Charity Donation Link Update

It has come to my attention that the CJ Foundation page is a broken link. If you find the content of this page helpful - please consider donating to the Ronald McDonald House Charities. They are highly rated by Charity Navigator and provide an essential service for families battling childhood illnesses.

CJ Foundation for SIDS

I have added links to the CJ Foundation for SIDS along the top banner and sides. Please consider donating to this cause. Also, please see the fundraising contest on reddit.com (link to announcement) that runs until November 25, 2012.

The End

Unfortunately, I will no longer continue this blog. It has been fun sharing what information I could provide on basketball strategy but it's time to move on to other things. What I added here is only a small part of who I am as a person and my other personal pursuits require more of my attention. As Magic Johnson said, "Magic is who I am on the basketball court. Earvin is who I am."

Thank you for reading.

Mens_Rea Teaches You Things About Basketball pt. 5 - Read and React Systems

Introduction

Last time we looked at two categories of offensive systems - set and patterned. Those systems relied upon heavy instruction of its players on where, when, and how to move to create offensive opportunities. Today we'll look at another category of offensive systems called read and react. Read and react systems stress spacing and letting the defense inform the offense on how to move within the space. The first of these systems we're going to look at is the Dribble Drive Motion Offense. Second, we'll look at the Princeton Offense. Finally, we're going to try to apply everything we've learned so far and spend considerable time looking at the Triangle Offense.

Let's get started.

Dwight Howard's Role in the Princeton Offense

Introduction

For those of you that visit the subreddit /r/nba, you may remember about a week ago I put together some plays out of the Princeton Offense designed primarily for the PG called the Chin Series. In light of the Dwight Howard trade, I thought there would be some interest in plays in the Princeton Offense designed primarily for the C - the Princeton Low Series.

Mens_Rea Teaches You Things About Basketball pt. 4 - Set and Patterned Offensive Systems

Introduction


Today we're going to start looking at different offensive systems. Due to the wide variety of systems out there I'm going to have to limit this section to the systems most commonly found in the NBA. Even then, there are so many systems that I've decided to break this discussion into three categories - set, patterned, and read and react systems. Set systems run their offense through a specific formation of the offense called a set. Patterned systems carry a signature pattern of movement or cuts to them. Read and react systems typically stress a particular spacing and decision making.

In this post, we're going to look at two set offenses, Horns and UCLA, and two patterned offenses, Flex and Shuffle. Next time, we'll look at three read and react systems, the Triangle, Princeton, and Dribble Drive.

Let's get started.

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.

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.