principles by running what is called a 'flex' offense.
This system asks players to play all three zones on offense (perimeter, mid-range/high post, and inside or low post), obviously guards will spend more time outside and bigger players inside, but what any flex system does is create mismatches. Usually this is done through a quick succession of screens that don't give defenses time to stay with a player, so if the small forward is screened by the center and the defenders switch, now the center can go post up with the smaller defender guarding him. Transversely, if the better matchup is to give the ball to the forward with the slower center defending him (think Andrew Bogut defending Kevin Durant) the offense can go to the outside player. Two contrasting flex styles are the Spurs and Grizzlies from this past season. The Spurs run flex by running lots of high sideline pick and rolls, and having the other big down low and the other guards around them for three point shots. The Grizzlies use a common formation called “Horns” as their base set, which has two high post bigs, two guards in each corner, and the final guard up top. This allows for lots of drive and kick plays, or simple penetration and passes to bigs on their rolls depending on how the defense reacts.
Sounds great right? Well, even the flex isn't perfect (something I cringe to admit as I generally prefer to run a flex offense myself). For one, it takes the ball out of your better player's hands and a guy who is "on" may find it more challenging to score a lot of points in such a system because a defense can choose to key in on him and allow rotations or help defense pick up the other player. Think like this, Manu is getting hot shooting outside, so the defense stays with him off a screen and allows Tiago Splitter to roll to the basket, temporarily leaving him open on the roll while the defense rotates over to pick him up before he gets there. Sure, he might score 6-10 points doing that, but chances are if someone asks you to choose between Tiago Splitter and Manu Ginobili as being the guy who is beating you, you'll take your chances with Splitter. The other issue is that it requires all players to have a fairly high basketball IQ when it comes to how to break down a defense, which comes down to a player' commitment and how skilled a coach is as a teacher. Not all teams have that.
Teams that don't have the dominant scorer, and don't possess players who can mentally dismantle a defense in the way that is required to effectively run a flex, typically run something nearer to Avery Johnson's dribble attack offense, a motion offense or a free flowing offense. One of the beautiful things about Johnson's offense is that it can be run out of the transition game, and is actually coached that way if done right. It's a great offense for high pace teams who just want to go every time. It also allows great scoring point guards to take over a game, John Calipari utilized the dribble attack offense when he was coaching Derrick Rose in Memphis with great success. Obviously, this offense can be slightly hampered by a defense that is able to retreat well in transition and can pick up the ball quickly, or if you don’t have good shooters around the point guard or attacking guard that can catch and shoot off those penetrations. A nice fit here would actually be the OKC Thunder, with Westbrook as one of the most athletic attacking point guard in the game today, and some nice young shooters around him as well as the current MVP, Kevin Durant.
A motion offense is exactly what it sounds like. Basically what it boils down to is that if you are on offense and you are not moving, you are not running the offense. Motion offenses rely on off-ball screens and backdoor cuts to remain effective, and are excellent at causing confusion among the defense as they try and stay with their man, but also help on drives, or be that third rotation guy if one of their teammates steps to help. A new coach who likes to use a motion offense is Dave Blatt in Cleveland. His teams love off-ball high pick and rolls, keeping the lane free to attack, and again, just setting off ball screens in the right location to free up the perfect backdoor cut or the perfect lane to attack in. In fact, most of his sets have guys either outside the arc in the corners or above the break (foul line extended to sidelines with an imaginary line is called the ‘break’) and only breaking that rule after they receive a screen. What this will allow an incredibly skilled and athletic team like Cleveland to do is generate open looks inside off of cuts. Adding a big man like Kevin Love who can set those screens and pop out for a three off of them would make this team near unguardable.
The main weakness of a motion offense from my personal experience is to throw a zone defense at it. Some coaches may have a different method, but this is mine. If a team is built around using those back screens to find open looks near the rim, take away the paint by putting your biggest man in the lane. In high school, the motion offense is a staple because it can be taught in a very structured manner and this allows for almost any player to be involved, but generally if you pack the lane and take away mid-range jumpers off of off ball screens you can limit the damage quite significantly.
Finally, the free flowing offense that is run by the Rockets and occasionally by a team with a lot of star power like OKC or Miami. Generally this involves giving the ball to a team leader like Harden, Westbrook, Durant or James and just letting them go to work however they see fit. This can lead to a 'sticky ball' like we saw from Miami in the finals, or from the Rockets all season long and a lot of bad shots as the star needs to force a quick pass to a teammate with little time left on the shot clock to hoist a shot up. In my opinion, I find this to be the most ineffective of any offense, despite the fact that game planning against it can be miserable.
With the incredible uptick in three point shots attempted by NBA players and teams over the recent years, chances are we will see an offensive revolution take the NBA by storm. The pick and roll will always be a staple, because it simply is able to accomplish the goal of an offense better than anything else in the simplest way possible. Forcing defenders to choose between having a big defend a guard, and a guard defend a big, and an uncontested shot or an uncontested layup is too dangerous and too simple to ever be eliminated.
But for the current league, the discussion of how the San Antonio Spurs have changed the NBA by building their team from the ground up, and how that will encourage other teams to mimic that style of team building (something I think we're already seeing in Philadelphia and Milwaukee), we are leaving out a big part of the discussion. Teams and coaches capable of running a sound system, with the level of players in the NBA, would create a more beautiful game. I don't just mean players as athletes, who can sky for an incredible jam, I mean real basketball players. Guys who spend time studying, learning from their mistakes and taking advantage of mistakes made by their opposition, would be able to run offenses that are NBA level like the Spurs instead of everyone watching NBA stars have the ball. We have the opportunity to build a game that would build a more sound foundation by setting the example for millions of young athletes around the world, let's take advantage of it.
Understanding offenses requires that we understand the main objective of an offense is to generate mismatches, some coaches will try and create this magical system that gets people wide open for uncontested shots and layups or dunks on every posession. I know when I first started coaching I was naive enough to attempt to do that myself, but honestly if you are playing a team that is on your level or better, you will not get those wide open looks very often. Yes, they will happen occasionally, but more often than not your players will still be forced to make a move in order to score points. Because of this, most offenses are specifically engineered to take advantage of a mismatch like height or speed, or to rely on players who possess special offensive talents in order to run their system. A great example of this is the triangle offense designed by Phil Jackson and Tex Winter.
The way the triangle is typically set up is with the center on the block, that powerful scorer on the wing on the center's side, and then the other two players on the opposite side. Typically, to maintain the spacing that is so important (15-18 feet in the NBA), the power forward and other guard stay on the perimeter on the opposite side of the court to keep the lane free. Generally, the point guard also goes to the same corner as he just passed the ball (i.e. Fisher passes to Kobe on his right, he goes to the right corner) and this creates a baseline three point opportunity, the most efficient and shortest three, if the defense collapses on the star guard and center. This is called the sideline triangle and it's the basic formation for most teams that run a triangle system. What separates this offense from most, and what made it so special, is that with the dominant scorer on the wing it allows a team to run a two-man game on either side of the court really and gives them space to work. Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant were able to do so much damage in that system because you had arguably the best shooting guard and center in the NBA on the same half of the court, with room to work. Additionally, if the defense swarms to those special players, the players are spaced out enough that a quick pass leads to a wide open shot or a nice back cut for a layup.
However, the triangle has its pitfalls as well. Without a scorer like Bryant or Jordan, you generally are not only unable to generate the offense from that pivotal position that gets such a high usage rate in the triangle offense. This is in no small part to the fact that because the ball is going to that non-dominant scorer and stopping, you create a lot of contested ISO-heavy sets that ask too much of a player without skills on the level required to make the offense function. Some teams in the NBA do have players on that level with those skills though. Teams like the Rockets, with Harden and Dwight Howard, would be perfect candidates for an offense like this. However, I have long been a proponent of quicker ball movement and preferring to avoid a ‘star-centric’ offense. This is in large part because it can shift the defense and the ball never ‘sticks,’ or stay in one player's hands for too long or allow a defense to focus on one player. Teams like the Spurs run a system that adheres fairly strongly to those principles by running what is called a 'flex' offense.
This system asks players to play all three zones on offense (perimeter, mid-range/high post, and inside or low post), obviously guards will spend more time outside and bigger players inside, but what any flex system does is create mismatches. Usually this is done through a quick succession of screens that don't give defenses time to stay with a player, so if the small forward is screened by the center and the defenders switch, now the center can go post up with the smaller defender guarding him. Transversely, if the better matchup is to give the ball to the forward with the slower center defending him (think Andrew Bogut defending Kevin Durant) the offense can go to the outside player. Two contrasting flex styles are the Spurs and Grizzlies from this past season. The Spurs run flex by running lots of high sideline pick and rolls, and having the other big down low and the other guards around them for three point shots. The Grizzlies use a common formation called “Horns” as their base set, which has two high post bigs, two guards in each corner, and the final guard up top. This allows for lots of drive and kick plays, or simple penetration and passes to bigs on their rolls depending on how the defense reacts.
Sounds great right? Well, even the flex isn't perfect (something I cringe to admit as I generally prefer to run a flex offense myself). For one, it takes the ball out of your better player's hands and a guy who is "on" may find it more challenging to score a lot of points in such a system because a defense can choose to key in on him and allow rotations or help defense pick up the other player. Think like this, Manu is getting hot shooting outside, so the defense stays with him off a screen and allows Tiago Splitter to roll to the basket, temporarily leaving him open on the roll while the defense rotates over to pick him up before he gets there. Sure, he might score 6-10 points doing that, but chances are if someone asks you to choose between Tiago Splitter and Manu Ginobili as being the guy who is beating you, you'll take your chances with Splitter. The other issue is that it requires all players to have a fairly high basketball IQ when it comes to how to break down a defense, which comes down to a player' commitment and how skilled a coach is as a teacher. Not all teams have that.
Teams that don't have the dominant scorer, and don't possess players who can mentally dismantle a defense in the way that is required to effectively run a flex, typically run something nearer to Avery Johnson's dribble attack offense, a motion offense or a free flowing offense. One of the beautiful things about Johnson's offense is that it can be run out of the transition game, and is actually coached that way if done right. It's a great offense for high pace teams who just want to go every time. It also allows great scoring point guards to take over a game, John Calipari utilized the dribble attack offense when he was coaching Derrick Rose in Memphis with great success. Obviously, this offense can be slightly hampered by a defense that is able to retreat well in transition and can pick up the ball quickly, or if you don’t have good shooters around the point guard or attacking guard that can catch and shoot off those penetrations. A nice fit here would actually be the OKC Thunder, with Westbrook as one of the most athletic attacking point guard in the game today, and some nice young shooters around him as well as the current MVP, Kevin Durant.
A motion offense is exactly what it sounds like. Basically what it boils down to is that if you are on offense and you are not moving, you are not running the offense. Motion offenses rely on off-ball screens and backdoor cuts to remain effective, and are excellent at causing confusion among the defense as they try and stay with their man, but also help on drives, or be that third rotation guy if one of their teammates steps to help. A new coach who likes to use a motion offense is Dave Blatt in Cleveland. His teams love off-ball high pick and rolls, keeping the lane free to attack, and again, just setting off ball screens in the right location to free up the perfect backdoor cut or the perfect lane to attack in. In fact, most of his sets have guys either outside the arc in the corners or above the break (foul line extended to sidelines with an imaginary line is called the ‘break’) and only breaking that rule after they receive a screen. What this will allow an incredibly skilled and athletic team like Cleveland to do is generate open looks inside off of cuts. Adding a big man like Kevin Love who can set those screens and pop out for a three off of them would make this team near unguardable.
The main weakness of a motion offense from my personal experience is to throw a zone defense at it. Some coaches may have a different method, but this is mine. If a team is built around using those back screens to find open looks near the rim, take away the paint by putting your biggest man in the lane. In high school, the motion offense is a staple because it can be taught in a very structured manner and this allows for almost any player to be involved, but generally if you pack the lane and take away mid-range jumpers off of off ball screens you can limit the damage quite significantly.
Finally, the free flowing offense that is run by the Rockets and occasionally by a team with a lot of star power like OKC or Miami. Generally this involves giving the ball to a team leader like Harden, Westbrook, Durant or James and just letting them go to work however they see fit. This can lead to a 'sticky ball' like we saw from Miami in the finals, or from the Rockets all season long and a lot of bad shots as the star needs to force a quick pass to a teammate with little time left on the shot clock to hoist a shot up. In my opinion, I find this to be the most ineffective of any offense, despite the fact that game planning against it can be miserable.
With the incredible uptick in three point shots attempted by NBA players and teams over the recent years, chances are we will see an offensive revolution take the NBA by storm. The pick and roll will always be a staple, because it simply is able to accomplish the goal of an offense better than anything else in the simplest way possible. Forcing defenders to choose between having a big defend a guard, and a guard defend a big, and an uncontested shot or an uncontested layup is too dangerous and too simple to ever be eliminated.
But for the current league, the discussion of how the San Antonio Spurs have changed the NBA by building their team from the ground up, and how that will encourage other teams to mimic that style of team building (something I think we're already seeing in Philadelphia and Milwaukee), we are leaving out a big part of the discussion. Teams and coaches capable of running a sound system, with the level of players in the NBA, would create a more beautiful game. I don't just mean players as athletes, who can sky for an incredible jam, I mean real basketball players. Guys who spend time studying, learning from their mistakes and taking advantage of mistakes made by their opposition, would be able to run offenses that are NBA level like the Spurs instead of everyone watching NBA stars have the ball. We have the opportunity to build a game that would build a more sound foundation by setting the example for millions of young athletes around the world, let's take advantage of it.