3.11: Motion, Conceptual Offense, Reads and Counters

Chapter 3: Offense

Offense run from rules rather than a script: motion, read and react, isolation and the mismatch, and the synthesis of every beaten-by slot in this chapter.

New terms introduced (4): Isolation, Mismatch, Motion offense, Read and react. Diagrams: 4.

Nine lectures have named actions. This one is about the offenses that do not call them. A set play tells five players what to do; a conceptual offense tells them what to do if. The instructions are rules attached to events: if the ball is passed, screen away; if a teammate drives at you, cut behind him; if you are denied, back cut. Nobody calls anything, and the actions of lectures 3.2 to 3.9 appear anyway, because the rules produce them.

Section 1 is motion offense, the oldest of these. Section 2 is read and react, the most systematic. Section 3 is the two situations in which an offense deliberately stops moving: isolation and the mismatch. Section 4 is the synthesis this chapter has been building toward: every “beaten by” slot in Chapter 3 is a coverage from Chapter 4, and choosing the action that beats the coverage being shown is what an offense actually does.

1 Motion offense

Motion offense gives each player a small set of rules about what to do when the ball moves. The classic pair is pass and screen away and fill the spot behind, as in Figure 1. The ball goes from the slot to the wing; the passer screens for someone on the far side rather than cutting toward the ball; the man he screens comes up to fill the spot the passer left. The floor is back in its shape, the ball is on a new side, and the rules apply again.

A 4-out 1-in floor. 1 at the right slot passes out to 2 on the right wing. 1 then cuts across the top and screens away on x3, the defender of 3 at the left slot; the screen is drawn as a bar at the end of 1's cut, above and to the right of x3, labeled screen away. 3 comes up off the screen, over the top of the key and across toward the right slot, the spot 1 left, labeled fill. The big, 5, lifts from the left block toward the left elbow, and 4 is in the left corner. Every attacker has a defender near him. — Figure 1: Motion offense. The ball is passed to the wing; the passer screens away for the far slot; that player fills the spot the passer left. No play was called: each player is following a rule about what to do when the ball moves.

Setup: Four or five players around the perimeter in named spots, one big inside or all five out, and a rule set every player knows.
Trigger: Any pass. The rules are attached to the ball moving.
Read: The passer chooses between the rules his team allows: screen away, cut through, or hold. The screened player reads his own defender with the four reads of lecture 3.5. Every other player fills so the spacing of lecture 3.10 is preserved. If the defense switches everything, the rules produce a mismatch and the offense stops and plays Section 3.
Payoff: Continuous screening and cutting that a defense must guard correctly every time, from an offense that can be run at any tempo and needs no call.
Beaten by: Switching everything, which turns every screen into a non-event and dares the offense to beat a matched-up defense one-on-one; or physical denial that stops the first pass. Lecture 4.5.

Action 1: Motion offense: rules attached to the pass, and the actions appear on their own.

2 Read and react

Read and react attaches the rules to the drive rather than the pass, and it is the most explicit version of a conceptual offense: each player has a specified reaction to each thing the ball does, learned in layers, as in Figure 2. A baseline drive makes the man behind it circle to the spot it left, the weak-side corner lift to the wing, and the players away from the ball move up a spot. A drive at a teammate makes him cut behind it, which is the 45 cut of lecture 3.7. A pass to the post makes the passer and the nearest teammate cut in opposite directions.

A 5-out floor: 1 with the ball on the right wing, 2 in the right corner, 3 at the top, 4 on the left wing and 5 in the left corner, each with a defender. 1 dribbles past his defender, who is on his inside, down toward the right baseline; under the end of the drive is the label the drive is the signal. At the same time every teammate moves: 2 cuts up from the right corner, behind the drive, to just below the wing 1 left; 3 moves right from the top along the arc to the right slot, behind the drive, labeled fill behind; 4 moves up from the left wing toward the top, the spot 3 left; and 5 lifts from the left corner up toward the left wing that 4 left, labeled lift. — Figure 2: Read and react. The drive is the signal. The player behind the drive fills the spot it left, the weak-side corner lifts, and the man at the top fills behind. Each reaction is a rule triggered by the direction of the drive.

Setup: 4-out or 5-out spacing with every player in a named spot, and a rule for each of: a drive at you, a drive away from you, a pass to the post, a dribble at you.
Trigger: A drive, a dribble-at, or a post entry. Not a call.
Read: The driver reads the help exactly as in lecture 3.10. Everyone else executes their reaction without waiting to see whether the drive succeeds, which is what makes the passes available at the instant the help commits.
Payoff: Every drive has three outlets already moving to the right places before the help has finished committing.
Beaten by: A defense that never helps, so no reaction is ever triggered, which requires five defenders who can guard the ball alone; or shrinking the floor so the drives are into single gaps. Lecture 4.4.

Action 2: Read and react: the drive is the signal, and everyone else has a rule for it.

3 When the offense stops moving

Two situations are worth stopping for.

Isolation clears one side of the floor so one attacker can work alone, as in Figure 3. Everything this chapter has built exists to make two defenders guard one attacker; an isolation is the admission that this particular attacker beats one defender by himself, and the four teammates are there only to keep their own defenders too far away to help. It is the least collective thing an offense does, and it is correct whenever the individual advantage is larger than the advantage a screen would create.

Figure 3: Isolation. The other four attackers have cleared to the far side; the handler has the whole side of the floor and his defender has no help nearer than the nail.

Setup: The handler on a wing or at the top. The other four on the opposite side, spread so their defenders cannot help without leaving a shooter.
Trigger: A favorable individual matchup, or a late shot clock, or an ATO designed for it.
Read: The handler reads whether help comes. No help: beat the man. Help from the nail: the pass back to the top. Help from the weak-side corner: the skip. A second defender arriving on the dribble: the isolation has become a two-on-one and the read is the same as the drive’s.
Payoff: A one-on-one against the defender the offense chose, with no help within a pass.
Beaten by: A defender who stays in front, which is the whole answer; or a defense that sends a second defender early and lives with the pass out. Lecture 4.4.

Action 3: Isolation: clear the side and let one player beat one player.

A mismatch is the same idea created by the defense rather than chosen by the offense. After a switch, a big is guarding a guard or a guard is guarding a big, as in Figure 4. Both are attackable and each has its own route: the guard drives the slower defender, or the big posts the smaller one, which is the post-up and the early seal of lecture 3.7. The defense’s answer is the scram switch of lecture 4.5, which is why the early seal has to be early.

A ball screen has been switched. At the top, the small ball-handler 1 has the ball and is guarded by the big defender x5, who is above him and to his left, labeled big on the guard. The big, 5, stands just outside the right elbow, guarded by the small defender x1, above him and to his right, labeled guard on the big. Two arrows show the two ways to attack it: 1 dribbles down into the lane away from the slower big, and 5 cuts straight down just outside the right lane line toward the block to post the smaller defender. The other three attackers are spaced wide, each with his defender: 4 at the left wing, 3 in the left corner and 2 in the right corner. — Figure 4: The mismatch. A switch has left a big on the guard and a guard on the big. Two ways to attack it: drive the slower defender, or post the smaller one.

Setup: A switch has just happened. The three players not involved space away to keep help out of the picture.
Trigger: The switch itself. The window is a second or two before the defense fixes it.
Read: Which mismatch is bigger. A guard against a slow big: attack off the dribble before help arrives. A big against a small guard: seal and call for the ball immediately, because a scram switch is coming. If the defense sends help, the man the helper left is open.
Payoff: A drive or a post catch against a defender who cannot guard that player alone.
Beaten by: The scram switch, or switching back at the first dead ball, or a defense whose players are similar enough in size that no switch creates a mismatch at all. Lecture 4.5.

Action 4: The mismatch: the defense made it; take whichever half is bigger, quickly.

4 The synthesis: read the coverage, pick the action

Every card in this chapter ends with a “beaten by” slot, and every one of those slots names a coverage from Chapter 4. Reading them the other way round gives the offense’s actual decision procedure, because a coverage that beats one action is usually what makes another one available:

The defense drops on ball screens, conceding the pull-up to protect the rim. Then the pop and the pull-up are open, and the snake gets to them.
The defense plays at the level or hedges, killing the pull-up. Then the slip and the ghost punish the early commitment, and the rocket pass beats the hedge.
The defense traps, taking the ball out of the best player’s hands. Then the short roll and the 4-on-3 are the whole answer.
The defense ices toward the sideline. Then the step-up screen sends the handler baseline instead, and the twist re-screens him back to the middle.
The defense switches everything. Then screens stop mattering and mismatch, early seal and isolation are what is left, which is why switching teams need five players who can guard.
The defense top-locks shooters off screens. Then the back cut is open behind the lock, every time.
The defense helps hard from the weak side. Then the hammer, the kick-out and the skip pass are the punishment.
The defense never helps. Then the drive and the isolation are the offense, because nobody is guarding two players.

This is what a good offense is doing while it looks like it is running a play: showing an action, seeing the coverage, and running the action that beats it. The named actions of lectures 3.4 and 3.6 exist for exactly this reason, which is why each of them was introduced with the coverage it was invented against.

The idea to carry into lecture 3.12 is that all of this assumes a live ball and a set defense. The next lecture is about the possessions that start from neither: out of bounds, after a timeout, against a press, and against a zone.