3.10: Spacing and Roles

Chapter 3: Offense

The floor and its spots, the alignments, the gap and why its width decides everything, the drive, kick-out and skip pass, and the five roles as they are actually played now.

New terms introduced (23): 4-out 1-in, 5-out, Block, Center (5), Combo guard, Corner, Drive, Dunker spot, Elbow, Gap, Kick-out, Point forward, Point guard (1), Power forward (4), Shooting guard (2), Skip pass, Slot, Small forward (3), Spacing, Strong side, The paint, Top of the key, Wing. Diagrams: 6.

Eight lectures of actions have taken the floor for granted. This one is about the floor. Every action so far works only if the players who are not in it are standing in the right places, and “the right places” has a precise meaning: far enough apart that one defender cannot guard two of them. That is spacing, and it is the quietest thing in basketball and the one that decides most possessions.

The lecture is mostly vocabulary, because a viewer needs the names of the spots before the rest of the site’s sentences mean anything. Section 1 names the floor: the areas and the spots. Section 2 is the alignments, 5-out and 4-out 1-in, and what each buys. Section 3 is the gap, the single measurement that explains why spacing matters. Section 4 is the three things that happen when spacing works: the drive, the kick-out and the skip pass. Section 5 is the five roles as they are actually played now.

1 The floor

Split the court lengthwise, basket to basket, and the half the ball is on is the strong side; the other is the weak side, which on defense is where help comes from. That is the first division every player learns, and half the defensive vocabulary of Chapter 4 refers to it.

The painted rectangle from the baseline to the free-throw line is the paint, also called the key or the lane. Inside it, against the rim, is the restricted area, the half-circle inside which a secondary defender cannot draw a charge. The painted marks on the lane lines nearest the baseline are the blocks, and the traditional post-up spot is on one of them. Where the free-throw line meets a lane line is an elbow, the hub of high-post play and the spot the two bigs stand on in Horns. The middle of the free-throw line is the nail, which is a defensive spot: it is where a help defender stands to threaten a drive from either side, taught in lecture 4.4.

Outside the arc, going round from the baseline: the corner, where the three-point line meets the sideline and the shot is shortest; the wing, level with the free-throw line extended; the slot, above the arc roughly in line with the lane line; and the top of the key, straight out from the rim. Between the corner and the block, just outside the lane, is the dunker spot, where a non-shooting big waits for lobs and drop-offs, and where the hammer of lecture 3.6 sends its screener.

2 The alignments

A team’s alignment is how many players stand outside the arc. 5-out puts all five outside it, as in Figure 1, and the paint is empty: any drive meets nobody until a defender leaves his man. It is the base of the delay offense of lecture 3.2 and of most modern motion. It asks one thing of a roster, which is that all five players can be guarded outside the arc; a non-shooting big standing at the arc is guarded by a defender who simply stands in the lane, which turns 5-out into 4-out with an extra defender in the paint.

Five attackers stand fully outside the three-point line: 1 at the top with the ball, 3 and 2 high on the left and right wings, and 4 and 5 at the top of the left and right corners, just above where the corner line meets the arc. Each defender stands a step inside his man, and none of them is in the lane. A dribble arrow runs from 1 straight down the middle of the lane and stops above the restricted area, right over the label nobody home. The label 5-out: nobody in the paint is written across the top of the court.
Figure 1: 5-out. Every attacker outside the arc, so every defender is out of the paint, and a drive from the top meets nobody until someone leaves his man.

4-out 1-in puts four outside and one inside, usually in the dunker spot rather than on the block, as in Figure 2. It concedes one defender in the paint and gains a drop-off target and an offensive rebounder. Which alignment a team uses is a roster decision in the same way the systems of lecture 3.9 are.

Four attackers stand spread around the three-point line: 1 with the ball at the left slot, 2 at the right slot, and 3 and 4 in the two corners. The fifth, 5, is in the right dunker spot beside the rim, labeled drop-off. Of the five defenders only x5 is in the paint, a step up from 5 toward the lane. 1 dribbles past x1 into the lane toward the rim, and a dashed pass runs from the end of the drive, under x5, to 5. The line at the top reads 4-out 1-in: one defender in the paint.
Figure 2: 4-out 1-in. The one inside player waits in the dunker spot; his defender is the only one in the paint, and he has to decide whether to leave it when the drive comes.

3 The gap

A gap is the distance between two attackers on the perimeter, measured in spots. If they are in neighboring spots, slot and wing, that is a single gap. If the spot between them is empty, slot and corner with the wing vacant, that is a double gap, as in Figure 3. The difference decides whether a drive is worth attempting: driving a single gap means the second defender is one step away, and driving a double gap means he is two, which is the difference between help arriving before the driver and after him.

On the right, two attackers stand one spot apart, 2 at the slot and 3 on the wing, and the space between their defenders, x2 and x3, is labeled single gap. On the left, 4 at the slot has the ball and 5 is in the corner, with the wing between them empty. 4 dribbles down the left side, past his defender x4 on the sideline side, into the space between x4 and x5, labeled double gap: the nearest help, x5 in the corner, is a spot further away than a wing defender would be. 1 stands at the top, guarded by x1.
Figure 3: Gap. On the right, two attackers one spot apart: a single gap. On the left, the wing is empty, so the slot and the corner make a double gap, and that is where the drive goes.

This is what spacing means, operationally. It is not “stand far apart”; it is “stand so that the gaps the ball can attack are double, and so that no defender can guard two attackers at once.” Every offense in this chapter creates double gaps somewhere. Dribble drive motion is built on nothing else.

4 Drive, kick-out, skip

Three things happen when the spacing is right, and they follow one another.

The drive is the ball-handler beating his man into the gap, as in Figure 4. A drive is not primarily a way to score; it is a way to make two defenders guard one player, which is the same thing a ball screen does, achieved without a screen. Once the second defender commits, the driver is no longer looking at the rim, he is looking at the man that defender left.

The ball-handler 1 at the right slot dribbles down into the gap toward the middle of the lane, labeled into the gap; his defender, x1, is off to his right, out of the path of the dribble. The top, the spot between 1 and 3 at the left slot, is empty. Two help defenders react, each drawn with an arrow: x3, the defender of 3, stands at the nail and steps across in front of the drive, labeled steps across; x4, the defender of 4 in the left corner, sinks from the left side toward the lane and the rim, labeled sinks. 3 at the left slot and 4 in the left corner are left unguarded. 5 stands in the left dunker spot with x5 between him and the rim, and 2 is in the right corner with x2 above him.
Figure 4: The drive. The handler attacks the double gap. The nail defender steps across and the weak-side defender sinks; both of their men are now open, which is what the drive was for.

The kick-out is the pass to that man, as in Figure 5. It is the most common assist in the modern game, because the modern floor puts a shooter in each corner and the modern defense sends help from one of them.

1 has the ball in the paint just above the rim, with his defender behind him, up and to the right. The weak-side wing defender, x3, has left 3 on the left wing and helped into the lane on the left side of the rim, labeled he helped. 1 passes out to 3, a dashed line labeled kick-out that ends just short of him. A second dashed line runs from 3 down the left side to 4 in the left corner: the further option, labeled swing on, if 3's defender recovers. 4's defender is above him toward the lane, 2 is in the right corner with his defender above him, and 5 is low on the right with his defender between him and the rim.
Figure 5: The kick-out. The weak-side defender has helped at the rim; the driver passes out to the man he left, and if that defender recovers, the shooter swings it on to the corner.

The skip pass is the longer version, thrown across the floor over the defense rather than around it, as in Figure 6. It skips the players in between, which is where the name comes from, and it is thrown when the whole defense has shifted to one side: the recovery is then a closeout from the middle of the paint to the far corner, which is the longest closeout in the game and the one that produces the most open shots.

The ball is with 1 on the right wing, and the defense has shifted toward him: x1 below 1, x2 above 2 in the right corner, x3 at the top of the free-throw circle to the right of 3 at the top, x5 beside 5 on the right block, and x4 in the paint left of the rim. A dashed pass runs from 1 all the way across the court to 4 in the left corner, passing above x1, x5 and x4 and below x3, labeled over the shifted defense. A teal arrow takes x4 from the paint toward the left corner and stops well short of 4, labeled long closeout.
Figure 6: The skip pass. The defense has shifted to the ball; the pass goes across the floor to the far corner, and the closeout that has to cover it starts in the paint.
Setup
A handler with a live dribble facing a double gap, two shooters spaced on the weak side, and either an empty paint or a big in the dunker spot.
Trigger
The handler’s defender is beaten or leaning, and the gap is two spots wide.
Read
The driver reads the second defender, not the rim. Nobody helps: finish. The nail defender steps across: the shooter behind him is open at the top or the far slot. The low man helps at the rim: the corner he left is open. The big’s defender leaves the dunker spot: the drop-off. If the defense recovers before the pass, the ball is swung on and the next player attacks the gap that has opened.
Payoff
A layup, or the open shot belonging to whichever defender chose to help.
Beaten by
Guarding the drive with one defender, which needs a player who can stay in front; a stunt that fakes help and recovers; or building a wall in the middle and conceding the pull-up. All in lecture 4.4.
Action 1: The drive, the kick-out and the skip pass: one action that makes two defenders guard one player, and the two passes that punish whichever one comes.

5 The five roles

The numbers are still used, and still mean something, but what each number does has changed enough that the old definitions mislead.

The point guard, the 1, is the primary ball-handler and initiator. The shooting guard, the 2, is the secondary handler and perimeter scorer, today mostly an off-ball mover who comes off the screens of lectures 3.5 and 3.6. The small forward, the 3, is the wing, expected to shoot, drive and guard several positions. The power forward, the 4, was the second post player and is now often a perimeter player who screens, pops and makes the short-roll decisions of lecture 3.3; when he shoots from the arc he is called a stretch four. The center, the 5, is the primary screener, roller and rim protector.

Two role names exist because the numbers stopped fitting. A combo guard moves between initiating and spacing without a fixed role. A point forward is a forward-sized player who runs the offense, which puts a bigger, slower defender at the point of attack and is a mismatch before anything has happened.

The reason the roles matter for this chapter is that every system in lecture 3.9 is chosen for the players on the roster, and every action in lectures 3.2 to 3.8 is run for a particular kind of player. A ball screen for a point forward is a different action from a ball screen for a point guard, even though the diagram is identical.

The idea to carry into lecture 3.11 is that spacing, gaps and roles are the raw material of an offense that has no script at all. The next lecture is about those: motion, read and react, isolation and the mismatch, and how an offense chooses the action that beats the coverage it is being shown.