Explaining the universe 🌌

Principles of modern NBA offenses, jersey power rankings, and what the Lakers rank last at

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Look it’s hard to focus on trivial things with a madman who won’t accept his fate occupying our Twitter timelines and specialty cable channels. But enough about Tom Brady, because this is an NBA newsletter.

Speaking of which, the NBA is a vastly different place than it was a few years ago. While the basic structure of the league remains the same, franchise values, revenue sources, and even the Xs and Os of the game itself are evolving rapidly. 

As students of the game ourselves, we realized our readers may appreciate a guide to some of the esoteric language and ideas that form the basis of how NBA basketball operates today.  Also, it’s important to sound like you know your s#!% when talking about the NBA at work. Accordingly, this is our first installment in “STL Explains the (Basketball) Universe”, which we’ll expand upon in the coming months.

STL Explains the (Basketball) Universe

1. Offense

2. Defense

3. The Court

4. Free Agency and the Salary Cap

5. Moves

6. Advanced Stats

STL EXPLAINS THE (BASKETBALL) UNIVERSE: OFFENSE

You may have missed it, but we linked to a tweet last year that explains a lot about what we now see on the court. And it’s all Daryl Morey’s fault.

llewellyn jean @owenlhjphillips

how it started how it's going @dmorey edition

Since Owen’s first chart from the 2006-2007 season, a plague of uniformity has settled onto NBA offenses, driven by the analytics revolution that has swept the league. Coaches have become singularly focused on two types of shot: at the rim, and three pointers. While far from the first to realize the value of these types of shots, Morey aggressively pushed the Rockets to emphasize them and excise midrange two-point jumpers from their arsenal. And for good reason: these two shots are much more efficient, as measured by points per shot, than any other type of shot. And so more aesthetic midrange shots are banished, another casualty of capitalism’s brutal efficiency. Sorry MJ!

The easiest way of getting shots at the rim is by creating “live ball” turnovers, aka steals (as distinct from dead ball turnovers, like a pass out of bounds). But NBA defenses only generate turnovers on around 15% of possessions, so most of a team’s success getting good looks on offense depends on how effectively it can operate in a half court offense against a set defense.

In the half court, there are three archetypes of how teams run offenses. There is some overlap, and most teams run all types of plays in different quantities, but most plays, or actions, boil down to one of the below archetypes:

1. Ball screens, featuring a ball handler navigating a screen set by his teammate (the pick and roll, a play that has worked since Naismith invented the game). Here’s Cousy and Russell running pick-and-roll in the 1960s.

   

   (Ed. Note. Enes Kanter considers this play the bible for PNR defense…)

2. Motion, featuring a combination of high IQ passers and off ball screens. The Dubs mastered this in their run to five straight NBA Finals.

   

3. Isolations, featuring James Harden dribbling between his legs until his defender falls asleep.

   

Pick and roll heavy offenses require specific team construction to work well. First, they need a talented ball hander who is a threat to shoot from distance, a good screen setter with gravity (someone who needs to be covered when he’s either rolling to the rim or left on the perimeter), and good shooters on the wing. If the ball handler isn’t a threat from deep, the ball handler’s defender can go under the screen and blow up the play. If the screener doesn’t have gravity, both defenders can ignore him and double the ball handler. And without good wing shooters, secondary defenders can collapse into the paint to help on the ball handler. 

Notice how “high” (close to midcourt) John Collins sets the screen for Trae Young here. Once he gets by Fultz, Trae will have plenty of room to cook Khem Burch off the dribble or throw it back to Collins for a three, while wing defenders have to respect Hawks shooters.

Motion offenses, including the well-known Princeton offense, have more variation. They rely on a mix of off-ball movement, dribble handoffs (also known as DHOs), off-ball screens, and back cuts to generate open looks. This video demonstrates what this looked like for the Warriors when their flow offense incinerated the league in 2015-2016. Motion offenses are very complicated and thus need high basketball IQ players to execute, along with at least one excellent post passer. The Warriors offense this year scuffled until Draymond Green—a gifted passer and defender—returned but has been great since.

Isolations, the framework everyone remembers from 72-68 Knicks/Heat matchups from the mid-1990s, rely on a star player to create his own shot. The NBA’s illegal defense rule changed for the 2001-2002 season, making it much easier to double team players off the ball and to help on ball, which eliminated many of the advantages that made isolations popular in the 80s and 90s. Nevertheless, Kobe continued to fire away to the chagrin of his teammates.

James Harden is the king of the modern isolation due to his ability to create a high-percentage shot without the help of other players. He can easily either get to a step back three, which he makes at an astonishing clip, or blow by his man off the dribble (as in the clip above) on his way to the rim for a layup or foul. This is especially important late in the shot clock, when offensive efficiency typically goes down: one of the downsides of a high ball screen is that the screener brings a second defender towards the ball, facilitating a double team that can lead to a bad shot or shot clock violation. The only real requirement for an isolation is a prolific isolation scorer, which are hard to come by: think Harden, Durant, Jordan, or Iverson. Harden also relies on the spacing created by having shooters around him, which provides the driving lane to the basket in the clip above.

This simplistic explanation sits on top of many, many layers of nuance and complexity, but certain themes immediately emerge. Three point shooting is critical for any team. Good passers don’t need to be good shooters, but themselves need good shooters to be effective. Stretch bigs give a pick-and-roll offense important versatility. Players who can create their own shot are worth their weight in gold. And, by virtue of its absence above, the devaluation of low post play. Someone like Jahlil Okafor, who relies on other players to get him the ball where he needs it to be effective, and who isn’t an effective passer, is virtually unplayable in the modern NBA despite being drafted third overall just over five years ago. It’s a cruel world out there.

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TWEET OF THE WEEK

It’s hard to build a championship team with kids. But man, the Lakers old af!

Positive Residual @presidual

Thread: Here's the distribution of playing time by age for each NBA team. The leaguewide weighted average age is 26.3. The Lakers, Clippers, and Jazz are at the top end (around 29), while the Wolves, Thunder, and Hawks are at the low end (around 24).

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STL INVESTIGATES: NEW UNIFORM SZN

Since its inception, Save The Lottery has quickly become known for being the most suave and dapper newsletter in the game. And we thought we should inaugurate the new season by sharing some of our sartorial chops with our readers.  

Each year a crop of new uniforms of varying quality are released upon the jersey buying public, but who is really wearing it best? STL Investigates.

BEST NEW UNIFORMS

Honorable Mention:

Charlotte Hornets City Edition.  The uniform apparently celebrates that Charlotte was the first location of a branch of the US Mint.  The mint green is crisp, the black and gold piping looks slick, and the pinstripes are clean without being derivative.  On the other hand, no one (no one) has ever called Charlotte “Buzz City”, because that would be painfully stupid. Nice looking kit though.

Runner Up:

New Orleans Pelicans City Edition.  Having a jersey that does not feature the name of your team or city is a power move. But New Orleans has such a unique cultural heritage they can pull it off without issue. A serif numeral is a bold choice, but it works here. Well played, Nola.

Winner:

Just because it’s obvious doesn’t make it any less awesome. The gradient, the hot pink, the Bam, there is just too much good stuff here.

WORST NEW UNIFORMS

Honorable Mention:

Chicago Bulls City Edition. This actually isn’t a terrible jersey, but STL dearly wishes they were in the pitch meeting for this uni unveiling. “So we’ll have them rocking a vintage art deco font, and to celebrate that, we’ll do the photo shoot on a couch in a porn producer’s basement, while Zach Levine does his best to make everyone in America supremely uncomfortable!”

Runner Up:

Cleveland City Edition. What are the biggest cultural touchstones that you associate with the city of Cleveland? Yeah, the Cavaliers couldn’t come up with any either...

“Winner”:

Brooklyn Nets Throwback Jersey. 

This is just....

Let’s say this ‘throwback’ captures all the beauty and class that we all normally associate with the state of New Jersey. Maybe it also explains why Kyrie ‘just didn’t want to play’ the first time they wore them last night…

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AT THE BUZZER

• The Athletic: The top 10 sneaker releases of 2020 ($)

• Owen Phillips invades our turf

• The James Harden blockbuster trade is coming ($) Preview: Sixers, Raptors, Nets. 

• Combo guard vs. Hybrid Guard vs. Traditional Guard? Basketball analyst and former mid-major legend Rashad Phillips breaks down his updated position categories in his new podcast