Thursday, February 9, 2012

Small Market Series pt. 4 - The Charlotte Bobcats' UCLA Offense

Small Market Series pt. 4 - The Charlotte Bobcats' UCLA Offense
Background Info


Last time we discussed the most successful small market team, the Spurs. This time we're going to focus on a team that so far has struggled to match that success, the Charlotte Bobcats. The Bobcats have the dubious distinction of ranking last in points-per-possession and have so far shot 41.3% from the field.

When we look at the Bobcats, let's see if we can identify the difference between their execution and the Spurs. In doing so, perhaps we will learn something about what separates successful and unsuccessful teams.

Tuesday, February 7, 2012


Small Market Series pt. 3 - The San Antonio Spurs' Motion Offense

Background Info

Up until this point most offensive systems we've looked at can be categorized into a narrow subset of the motion offense. The San Antonio Spurs' offense, however, is a combination of designed plays and read-and-react plays. While it's true that nearly every team runs a combination of designed and read-and-react plays, the Spurs run much more designed plays than most teams. For this reason I'll refer to their offense under the more general term "motion offense" - a very broad term but as we go through their offense I think it will become apparent why I decided to do so.

Also, we're going to discuss a topic that has only been mentioned briefly in the past - execution. Execution is the ability of a team to run their plays effectively. An effective play maximizes the potential of its primary scoring option while also providing plenty of auxiliary options if the primary option isn't available.

Let's take a look.