The 5 Tenets of Offensive Scheme Success

By: Tim (“Cranjis McBasketball” on Twitter)

4.5 years ago I wrote an article titled “Designing a Great Offense” for the wonderful Lakers website Forum Blue & Gold, where I outlined my personal tenets of scheme that lead to successful offensive basketball.

I’ve been referring others to that original work for quite a while, but it’s time to update that work with lessons learned from the countless hours analyzing best practices I’ve committed since that original release. These aren’t just Tim’s musings, but me tweaking and fleshing out those original thoughts as I put a framework around how the elite of offensive elites operate.

The choice of the term “tenets” wasn’t chosen lightly. The goal here is that EVERY basketball team, regardless of level (high school and up) and nation, can utilize these strategies to up their success. The way it materializes can differ based on team, but every coach reading this can use what’s discussed below.

I want to set YOU up the best I can to self-scout your team, the team you choose to follow, etc. to see how well they’re doing in these areas.

 

The Goal and the Environment

At its core, a good scheme manufactures numbers advantages for your players, and its principles help them make the most of those advantages in the moment. That won’t guarantee success, on every play, but it certainly sets you up for success.

Every player at some point in their career, perhaps many points, has run drills where you play 3v2 in one half court and then go 2v1 on the other end after the initial make/miss/turnover. The team with the numbers won’t always score, but they should have constant opportunities to get good shots off.

Will this guarantee wins or elite efficiency every game? No! Of course not. You’ll never escape vulnerability to shooting luck/variance for individual games. It won’t turn a team of okay players into world beaters.

Will it give you the proverbial high ground over defenses more often and help you elevate whatever level of personnel you do have? Yes.

And that’s part of the opportunity and problem. You CAN and teams DO succeed offensively with mediocre scheme and strong talent. Strong scheme is not the only path to success, but it’s ALWAYS a path to more success when done well.

Teams leaning into this opportunity do elevate their performance. But until the market reaches a point where enough teams are doing so, the sport won’t have enough market-driven pressure forcing either improvement or failure.

Until that point, smart teams will figure this out and lean into it, and collect extra wins along the way. The Suns, Warriors, Nuggets, Jazz, Hawks, Grizzlies, Heat, and others at the NBA level get it. But handfuls of teams still struggle to.

At the NCAA level, Purdue, Gonzaga, Baylor, Davidson, and others do to varying levels. Oral Roberts was an easy March Madness Sweet 16 double upset pick we nailed at the site. Scheme was that reason (and I’m glad our models saw it too!). But most teams don’t.

There’s a lot more to this than “Run more plays,” and we do see system teams in college not do well with what we’re about to cover.

For as good as the online coaching community is at sharing new actions and concepts in a “here’s a play!” manner, there’s a general lack of analysis on how strategically to integrate those elements in advantageous ways, showing how and why to make the most of those new actions. I hope this writeup can help fill that void, and provide a framework that enables better scheme building and playcalling.

So let’s get right into it! Here are my 5 Tenets of Offensive Scheme Success (TOSS!):

 

Tenet 1: Create & Enhance Advantages with Actions

 

The idea here is to be purposeful with movement to generate advantages. An advantage often materializes as a step advantage in an iso, a post-up mismatch, or a numbers advantage (4v3, 3v2, 2v1, or 1v0).

With no shot clock you can pass and cut until someone eventually falls asleep and you get a good shot. But a shot clock changes things.

The “we’ll run our stuff and eventually something will open up” approach you can take in high school (in the states without a shot clock) doesn’t work in the NBA/NCAA. You need to launch as many attacks in as short a period of time as you can to get the best shots possible and be as efficient as possible.

The key here is this: Make sure your movement generates advantages to beat good defense, not just take advantage of poor defense falling asleep.

So don’t move just to move. Moving itself isn’t beneficial. Move in ways generating scoring chances, such as running actions and smart cuts.

 

Actions

Actions put multiple defenders in situations to defend an attack, such as: Ball screens, off-ball screens, split cuts, ram action to set up a ball screen, veer action to run an off-ball screen based on an advantage generated by an initial ball screen, or a 45 degree cut to open up a double gap for a strong slasher to drive.

 

Cutting

If you’re going to cut, it better fit into one of these buckets:

  1. Be a scoring cut, creating a scoring chance OR requiring a tag to stop
  2. Be a cut to create a double or triple gap setting up an on-ball drive

Through cutting you can generate advantages and scoring chances, and also enhance advantages via elongating gaps from single -> double or triple gaps, making it easier for your on-ball perimeter players to drive.

Passing from the point to the wing and then that point player relocating to the opposite corner isn’t value add. A dozen seconds of setup that won’t accomplish anything against attentive defense isn’t a valuable use of shot clock time.

Cut out the fat in how you spend your time by asking yourself, “what does this accomplish against attentive defense?” If you don’t have a clear answer, consider cutting that fat out.

 

Simultaneous Weak Side Action

Simultaneous weak side actions are all about understanding and attacking defensive rotations by either preventing them from happening or exploiting them for happening.

 

Preventing Rotations

Good defenses will concede advantages, but rotate on a string to recover and negate those advantages. The goal when preventing rotations is to stop that rotation chain from happening, so that 1 generated advantage results in a good shot as directly as possible. 

Here’s an example: On this play, the defense is sending extra help on 5’s post up from x4 and x2 is responsible for a skip pass.

Rather than standing around on the weak side so a skip pass can be recovered to, 4 setting a pin-in flare screen (blue) allows 5 to skip the ball to 2 the opposite corner for a catch & shoot stationary 3-point shot with x2 impeded from their normal help rotation by the pin-in flare.

Here’s another example of preventing a rotation to generate a good shot. x3 is the low man in this setup, responsible for trapping the box on a drive or tagging a roller.

The offense lifting 3 to the top of the key right before the ball screen is happening changes the help responsibilities on the weak side so that x4 is the low man.

But doing so right before the roll is happening likely keeps x4 from rotating on time. If done simultaneously with the screen, you get into our “exploiting rotations” category as x3 is deciding whether to help on the roll or stay home on the shooter.

 

Exploiting Rotations

When exploiting a rotation, you do so by manufacturing a situation where 1 defender now has 2 jobs (much like a read option in football). Read them correctly and you have an advantage.

For example, here’s a look at how normal help rotations would defend a roll to the rim with a show & recover on a ball screen. We see x4 tag the roller (blue), x2 sink down to help the helper (green), and x3 fill and zone up two perimeter shooters (purple). If executed well, the defense can recover and rotate back with the offense’s initial advantage negated.

As the ball screen is happening, the offense can take advantage of the 2v1 on the weak side by having flare screens set. The exact angles and types of the screens can vary, but the offense can pick their best shooter and use their other 2 players to screen the 2 defenders to free up that player.

Here, we see a pin-in flare by 4 and a hammer flare from 2 to make 3 a great kickout option in the corner.

This can be the case in isolation or post up situations as well. For example, we’ll say the offense has a mismatch with a post player, and the defense is fronting the post and sending help from the low man weak side to defend a potential post pin lob into that post player.

Instead of standing around on the weak side and giving the defense a chance to rotate against a skip pass, using 2 as either a screener or shooter in a weak side action (here, a hammer flare screen) exploits x2 out of position by defending the post up. If they do defend that weak side action instead, the post pin lob pass is now open.

Make them choose between 2 jobs to execute, read them correctly, and they’ll always be wrong.

 

Synergistic Action

Synergistic action, like weak side actions, require an understanding of how defenses behave and using their behavior to stop an initial action to help you be more effective with a second, subsequent action.

Here’s an example: On this play we start with a back screen by 4 for a cut from 2. It starts simple.

The key is asking yourself: IF that cut doesn’t work, why? If the screen is executed well to generate an advantage, which defenders can help to stop the cut?

There are 2 primary candidates: x2 (weak side low man) or x4 (the screener’s defender)

So what do we build into this play?

A simultaneous weak side pin-down during the cut, along with a synergistic second action of a ball screen with a staggered screen weak side. 

Here’s that weak side pin-down happening simultaneously as the cut:

The simultaneous weak side action exploits or prevents a potential x2 rotation stopping the initial cut. The ball handler reads x2 to decide between 2 passing options.

Then the ensuing action:

The second synergistic action of the ball screen creates a 2v1 ball screen with x4 out of position IF x4 is helping on the initial cut. And you have a simultaneous weak side stagger to keep potential help defenders out of the way so you can make the most of your primary action of a pick and pop/roll.

One last note for this first tenant: with every scoring cut & action, it’s important to be thoughtful about player positioning. Don’t run cuts that have no chance of being passed to, or off-ball screens creating difficult passing reads and angles for playmakers.

Self-scouting, ask yourself if you build in ways to prevent or punish help defense for doing its job through simultaneous weak side action. Ask if your actions are isolated attacks, or if they build on themselves. Is your spacing and ball/player positioning such that your attempted scoring cuts and actions are able to be utilized?

 

Tenet 2: Maximize Functional Spacing

In order to create an advantage in the first place, and to have a real opportunity to exploit the advantage created, you need spacing. And specifically, functional spacing.

But spacing as a concept can often be misrepresented and limited.

Is this good spacing?

The correct answer is: we don’t know. This is because spacing is about the location of defenders, not the offensive players. That’s why I like using the term functional spacing. How much space to you really have to work with?

If you have a lack of shooting ability from players at the 3-point line and their defenders are able to load up to the ball, you have spacing of your players but no functional spacing to attack.

At its core, functional spacing is about a team’s ability to engage defenders in ways enabling easier access to the rim for the offense, via drives and cuts.

 

Don’t Let 2 Guard 1 & Align to Engage

Core to maintaining functional spacing is keeping offensive players in positions where they are threats as often as possible. As such, choosing alignments (5-out, 4-out 1-in, etc.) that match your personnel’s spacing ability is important to make the most of your team.

If you have a non-shooter C, 5-out won’t reap the spacing benefits it would for a team with shooting across the board. In fact, it may yield less functional spacing than going 4-out 1-in, where at least that non-shooter can be a threat and force their defender to guard them.

Any time you position players away from the rim who don’t have the shooting ability to match, you’ve made yourself vulnerable to the defense not respecting their shooting and choosing to send extra help towards the rim instead.

While this is a threat, it is also an opportunity. One not new to basketball or unique to any particular team. Whether that non-shooter is a Guard/Wing/Big, the remedies are similar.

Rather than allowing their defender to provide extra help elsewhere as an advantage for the defense, we want to exploit that same positioning as an advantage for the offense.

Just as the defense not respecting shooting can materialize in a number of ways, exploiting it can be done in a number of ways.

Examples of this include using that non-shooter as an on or off-ball screener (including having them execute dribble handoffs) or manipulating positioning then using them as a cutter. All of them are about making that defender sagging off the offensive player wrong.

 

 

Here’s a simple illustration of how this works. Here, 2’s defender is sagging off them while making the ball handler’s chances of a drive less effective. If 2 isn’t a shooter and you don’t counter this somehow, that’s a problem!

But from this same setup, we can turn that weakness of the offense into a weakness of the defense, with a simple pin-down screen for a shooter.

Exploiting defensive tactics meant to stall the offense 1) is a good way to score efficiently, and 2) may prevent the defense from trying those tactics and may manufacture gravity for non-shooters.

 

Don’t Let 1 Guard 2

Through smart offense, good 1v1 creation, and natural defenses lapses, offenses will generate numbers advantages throughout a game. Their ultimate success will depend on their ability to exploit those 3v2 and 2v1 opportunities. Ideally, to turn 3v2s into 2v1s, and then attack the 2v1.

As we discuss this, keep the Law of Space in mind. This is a principle you’ll see referenced by coaches (I’ll update this with a specific coach citation if someone knows the originator). 

Law of Space: To create space in one area, we must compress players in another.

that if parts of the court are more spaced out than normal, others will consequently be more compressed.

And closer players are together, the easier it is to rotate and guard with a numbers disadvantage. A 3v2 with the 3 offensive players at the corners and rim is harder to guard than 3 offensive players in the same corner.

While this is a challenge, it’s one that can be addressed.

In these situations, the offense needs to optimize stretching of both axes of the court and force defenders attempting to guard 2 players at the same depth (closeness to the baseline) of the court to declare who they wish to guard, and we can do it for them through obtaining leverage or with further stretching our spacing.

In this example, we see 4 lift further up the wing to likely take x4 with them (or be open for a kickout 3), and 5 either flash to the rim (green) to stretch x2 horizontally, seal x2 to get inside leverage (purple) or set a pin-in flare for a kickout to 2 in the corner (blue) using outside leverage. Just standing around in the dunker spot allows x2 to guard 2 players.

In a similar way, engaging defenders inside with lob threats can prevent rotating defenders from disrupting a rim attack through vertical spacing:

These 3 principles: 1) horizontal & vertical stretches, 2) creating leverage to declare for defenders, and 3) vertical spacing allow teams to make 2v1s out of 3v2s and then maximize those 2v1s.

 

Don’t Guard Yourself

While calling sets to beat specific defensive strategies and tactics is my preferred route, it’s always good to also align such that any built-in in-play counter has a chance to succeed.

The “if you’re overplayed, back cut” type of in-play counter.

If the post is occupied on your side of the court, that won’t work.

Avoid this whenever possible. It’ll be hard to completely prevent these potential conflicts of spacing, but it’s important to keep them in mind when designing sets.

 

Tenet 3: Optimize Personnel Roles

This one should be simple, right? Put players in jobs that match their skills. Have a Marketing Degree? Go get a Marketing job, not an Engineering job. Unfortunately, this is a pitfall you still see across the basketball landscape.

 

Know Your Roles

You can define roles in various ways. The Point Guard, Shooting Guard, Small Forward, Power Forward, and Center positions in 2022 do little to inform us of what players are actually tasked to do, so at BBall Index we’ve worked hard to create our own sets of roles to outline player jobs.

Offensive Roles

On offense, we have our Offensive Archetypes/Roles, which you can read about here. We’ve set calculations for these up for NCAA, WNBA, NBA, and international teams. Hell, even the US Military reached out and now uses these in training academies as an example of task delegation.

Defensive Roles

We also calculate our Defensive Roles at the NBA level, and are working to do the same at other levels of basketball. A default defensive lineup in the NBA will generally look like this:

  • PG: Point of Attack
  • SG: Chaser
  • SF: Wing Stopper or Helper (depending on if you’re facing a wing scorer or not)
  • PF: Perimeter Big
  • C: Anchor Big or Mobile Big (depending on screen coverages run)

It’s important to understand what these roles on both ends of the court are and how to best leverage combinations of them as you construct a roster or individual lineups. This is a topic we’re investigating for broader analytical answers on role synergy at BBall Index, but for now we can use some common sense.

A few simple examples:

  • Don’t build a lineup without someone matching the skills of a Shot Creator/Primary Ball Handler in it, or you may have trouble running an offense.
  • Don’t stack multiple Roll & Cut Bigs and/or Athletic Finishers in the same lineup, or you may have spacing issues.
  • Match the degree of demand for off-screen and movement shooting in your playbook to the types of shooters you have on your roster (Stationary vs Movement vs Off-Screen Shooters).
  • If you’re running drop coverage, use an Anchor Big as your Center. If soft hedging or switching (or another more mobile coverage), a Mobile Big makes more sense.
  • Wing Stoppers matter more when facing a Shot Creator scoring wing. When not, a Helper in that SF slot can be more impactful.

While we and our consulting clients certainly think our roles are value-add to help take perspective and analyze players, you may find another set you like more. But regardless, find a framework and ask yourself how you’re utilizing your players. It’s an easy way to spark insight on your own roster, help watch film on other teams and categorize opposing players, and identify concepts from other teams as ones you’d like to use for your own.

These are all on a spectrum and just how pure of a specific role a player is can vary. Don’t let imperfection of role cutoffs lead you to ignore roles.

 

Role Fit Matters

It’s also important to understand how players are being asked to play vs roles that they should be in, as a way to identify opportunities to better align jobs to skill sets.

 

Size Matters

Ask a player like Kevin Durant to be an Off-Screen Shooter and you limit the impact he can provide. That role is too small for his skill set.

Ask a player like Bryn Forbes to be a Shot Creator and you set him up for failure. That role is too big for his skill set.

The scope of a role should align with a player’s skill set.

 

Function Fit

Ask a player like Rudy Gobert to be a Stationary Shooter and you set him up for failure. Same for Bryn Forbes being a Versatile Big. Those are roles with entirely different types of skill sets involved.

Understand the general groupings of functions as such:

  • On-Ball Guards/Wings: Shot Creators, Primary Ball Handlers, Secondary Ball Handlers, & Slashers
  • Off-Ball Guards/Wings: Off-Screen Shooters, Movement Shooters, Stationary Shooters, & Athletic Finishers
  • Bigs: Versatile Bigs, Post Scorers, Stretch Bigs, & Roll & Cut Bigs

Figure out which major function a player should reside in, then drill down to the level of scope. That’s how to figure out what’s best for a player’s role.

 

Match Actions to Roles

Always find the right job for the role that needs to be done!

If you need a plumber, call a plumber! Don’t grab an electrician.

If you’re choosing a player to run around screens off-ball, use an Off-Screen Shooter! If you’re picking someone to run ball screens, grab one of your ball handlers.

Keeping in mind who fits into what roles is important when designing plays and also something to keep in mind as a play breaks down.

For example, as a Lakers fan, it’s agonizing seeing Avery Bradley (Stationary Shooter) operating ball screens or isolating with 15 seconds left on the shot clock.

Last year it was equally annoying to watch Stretch Big Marc Gasol asked to often be a roller or dump-off big. In his 2021 Olympics with Spain, the usage made even less sense.

 

Another way I see this materialize is in continuity offenses. In a shot clock environment, running a continuity attack where every few seconds you’re running an action that makes little to no sense for the personnel involved isn’t effective use of time.

That’s not to say every continuity attack will have this problem, but it is a common mistake I see.

 

Develop to Roles

As you are focusing on priority skill sets for players to develop during practice time and drill work, picking skills associated with success in their role (or next role) are the place to start.

As a brewer, if you can go to a conference about brewing, a conference about distilling, or a conference about pancakes, all options may be value-add and help grow your skill sets. But that first option will more directly help you be better at your current job. The second may help set you up for your next role. The last one would be more useful for a career change.

Development time is currency. And realistically we don’t see players that are good everywhere all that often. But we do see players work on skills that they won’t/shouldn’t be using much in games for their role. We see others commit to growing skills directly translatable for their jobs, and thrive as a result.

Are you a Stationary Shooter? Working on skills associated with being a Stationary Shooter will help you be better at your job, and skills associated with being a Movement Shooter can help ready you for promotion to that next level of shooting.

Don’t take this as me saying player development outside of your role is bad. Targeted development is just a more efficient use of time for success in a role and a way to translate as much growth as possible into performance.

 

Develop, Then Unleash

Real development work generally comes in the shadows, not in the spotlight of games. Patrick Ewing knows a little something about that.

 

The volume of reps you can have during practices and offseason work is exponentially higher than what you can get in-game. But going beyond what you’re ready for during games has massively larger win-loss consequences.

We’ve seen this in the past with rookies held out for seasons developing at similar rates as players playing games in-season (hi, process Sixers).

Before we see a non-shooter Center start attempting 3s in games, they’ve put the work in behind the scenes to develop that proficiency and earn that right. Once you prove you can do it at a high rate behind the scenes, then start to unleash that developing skill.

Putting a player into a superstar role before they’re a superstar is a way to set them up for immediate failure, some highlight plays, and can be damaging to a psyche. You can simultaneously be putting in that practice work and eventually see the growth, but the price tag doesn’t need to be wins if you’re a team looking to succeed in the standings this season.

 

Tenet 4: Attack Screen Coverages

If there’s one area that’s ready to be exploited by smarter coaches, it’s here. This can be the difference between a good offense and an elite offense.

Think about football: whenever you see an audible at the line of scrimmage by a quarterback, or the sideline signal in a new play after lining up and looking at the defense, why is that?

It’s because they see the defense, are anticipating a specific coverage, and are changing their play to give themselves the best chance to beat that coverage.

You can do this in basketball. And it’s much easier than you’d think and incredibly value-add.

Just like in football defensive coverages, basketball coverages on ball screens and off-ball screens help take away certain attacks well and are vulnerable to others.

Unlike the NFL, but closer to NCAA football and even closer to high school football is how frequently basketball defenses change coverages.

It’s not play after play. Sometimes it’s an entire game of the same coverage. For many teams, they won’t adjust until halftime. Some go quarter by quarter. Others timeout by timeout. Very few will adjust dynamically. The quicker you are to adjust as a defense (or offense), the better.

The good thing for you (less so for the game in general) is that teams in basketball are generally slower to adapt. 

Exploit the heck out of that.

 

Be a haunted house, not a surprise party

Surprise parties have that 1 big surprise. BOOM. There it is. Like a trick play in football, you’ve caught the victim(?) off-guard. Some people design basketball plays this way. But when the frequency of those smart attacks is scarce, the overall impact is low.

Be a haunted house. I hate them. Surprises come left and right. Take that approach, where the frequency at which you’re attacking the weakness in the defense’s coverages is high. Unlike a trick play, attacking coverages can be constant and you can even run the same sets over and over and over again until a defense adjusts.

And if they adjust, you adjust, and you keep the pressure on just with different concepts.

 

Organize Your Playbook

This is a huge one. Thinking back to the football example, you have to know how to adjust once you identify the defense’s coverage. “Attack the seams against cover 3.” We can take this same approach in basketball. “Run 77 Spain Veer against drop, not a show & recover.”

Ask yourself:

  1. Do we know what the weaknesses are to different on and off-ball screen coverages?
  2. Does our playbook encompass sets designed to attack those weaknesses using those concepts?
  3. Is our playbook organized such that we know what to call when we anticipate specific coverages?
  4. Are we recognizing coverages in-game in a way that enables our playcalling to attack coverages with those sets?
If you’re not 4/4 on this, you have opportunities to tweak your approach and more purposefully attack defenses.

Years ago I thought tracking set play efficiency alone was a good way to dictate how you’re calling plays. A key piece that analysis was missing was coverage. Just because a set is great against drop coverage doesn’t mean it’ll work against switching.

You should know (or can learn!) what concepts work best against what types of defenses before needing to call the plays. Any learning on the fly comes with an in-game opportunity cost that you could potentially be running better sets for the situation.

My recommendation: figure out that organizing ahead of time, and use tracking on efficiency as a way to fine-tune within those organized groups of sets rather than as the way to group them.

As we build out more of our scheme offerings at BBall Index, this concept is one we’ll touch on constantly. Any concept introduced will include info on when and where to deploy it, from a personnel standpoint (on your end) and a coverage standpoint (on the defense’s end).

 

Built Your Playbook Thinking 2-3 Steps Down the Road

Anticipate. You’ll need to make in-game adjustments. Have the sets and concepts you call upon be ones you’ve already built into your playbook. Prioritize the counters to adjustments attempting to take away your core attacks.

You can have great ideas, but they need to be ones your players can execute in the moment. And it’s easier to execute when you’ve practiced before.

Do you have a dominant post-player that’s your primary offensive engine? Teams will try tactics pre-catch to deter post entries and will send help post-catch to disrupt those chances.

So what’s the action here?

 Be ready to beat a defense fronting with lob protection on the back side, doubling from the strong or weak side, ¾ high or low pre-catch positioning, etc.

You likely won’t need it all in game 1, nor will you need it all in the same game, but over time you’ll have those challenges thrown at your squad and you can be more comfortable knowing your players and your staff are prepared.

 

Keep an eye out for articles addressing these types of situational basketball from the BBall Index premium scheme feed once we launch that subscription tier.

 

KEP

Usually KYP for Know Your Personnel, I’d say you should Know Everyone’s Personnel. If you’re facing a team with weak point of attack defense, you should:

  1. Look to attack it if your on-ball ball handlers are capable of that, and
  2. Anticipate tactics to support that weakness of the defense

Don’t limit yourself to only attacks your team is great at. If your opponent is really bad at defending something, that needs to be part of the calculus as well.

 

Tenet 5: Win the Scouting War

Being prepared is a gigantic part of sustained success in basketball. 

 

Sharpen the Right Tools

Scouting to know what coverages to anticipate from a defense and tactical tricks in their bag likely won’t reveal a brand new concept to consider, but it’ll help you focus on practicing the right concepts and sets during practice and walkthroughs.

Practice time is currency, just like a suitcase only has limited capacity, so it’s best to pack for what’s expected on the trip. You may encounter something you weren’t anticipating, but that shouldn’t stop you from being as prepared as possible for what’s most reasonable to prep against, given what you know about the destination.

 

Disguise Plays

Disguising plays comes down to preventing early detection, and I’m not into how this has materialized for a lot of teams.

Disguising plays doesn’t mean you need to waste 15 seconds running false motion you don’t pressure the defense with or intend to score off of, just to set up the action you want to run.

Instead, just make sure you don’t have a single (1) set play out of horns in your whole playbook, or only one (1) 5-out play. If you’re running Spain/Stack action, maybe don’t have that be the only time you line up with a guard at the block.

This helps us accomplish our goal of minimizing the risk the opposing coaching staff identifies what’s about to happen and can call out a set-specific defensive coverage while also not wasting our own shot clock time to do so.

 

Self-Scout

With resources for many teams limited, I understand why this is less of an in-season priority. But if you can delegate this task to someone or find just a little time to take a look in the mirror at how you might defend your sets and your own playcalling tendencies, you might learn something valuable.

Perhaps you find that you’re tipping your cards a bit, and allowing defenses to anticipate plays or actions early enough to deploy set-specific defensive coverages. This might be alignment-driven. It might be that you run the same set to start every game. It could be an end of game set you use a tad too often.

You might also end up anticipating adjustments you haven’t yet faced. This time to review and brainstorm can help you and your team be more prepared for those sorts of future challenges. That way, an in-game surprise ends up a 2-minute advantage rather than a 2-quarter advantage.

 

Boom Shakalaka

I said it ~5 years ago and I’ll say it again! Follow those principles and you’re on your way to building an offensive Death Star. Get them taken care of, then witness the power of that fully armed and operational battle station.

This is the blueprint I’d recommend for anyone building an offense. There’s a lot more meat to put on these bones, and we’ll get there, but integrate these principles for any team from High School to the NBA and you’re on track to high offensive efficiency.

Hit me up on Twitter with questions and hate mail @Tim_NBA. I’m also available at bball.index@gmail.com if you’re a coach and have questions about implementing anything you read today.

As always, stay efficient.

– Tim