The Official X's and O's thread

There was one sequence vs the Pelicans where the Lakers accidentally reversed the ball to the big in early offense, and it almost worked. This is notable because this is something that the other 29 teams in the league do on purpose, and for good reason.

Normally, the Lakers will inbound the ball with a big and then go into their outdated two guard front.

The play call this time seemed to be to fake a PnR on one side and go to the other side for another one, which is fine if you have bigs that can sometimes get up the court at a good enough pace to get out in front of the ball handler. However, in this situation, Hibbert, being Hibbert, takes some time coming out of the back court and then inadvertently gets in the way of the pass. He does get it to the weak side however, to run a PnR with Clarkson, enabling JC to get all the way to the basket and almost finish.



Note that there were still 14 seconds on the clock when the play finished despite it involving several passes, and could have been fewer, if the play was planned. This is something that rarely happens for the Lakers out of transition, because they are always walking the ball up waiting for the bigs to get into the high post first.

Some other good things that happened for them from getting the ball to the weak side. Hibbert as a big man trailer is wide open for the pass, so they can get into it cleanly without worrying about denial. Clarkson can start his move further out on his side and they get a screen going middle, and JC's man only has time to go under, which lets him attack him downhill. With the change of sides on the court, the role of the weakside defender switches from guarding the perimeter to helping inside on the roll, and it's harder to close out after coming in to tag the big. Nance's man is late on the help.

The Pelicans rebound and you see them come back, reverse the ball, run a PnR and get a wide open corner three.



They don't move the ball all the way to the other side, but the mere act of getting the ball to the middle of the floor with a pass creates more things for the weak side defender, Anthony Brown to process and worry about, and he's late on the tag and recover, giving them the open shot.

Right now we are a bit reliant on DLO skip passes after PnR to achieve these things. More shot clock time and less prepared defenses are some of the little things that we can look forward to to improve our efficiency when we finally move to a modern system in the future.

Fiendish with the above breakdown

 

I'll go into Motion Weak as run by the Lakers in a bit more detail. We first saw them run it in Summer League, and then I didn't notice it again until the Feb 8 game against Indiana and then later in the first play of the game against the Spurs. Against Memphis is the first time they really tried to run it as an offense rather than a single set. We have now finally joined the other 29 teams in the league in incorporating Spurs motion.

First, let me explain the terminology. In the Spurs motion offense, the two most prevalent actions are Strong and Weak, both of which have been copied across the league. In both, the point guard brings the ball up the floor along a side and a big trails behind near the middle of the floor.

If there is no wing ahead, the PG dribbles to the strong side wing and then simply reverses to big man, who swings to the weak side wing- this is Strong. The Lakers have not run this yet, to my knowledge.

Alternatively if there is a wing ahead, the PG passes to the strong side wing who then reverses it to the trailing big. The PG cuts to the weak side wing for the return pass so they call it Weak:



That cut to the weak side can either be deep (as the Lakers run it), crossing paths with the other wing, or shallow (as more commonly run and as shown in the diagram). After the ball gets back to the PG on the weak side, then the other wing player will go into a screen the screener action under the basket to free up the low big for a post up and then come up off the down screen near the top of the key. If the ball gets to the guy coming off the down screen, teams do different things, such as immediately run a pick and roll with the down screener or go into a Horns set. Sometimes the low man will pop out to run a side PnR with the PG. So far it seems the Lakers will tend to run just what you see in the diagrams, but with a deeper cut for the PG.

Going beyond just the clipboard, several details need to be executed for the play to actually work consistently. It's not surprising that the Lakers execution and results with the set was significantly worse than that of the Grizzlies' (who were running the same action back at them), given that the Lakers have only been running it 5 on 0 in practice.

Play 1: http://on.nba.com/1LmjxFL

Russell cuts to the weak side after his pass to Clarkson on the wing. If you're going to have the PG cut that deep, then the opposite wing Brown should have made more of an attempt to throw a flare screen at his defender Conley, to make him change his route. Otherwise it's too easy for Conley to get into denial position for the return pass on the weak side, which pushes Russell further away from the basket and burns some time off the clock.

Tempo is an important but often overlooked component of motion offenses like this and the triangle. If you get the entire team on the same rhythm, then actions will more easily flow together and the integrity of the spacing is less likely to be compromised. Brown also should have waited until Russell made the catch before setting his cross screen. Instead he goes to set it immediately rather than first giving Russell the flare screen. When he pops up off the down screen (which Randle barely even bothered to set), Russell is still moving back to position for the post feed. It ends up turning into just a simple post iso for Hibbert.

Here are last year's Warriors doing it right, against Conley and Grizzlies:


A counter for the overplay by Conley is a backcut by Russell, but he doesn't even hint at attempting it, which means that it may not be part of the Lakers' version yet.

Warriors against Grizzlies again:


Play 2: The Lakers again don't screen for the Russell on the weakside cut and then Conley easily intercepts Randle's pass while denying and takes it coast to coast:
http://on.nba.com/1oHsPBL

Play 3: Here is Clarkson taking the PG role in the set- he gets a ball screen from the trailing big Hibbert (usually teams run it with the low big), which leads to some awkward spacing, but Hibbert manages to score on a post up anyway:
http://on.nba.com/1Lmk4HF

Play 4: Still in the 1st quarter, the Lakers run it with Clarkson playing the 1 role. Brown finally sets a screen on the weak side, but it's a halfhearted one and Conley gets through it without a problem. Wary of another turnover, Randle chooses to go back to Russell on the strong side. They iso despite two teammates crowding the paint (and awkwardly trying to get out of it). Russell hits the tough floater anyway:
http://on.nba.com/1Lmks8W

Here are two plays in a row with the Warriors going to that strong side option, but with a proper secondary action, with Klay coming off either a single or a double staggered pindown. Note that Brown wouldn't have been in the position to do that because they have him rush into the cross screen without letting the play develop.


So while the Lakers are finally running a modern set with ball reversals and quicker developing actions, it's going to take a while for them to be effective with it. This is why teams usually don't make a dramatic change to their offense mid season. They didn't run it all that much after the first quarter. But if Clarkson was hitting the shots he normally hits and Randle wasn't so careless with his passes they likely would have done alright in offensive efficiency- which shows the kind of offensive talent we have on the team. Hopefully we'll see them adding to the set and tweaking certain things over the rest of the season.

Some more examples of what it looks like when run well:


Counters:


From FiendishOC on LG; for anybody who wants to get a better look at what we're trying to run and how other successful teams run 'Motion Weak.'

 

Good stuff as usual.

 

I want to focus on one play from yesterday's game, because it has a lot of meat on it.

Video: http://on.nba.com/1QGWmmz

This is a Motion Weak set. A few things worth noting about the individual components within it.

1) Russell's gravity - After scoring 11 points in the first half of the 2nd quarter, Russell very much has the attention of the GSW defense. He comes off of the screen and Curry/Clark do a poor job of communicating, and both of them go to him, opening up a wide open opportunity for Clarkson. Steph Curry gets teammates easy buckets in this same manner all of the time.

2) Clarkson is more than just an ISO/PnR guy - Clarkson's screening angle here (and the threat of Russell's jumper) force Curry to go over the top of the screen, which Clarkson smartly reads and dives to the basket. The key is that this is an on the fly read, and an impressive display of hoops IQ from Clarkson. Between things like this and his ability to knock down spot up jumpers, he's a legitimate threat in a modern offense. He's just HAD to get his with the ball in his hands more often than not over the last couple of years because of what we're running.

3) Randle needs reps in an offense like this - Randle is late on making this read, but fortunately Clarkson was so wide open that it didn't matter. Prior to this switch to Motion Weak, I commented on how Randle was the biggest victim of the antiquated crap that we were running. Russell & Clarkson have taken to it very quickly, whereas Randle's still figuring it out. These last 25 games of playing this way are a Godsend for him.

Good stuff from GoldenThroat.