Mens_Rea Teaches You Things About Basketball pt. 3 - Play Development and Analysis

Introduction


In part 1, we examined how offensive players move on the court and how that movement impacts other players on the court. In part 2, we looked at the options defenses have available to make scoring difficult and the consequences of the choices it makes. Now we're going to try to put the fundamentals we've learned into a more complex system that takes into account both elements - the full basketball play.

A successful basketball play contains three elements: (1) appropriate and realistic identification of the rosters strengths and weaknesses, (2) efficient application of those strengths while minimizing the weaknesses in our play, and (3) proper execution by the players on the court of the play.

We're going to begin by discussing those three elements then we'll take a look at some sample plays and critique them.

Mens_Rea Teaches You Things About Basketball pt. 2 - Defense and Its Consequences

Introduction


Last time we took a detailed look at the type of movement offensive players make on the court to increase their chances at scoring. This time, we're going to look at the other side of the court - defense. Just as we described the offense's main goal as scoring points, we can just as simply characterize defense's main goal as preventing the other side from scoring points.

We'll start by looking at the different types of defensive schemes, then we'll see how screens affect how the offense and defense interact with each other, and we'll finish by comparing our systems.

Mens_Rea Teaches You Things About Basketball pt. 1 - Movement and Mechanics

Mens_Rea Teaches You Things About Basketball pt. 1 - Movement

Introduction


In its most simplest terms offense has only one goal - put the ball in the basket. Achieving that goal is a much more complex matter. Since the game involves five players on each team on the floor at the same time, it's not a matter of simply breaking down a defender one on one and scoring. There's a team element that adds many layers of complexity to such a simple goal. For that reason, it's very important to understand how all the players interact each other and can influence each other on the court. We're going to begin this series by understanding this relationship between the movement of one player to another and what tools each player has available to them to become an active part of the offense. Likewise, we'll gain an understanding of how the defense can neutralize or minimize the movement of the offense.

Let's start by looking at some basic movement and how our movement can affect the game's mechanics.

Analysis by Request pt. 1: The 1995 NBA Finals - Magic vs. Rockets

Background Info


This post is in response to a solicitation for requests I made on reddit. I considered doing this post in the past but I knew it would take a lot of time and I would have to find the right footage to make decent clips. Thankfully, I was able to find decent quality video of Game 4 from the series and I think this game is representative of the entirety of the series. With that said, for this post we're going to take a look at one of my all-time favorite series - the Orlando Magic led by Shaquille O'Neal against the Houston Rockets led by Hakeem Olajuwon in the 1995 NBA Finals.

This series is one of my favorites for a couple of different reasons. First, the '95 Rockets are the lowest seeded team (6th in the Western Conference) to ever win a championship. Second, the path to the championship was probably one of the most difficult. The Rockets are one of three teams to face 50+ win teams in every round of the playoffs (the '01 and '10 Lakers being the other two teams). Even more impressive, the teams they faced - the Magic, Spurs, Suns, and Jazz - had the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th best record in the league respectively. Lastly, the two teams played a very similar offensive game so the series was mostly decided by execution.

We'll start by taking a look at the offense common to both teams then we'll take a look at their differences.

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.

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.

Small Market Series pt. 2 - The Minnesota Timberwolves' Princeton Offense

Small Market Series pt. 2 - The Minnesota Timberwolves' Princeton Offense

Background Info

The Minnesota Timberwolves hired Coach Rick Adelman during the off season to replace Kurt Rambis; the change closed the books on the Triangle Offense for the Timberwolves but opened up another notorious offensive system - the Princeton Offense. Adding to the exciting changes for Timberwolves fans was the addition of international sensation Ricky Rubio and lauded draft pick Derrick Williams.

Combining the new additions with the existing roster of Kevin Love and Michael Beasley may have created the most appropriate match in the league.

To further discover what I mean by that let's take a look at Adelman's Princeton Offense.