X's and O's: An Ongoing Discussion of the Exquisite Art of Basketball

[StrandedOnBeauboisHill]

https://youtu.be/hI8wq7vUxoo

I find this fascinating. This is a drastically different system than the one Carlisle ran, which was what they (under the direction of Korkoskov, I'm betting) got back to about halfway through last season to get headed back in the right direction. 

It's easy to understand then why the offense has looked bad at times, so far. It's not just Wood and McGee who are learning a new offense, it's ALL OF THEM. When the guys break the video down you can see the intent behind some of this design. Of special interest is that the Luka iso stuff seems to be the SECOND or THIRD option during most of these concepts, which means that maybe the reason we've been seeing so much of that is that the team just isn't very good (yet) at creating space for the first or second options. In theory, this should improve as they gain more comfort in the system, and just maybe games like last night, when the ball was moving around constantly, are an early indication of that improvement. 

Here's hoping.

This video definitely changed the way I was thinking of this offense vs last year's offense.  Last year it felt like it was a healthy balance of the three man sets with two corner spacers that Kidd loves to run (stack, spain, horns, etc.) and the rest being Luka just matchup hunting.  This year it has felt like the balance swung heavy towards Luka just matchup hunting but this video gives me a lot of hope in the sense that it's less Luka matchup hunting to score and more Luka finding his best post up matchup to initiate this new offense.  I always felt it was just Luka getting to a spot and 4 guys then clustered on the weakside but now I realize it's more about using a Luka post up to put a lot of pressure on the defense AND our other four players running off the ball action to put additional things the defense needs to account for while also putting people in places for Luka to find them, which is honestly super clever.  To your point, it feels like the Luka isos are not intentional but more of a side effect of this new off ball action not being very crisp early on (plus Luka can score on anyone in the league so it's easy for him to decide to just bail us out time and time again).