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.

Small Market Series pt. 1 - The Atlanta Hawks' Flex Offense

Small Market Series pt. 1 - The Atlanta Hawks' Flex Offense

Background Info

Recently, the redditor HumanAfterAll posted a thank you to those contributing material about small market teams. I noticed that lately I have neglected small markets with posts about the Lakers, Heat, Clippers, and Knicks so I thought I should do my part to give some small market teams some attention. The first installment will take a look at HumanAfterAll's team, the Atlanta Hawks.

The Hawks run a mixture of isolation plays and flex offense. The Flex Offense was popularized by Jerry Sloan's Utah Jazz. Like any effective offensive system, the Hawks run their version of the Flex Offense mindful of the strengths and weaknesses of their roster. Let's take a look at the Hawks' Flex Offense.

The New York Knicks' Seven Seconds or Less Offense

The New York Knicks' Seven Seconds or Less Offense

Background Info

Those who are familiar with Mike D'Antoni are also probably familiar with his Seven Seconds or Less Offense. He was very successful with his offense with the Phoenix Suns and many Knicks fans might have been excited to see his system run with two very capable offensive talents - Carmelo Anthony and Amar'e Stoudemire. Unfortunately, the Knicks' record has been rather disappointing so far. While much of the blame can be placed on defense, I want to take a look at their offense to see why this system is performing below expectations.

The Clippers' High Screen-the-Screener Series

The Clippers' High Screen-the-Screener Series

Last night the Clippers and Mavericks faced off at Staples Center resulting in a last second victory for the Clippers. Much of the focus will no doubt be the amazing shot Billups made to win the game shown here.

While that was a great play, I want to focus on how the Clippers put themselves in a position to win in the 4th quarter.

The play-by-play shows the Clippers started the quarter with 2 made field goals by Mo Williams, the second coming at 10:51 left in the quarter. For the next 5 minutes of play the Clippers went 1 for 9, the sole basket coming off a well-defended Billups 3pt shot. The Clippers' stretch of misses was due to poor execution and rushed shots. After the Mavericks tied the game at 78 a piece with 5:35 left on the clock, Vinny Del Negro called a timeout.

After the timeout the Clippers slowed the game down and Billups began to run their offense. Let's take a look at what they ran.

The Lakers' Strong Corner Offense

The Lakers' Strong Corner Offense

Background Info

This season brought a lot of new changes to the Lakers. One of the more interesting changes this season is the replacement of Phil Jackson by Mike Brown. Under Phil Jackson the Lakers ran the Triangle Offense, a system that brought Jackson's teams multiple championships. This year Mike Brown introduced the Strong Corner Offense to the Lakers. Brown's Strong Corner Offense utilizes some of the same concepts as the Triangle Offense and adds some new elements that are intended to add more low post scoring opportunities.

Let's take a look at how the Lakers run the Strong Corner Offense.

The Miami Heat Pace and Space Motion Offense

The Miami Heat Pace and Space Motion Offense

Background Info

Last season I discussed the Heat's double high post offense and this off-season it seems Erik Spoelstra has been busy tinkering with their playbook. The offense has been heavily modified and is now dominated by a "pace and space" motion offense. This offense emphasizes transition baskets, quick plays, and is a read-and-react system.

As I mentioned last season, the old system lacked low post scoring opportunities and suffered from poor rebounding positioning. Another disadvantage was the old system lacked read-and-react opportunities for its players because of the rigidity of the set. This season Spoelstra has addressed these concerns fairly well with a system that takes advantage of his players' high speed, great conditioning, and high basketball IQ.

Let's take a look.

Building the New Lakers Offense - An Exercise in Creating a Playbook

Introduction

Anyone that has followed the NBA in the last 20 years knows who Phil Jackson is and the significant impact he's had to the game. Since 1991, he has won 11 Championships with the Bulls and Lakers and reached the NBA Finals 13 times. He also earned a championship twice with the Knicks as a player. Unfortunately, this season was his last as a coach which ended the Phil Jackson era in Lakerland. In its place we are introduced with the Mike Brown era. This has left many to wonder what the future holds for the Lakers' triangle offense. While I don't know the answer to that, it gives us an opportunity to speculate by examining the options in front of him.

The Making of a Champion - NBA Finals Game 6 Deconstructed

Introduction

Now that the NBA Finals are over, I want to review the last game of the series in order to point out what made the Mavericks so successful. The final score was 105-95 favoring the Mavericks. The full box score can be found here along with the play-by-play and shot chart.

Since past postings have already discussed the offense of both teams I'm going to focus mainly on categorizing some of the plays to give an idea what kind of plays each team was running.

Reddit Q&A #1 - Examining the End of Game 2

A member of reddit's /r/nba posed a few questions and I felt the questions deserved a thorough response. Below is the question by gatorphan84:

I have a request, or question at least. It looked to me like in both games 2 and 3 [of the 2011 NBA Finals], the Heat stopped attacking the basket towards the end of the game when Dallas started to make their comeback.
To me it just looks like they start playing crappy offense, but I'm guessing that perhaps the Mavs defense might have something to do with it? What do you think is the case? If it is the Mavs defense: 1.) Why don't they play like that more often, and 2.) why can't the Heat seem to adjust, and 3.) what could they do to adjust to it? If it is the Heat's offense, why do they start taking jumpshots and stop attacking the rim when it is clearly their best strategy?

To answer your underlying question, I believe the late game difficulties the Heat face are a combination of ineffective defense and stagnant, simplistic offense. I'm going to focus on game 2 since I believe it better demonstrates the issues.

Defense pt. 1 - A Defensive Primer

Defense pt. 1 - A Defensive Primer

Background Info

Up until now we've focused entirely on the offensive end but today I want to take a change of direction and look at the other end of the court. You have likely heard the phrase, "the best defense is a good offense", today we take the opposite stance and the reasoning behind that sentiment is probably pretty clear. First, solid defense relieves the pressure on your offense to score more points. Second, the more your defense makes the other side work for its points, the more tired and frustrated they will become. Lastly, solid defense can break up the other team's offensive options and plans.

How does the defense try to achieve these goals? Defense operates in both sets and types. A set, much like our discussion on offense, is a description of the formation created by the players on the court. A type is a description of the way the defense interacts to the movement by the offense. The defense will pair a set with a type of and we'll see how these pairs can affect how the defense operates on the court.

This first part is in no way intended to be comprehensive but instead is intended to introduce you to the basic defensive concepts. In the future, we will apply these concepts more thoroughly and recognize the differing defensive philosophies.

Let's start with the sets.

The Thunder

Analyzing the Offense pt. 5 - The Thunder

Background Info

The Thunder's offense is a mixture of many of the concepts we've already seen. They probably have the most diverse offense of the teams we've seen so far. They tend to rely mostly on the dribble drive motion offense but they do use some more standard offensive systems. Below we'll see examples of the Thunder using a 1-4 low set, 1-4 wide box, and double high post. Their offense seems to be a work in development and that leads to some confusion and frustration by the players. Since they use concepts we've already seen before we'll jump into some examples and see what we can learn about their offense from there.

The Bulls

Analyzing the Offense pt. 4 - The Bulls

Background Info

Let's quickly review what we've seen so far to put the Bulls offense in perspective. We've seen the triangle offense that emphasized read-and-react with a particular spacing; we've seen the rigid use of the double high post set by the Heat; and we've seen the motion offense that combines a particular set with a read-and-react system. Now we'll see a system that is probably most similar to the Mavericks system we saw last time but has some key differences.

The Bulls combine a few different systems to create their offense and can ultimately be described as a type of motion offense. I'll characterize their two main systems as a flex motion offense and a dribble drive motion offense. Like most NBA playbooks, the Bulls don't run a purely flex motion offense or a purely dribble drive motion offense but instead have created a variant of those systems to maximize the advantages in their roster. Let's first take a look at what a flex motion offense is.

Similar to the description of a motion offense we used last time, any motion offense is a description of a system - one that emphasizes off-ball motion to open up passing options.

Analyzing the Offense pt. 3 - The Mavericks Offense

Analyzing the Offense pt. 3 - The Mavericks Offense

Background Info

When we looked at the triangle offense we focused on the system's emphasis on a particular framework, one that emphasized spacing and reading and reacting to the defense. We then moved to a much more rigid offensive system that the Heat run in their double high post series. In this offensive analysis we're going to look at a system that combines the two elements to create a mixture of an offensive framework and set plays.

The Mavericks run a combination of motion offense with a variety of sets, some roster specific plays, and isolations in their offense.

Let's begin our discussion by defining the motion offense.

The Miami Heat

Sorry to those of you that wanted me to select a different team but I wanted to go with an Eastern Conference team that was still in the playoffs which left with me with the Heat and Bulls. Between the two teams the Heat was the easier team to analyze. Having said that, let's take a look.

Background Info

The Heat's offense can be described as a mixture of double high post offense, triangle offense, and a series of pick and rolls. The offense is still fairly raw and I think that shows in some of the clips we'll be analyzing.

The double high post offense is their main set play and can be diagrammed as follows:

[1] Double High Post Set 

Let's look at what unique characteristics this set gives us. First, you'll notice there is nobody at the low post. This has the obvious disadvantage of limiting low post plays and rebounding. The advantage, however, is there is a lot of space available for perimeter players to drive to the basket. The SG and SF have potential baseline drives and cuts through the lane to the basket.

Second, you'll notice there is nobody in the wing positions. This is also to facilitate as much space as possible for the SG and SF to make moves to the basket.

If this offense looks familiar, you may have seen it used by [2] UConn on their way to winning the NCAA Championship or the [3] Cavaliers in the past.

We'll see how this all works when we start to break down this set.

The Triangle

I thought there might be some interest in a discussion about different offensive sets so I decided to write a thread about the triangle. In the future I might discuss other offenses around the league if there's any interest.

Background Info

Let's start with some underlying premises of the triangle offense.

First, it emphasizes spacing and ball movement in order to penetrate the defense. This differs from typical offensive schemes because it values dribble penetration a lot less. Rather than rely upon a perimeter player to pierce the defense, it focuses on off-ball movement and post players to create passing lanes in the teeth of the defense.

Second, for the most part it's a read-and-react defense. Most modern versions of the offense (Lakers/Timberwolves) incorporate set plays within the triangle offense framework but the majority of the offense is based on reading the court and finding the best options available. For this reason, every player on the court is assumed to be a legitimate offensive threat.

Lastly, the triangle offense is a description of an offensive framework, not a type of play.