I'll preface this by saying that I like JJ, am very glad that he is our coach, and that he has done a good job this year. But our lack of organized offense has been a big problem. It was a problem last year with Ham too. For almost two full seasons now the data has clearly shown that our points per possession is significantly higher when running sets vs. freelancing. Cranjis has been all over this stuff. Last year with Ham we'd run organized offense more than 50% of the time in first halves which was great, and then we'd overwhelmingly freelance in 3rd quarters and blow leads. In the preseason and the first few weeks of the year JJ had us running organized offense a really high percentage of the time (70% in October, 65% in November), but its declined every month of the season and our offense has dipped as a result (its down to 39% so far in March). And its not just bringing in Luka, it was down to 46% in January. Cleveland, OKC, Denver, they're all over 55% for the season. You know why OKC is able to blow teams out of the water every night, even with injuries to rotation players? Because they have an established system, a strong playbook, and they stay organized regardless of who is on the court. Against Boston we ran organized offense 34% of the time, which is awful. Our expected points per possession running organized offense was 1.02, our expected points per possession from freelance was 0.89. We were incredibly hot shooting in the first quarter which covered up bad offensive process. For some reason, they decided the gameplan was to switch hunt Horford who has always been one of the best switch defending bigs. JJ recognized the offense was too disorganized, said so in the presser and took responsibility. Cool, that's great. Ham would never acknowledge this stuff and he had the same problem. But then against Brooklyn yesterday the offense was still incredibly disorganized. 20% organized offense in the second half. 1.33 points per possession when they actually ran plays. Its not accountability if you say there's an issue and you'll fix it, but then you go out and do the same thing. We should have a dominant halfcourt offense with Luka and LeBron out there, but that hasn't been the case. Yes, part of it is Luka not being himself yet. Yes, part of it is adjusting to a vastly different offensive ecosystem. But offensive organization is entirely within JJ's control and he has not been good enough in that area.
this is a good post, and agree with everything except maybe how much of it is currently in jj's control given the injuries and new players. but yes, we've been better when we run offense, and we apparently hate doing it.
But at the same time the team has been ripping off wins playing this way and have been the best/ second best defense in the entire league. I think they've sold out the offense to a degree to be elite defensively. We're not going to get both. NBA teams don't really practice in season any more. I think this is kind of what we got at least until the playoffs where there's more time for stuff, but really until training camp when JJ and Luka can figure the offense out together.
But its not a matter of spending more energy on offense vs. defense. Within individual games, the offense performs much better when they call plays versus when they don't. So just call more plays! There are only a couple of explanations that I can think of. The first is that its a tracking issue. Maybe they count some basic freelance actions as running plays, so their tracking data shows that they are running organized offense more than they actually are. The other explanation, considering that this is a trend going back to last year, is that this is LeBron's preference.
this was definitely true last year, imo. it may be luka's preference, too. but the leader (coach) needs to find a way to make the optimal strategy happen despite that. that's why it's a tough job and pays a lot. i'm also not sure that playing structured offense has to come at the expense of defense? if anything, most well-structured offenses should at least improve your transition defense, as guys should know their role based on positioning, etc. i'd like to hear jj talk about it, tbh. i bet if a reporter asked the right way, he would, too. "the data suggest you're much better in the halfcourt when you run offense...what happens to prevent that?"
Could it be to save some plays for the playoffs? League is heavy data-driven nowadays and I think there's a lot of effort in hiding as much information as possible. I remember Bron/AD P&R was bread and butter for us but we barely ran it in reg season, even at the expense of being in the play-in and would use it more often in specific situations. Maybe they are already comfortable with some of the sets and don't want to run it too often so they give less data to the other teams and will use it more in the playoffs. Like the Horford thing, in the 1st half Bron was playing well against White. I think we acknowledged that but moved from it so Boston doesn't learn how to adjust to it and it can be an advantage later in the Finals, if we reach it.
