Why one NBA team stopped setting screens (!)

Try ZipRecruiter for free at ZipRecruiter.com/GREATDAY

Become a member to access all full length videos:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3HPbvB6f58X_7SMIp6OPYw/join

This detailed film explores the evolution of isolation in the NBA, from the post up, to clear outs, high post face ups, Memphis’s wheel offense and Erik Spoelstra’s Miami Heat offense that does not set picks.

Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/12kpkAvUj6LGxzViDIH0qH
Support at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thinkingbasketball

Book: https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Basketball-Ben-Taylor/dp/1532968175
Website: https://www.thinkingbasketball.net
Twitter: @elgee35

Find additional Thinking Basketball content on the NBA App, the More Thinking Basketball channel and the Thinking Basketball podcast.

Stats courtesy:
http://www.pbpstats.com @bballport
https://www.basketball-reference.com
https://stats.nba.com
—–
Footage in this video is owned by the NBA and its partners. It is intended for critique and education.

Music by hairlight

#ThinkingBasketball

[Music] Isolation basketball used to be all the rage. Simplify the offense by throwing it to your star until we discovered that that wasn’t very efficient. Pick and roll basketball was efficient. And so the pace and space revolution occurred in lockstep with the explosion in pick and roll. O only wait, what’s this? The league is now setting fewer pick and rolls this year than they have in a decade. If setting a screen is such a built-in advantage, then why are NBA teams screening less? And why has one team completely abandoned the pick and roll? Isolation basketball has been around for a long time, and it’s often a calling card of the game’s best offensive players. If someone is hard to guard one-on-one, defenses have to decide whether to send help. And this was a classic way to strain opponents. In earlier eras like the 70s, some of the isolation was fast. Skilled players would bring it up and look to attack any favorable matchup right away. Then the 80s hit and the league established the incredible illegal defense rules where players were not allowed to cross an imaginary midline down the center of the court unless they fully committed to double teaming the ball. So the game within the game became this forced isolation. Park four teammates above the three-point line on the opposite side and the defense had to stay above the foul line on that side of the court. So instead of moving into help positions, defenders had to time their help perfectly to slow an isolation attack. This turned a lot of isolation into incredibly slow, methodical possessions. The Barkley backdown was ultimately banned because it was so boring. I mean, he’s hunting for an illegal defense violation here instead of um, you know, hunting for a shot. Anyway, these two decades of illegal defense left a deep imprint on isolationism in the NBA because clearing out a side like that to play one-on-one was so comfortable for so many players from that generation. Then there’s the post up, which was arguably the preferred isolation options for teams in the early NBA. Back before the three-point line, big men tried to catch the ball in high value spots near the hoop. And if you had a skilled post game, you were probably an offensive allstar. This postup back to the basket attack fit perfectly with the artificial spacing of the illegal defense era because you could move a 7’4 shot blocker out of the way to play one-on-one. After illegal defense was finally scrapped in 2002, we saw a rise in mid post and high post isolation. I have to think Michael Jordan’s influence playing around the elbows was key to that development. But ending illegal defense also allowed for more complex doubles to take away the low posts, which meant that the mid-post area was a natural backup plan for isolation stars of that era. For all of these players, the ISO game started by catching it in a sweet spot. What makes the the best offensive players the best offensive players, and this goes back all the way in the 70s or 80s, they caught the ball where they wanted to catch. Okay. So, like think of Carmelon in the mid post. Like Carlon wasn’t getting pushed off the mid post and he caught it there every single time and he did work. All right. You think of Jordan in the triangle. He always caught it on the elbow despite people just trying to push them, push them, push them off. And this concept goes back to stars before the three-point line. And it’s especially true of the ISO heavy stars of the 2000s who didn’t even necessarily play with their back to the basket, but they could face up in a comfort zone and play out of the triple threat position. The old jab step and rocker step were staples of a slower, more deliberate type of isolation that was popular back then. There weren’t that many players who just brought it up the court and went to work off a live dribble. Most of the players bringing it up back then were strictly point guards and they wanted to initiate offense, waiting to throw it into a post player so he could go one-on-one or waiting for sets to unfold coming off the baseline where they could dime up their teammates. And then everything changed. European influences crept across the pond and the pick and roll game started to supplant isolation because, well, it was more effective. According to early tracking data, about 29% of possessions in 2005 were isolations or postups. By 2015, that number was down to 20% and by 2020, it was under 15%. Now, around 2015 was right when switch hunting started to take off. Teams were switching to counter the effectiveness of the pick and roll. So offenses gave the ball to their star and dictated the matchup that they won. Houston built an entire offense around James Harden isolating against his preferred matchup. So in many ways, the league has spent the last decade moving away from isolation by almost completely shelving the post up and limiting the number of mid post and ISO possessions for stars in favor of more effective pick and rollbased offenses. Which brings us to our original question. If screening is such a built-in advantage, why are teams suddenly screening less? And why has one team stopped screening entirely? Is it easier to quantify gravity or to find a candidate when hiring? Unclear. It’s like trying to find a pebble in a rock farm. No, that’s not right. A needle in a haystack. Yes, it’s Yes. It’s like trying to find a needle in a hay stack. Not with Ziprecruiter. Zip Recruiter finds amazing candidates for you fast. And right now you can try it for free at ziprecruiter.com/great. So you go to Zip Recruiter, create your job posting, then boom, their fancy algorithm is going to match you with the most qualified candidates and immediately show them to you. So ditch those other hiring sites and let Zip Recruiter find what you’re looking for. the needle in the hay stack. Four out of five employers who post on Zip Recruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. Try it for free at ziprecruiter.com/greatayday. You also help support thinking basketball when you support our sponsors. Again, that’s ziprecruiter.com/great. Ziprecruiter, the smartest way to hire. Now, if they only had something for gravity. We’ve seen that the development of pick and roll was key to supplanting low post and isolation basketball. We’ve done entire videos about this evolution, which sparked an arms race where defenses became smarter about defending pick and rolls. So, offenses started to move more so that they weren’t as predictable. Last year, the Cavs started moving two players in unison to occupy help defenders so they couldn’t load up on the pick and roll itself. At the same time, the Grizzlies started moving the entire team to create space for isolation scores. So, their shift away from ball screens or handoffs was a counter to the defense growing smarter about defending the pick and roll game. As we discussed last year, Memphis’s offense was about creating space for players to play one-on-one, to play isolation basketball. Only, this wasn’t iso ball from prior generations. This was iso ball starting off a dribble, sometimes 40 or 50 ft away with a head of steam. We zoomed in on this concept when discussing the downhill or Giannis offense last year. We also saw something different with the world champion Thunder offense, creating space in the middle of the floor for Shay Guiltus Alexander to isolate with a live dribble. Basically, if someone isn’t a an elite pull-up three-point shooter, or b an elite pick and roll passer, then maybe it’s counterproductive to bring an extra defender into the action where the other defenders know exactly where to be. This is why the Miami Heat have just stopped setting pick and rolls altogether. They don’t have traditional pick and roll stars, post players, or even elbow hubs like Nicola Joic. So instead of copying the league’s recipes with nonpremium ingredients, they’re changing the recipe altogether. On out-of- bounds plays or timeouts, Miami still runs conventional plays where they will set screens, but otherwise it is quite rare. In the flow of the game, the average NBA team sets 55 screens every 100 possessions. That’s the lowest leaguewide number in 13 years that we have camera tracking for. That Grizzlies funky offense last year was the low mark for a team at just 34 ball screens per 100. This year, the Miami Heat are at 12. 12 ball screens per 100. It’s almost an accident when they set a screen. Their offense is actually quite simple. Step one, attack off the dribble. Everyone on the floor essentially has the green light to drive into space. And there’s space for the ball handler because no one is coming to set a screen and bringing two extra bodies into the action. Time out. That’s a huge deal. This type of isolation comes at the expense of pick and rolls because the screen itself clogs up space. Miami’s first option is to ISO and drive into that extra space. Now, at this point, if no one helps, it’s just a game of one-on-one. And if the spacing is good enough, it’s a game of one-on-one deep into the paint. If the defense does help, Miami suddenly created the advantage most teams want from the pick and roll, only without the defense sitting in their rehearsed pick and roll positions. So, that’s step two. If the dribbler can’t create an advantage, quickly move it to a teammate who already has an advantage. This is my favorite part of the offense because everyone is ready to attack anytime their defender moves even just a little bit into help position. The heat punish just one step of recovery. If the player doesn’t shoot, he attacks right off the catch. We explored this idea of stampeding the catch before and it’s often the second option for Miami. Because of this, ball reversals are huge. This is basically a positionless system. So, moving it quickly to find that small advantage is key, and changing sides forces the defense to move because NBA defenses have evolved to clog up driving gaps and help off their men. Step three here is to create enough space for these driving lanes so defenders are out on an island, which is what Bam Anabio and Norm Powell walked through on Amazon Prime. The person who cuts or dribbles through is kind of like sit and see waiting. So when you pass me the ball and you’re sitting there, you’re seeing what I’m doing. So if I pass it to Dirk and he goes baseline, you feel you going to cut and we just keep filling behind. So, it’s just constant movement. This is similar to Memphis’s wheel. Yes, the architect of that offense, Noah Lar Ro consulted with Heat coach Eric Bolstra over the summer. Only Miami will cut a wing through the paint. Then that player reads and reacts to the ball to respace with the rest of the team. You can do whatever you want to do right now. Whichever way you drive, we going to move. So, we going to move this way. You do, you go that way. And we just going to keep moving. This is the old Rick Torbit concept where the ball pushes players around the court and then they space accordingly which has the effect of occupying the help defense so they can’t just load up against a stationary ISO. Both of these cuts occupy help defenders leaving the ball handler to play one. Essentially this is new age isolation that is starting behind the three-point line. The Spurs popularized 0.5 basketball. That’s making a decision to shoot, pass, or dribble within half a second of catching it. But the Heat have basically created 0.5 isolation. Either you are the advantage or you’re quickly moving it to the next player to find the advantage. Now, we talked about switch hunting earlier. The 2024 Celtics revolved around finding a mismatch and going to work one-on-one. But Miami’s approach isn’t about finding a mismatch. It’s about finding space. Either large driving gaps or the space created by a help defender who then needs to recover. And because they’re so quick to attack or move it, they play really fast. In the three decades we’ve had play-by-play data, the Heat are the fastest team by far. Excluding second chances, their average offensive possession is just over 12 seconds long, which is nearly a second ahead of the fastest Mike Danton teams way back in Phoenix. There’s actually a philosophical link back to those 7 seconds or less Suns because of course there is. And Steve Nash recently told me that Phoenix was always looking to push and attack driving gaps early, just like this Heat team. So me getting out and trying to see if I had something to get in the gaps and playmake before the pick, that was priority one, try to go score. The difference back then was that Nash or a handful of guards were the ones looking to attack off the dribble, whereas the entire Heat team is looking to attack. Unlike the old days when only a few gifted players could dominate in the post or face and jab step at the elbows, the Heat’s entire roster can basically shoot threes, attack closeouts, and dribble downhill into space. And this is also what a lot of role players or 3 and D players are asked to do in today’s game. So, it’s unsurprising that the Heat are better on defense than they are on offense right now. Miami has actually taken a defensively slanted roster and with Norm Powell as their best offensive player, created an above average offense. That’s actually pretty rare. Usually, teams built like this struggle mightily to score. So, there’s something to all this fast-paced isolation. Add in changes in officiating that make it extremely difficult to guard in space and the expansion in ball skills among younger generations. And it’s not surprising that we see hints of these ideas growing across the league. Giannis isn’t the only player hunting space in early offense anymore. And a team like Philadelphia looks for huge driving alleys way out near half court to generate ahead of steam. The Celtics come down quite a bit and attack off the dribble or look for those advantages to play one-on-one in space. Would this be an ideal offense for a team with Luca Donuch or Joic? Definitely not. But there’s something here. Isolation possessions have been ticking back up and they look quite different than they did in prior generations. And they’ve been about as efficient as pick and rolls for the last few years. And if we add in postups, pick and rolls have actually become slightly less efficient. Although they’re still run three times more frequently. We are probably never going back to the days of post-heavy or isoheavy stationary basketball. But teams have continued to find creative ways to evolve the simplest idea in the sport, which is win a game of one-on-one. To support this channel, patreon.com/thinkingbasket. That’s where we have proprietary stats on teams and players throughout the year. We also have a Discord community and you can get all of our extra video content over there or sign up on YouTube as a member where we also live stream the podcast. Thanks for watching all the way to the end on this one. Hope you enjoyed it and that you are having a great day.