Motion Offense

A motion offense is an offense where players are constantly setting screens to free other players and constant ball movement.

It will never work for this team.

First of all you need to have at least 4 excellent ball handlers on the floor since everyone has to be able to pass the ball at the very least. Second, you have to be quicker then the other team - and the Rockets aren't the quickest team.

Now, you also have to remember that with a motion offense it takes longer to get a good shot - which is why it's not used in the NBA (24 seconds versus 45 seconds in college).

Finally, a motion offense will get more shots for role players but at the expense of taking them away from your individual talents since the defense can control who gets the shots a bit more.

All in all, we don't need a motion offense.

Our offense is built around T-mac and Yao. And that's enough for Defenses to deal with.

 

Yikes, my last post was pretty long. If you're too lazy to read it all, I'll summarize in one sentence:

With the players we have, a "motion offense" would be exponentially more efficient than the offense JVG is using right now.

If you want to know why, you'll just have to read that giant post

I mean, just think of the damage we can cause on some of the elite teams in the West. The Spurs have a great half-court defense, but they are getting older and beat up. Can they keep up with the younger (and more athletic?) Rockets for 4 quarters?

They say in the playoffs that the game slows down and the half-court offense becomes more important. Well the "motion offense" is a half-court offense, not a "run no matter what happens" system like the Suns, so that is not an issue. And speaking of those Suns, we all know they like to run when they're on offense. But can they survive 48 minutes against the Rockets when they'll have to run on both ends of the floor? We are a deep team when healthy. I don't know about this year, but the Suns definitely were not deep last year.

Here's another reason why I'd like to try this. When we're in the upper echelon as far as fewest points allowed, it's not that we're an awesome defensive team. We're a decent team defensively, but also we play rrreeeeeeaaaaallllllyyyyyyy ssslllllooooooooowwwwwww. JVG likes to drain the clock. The thing is, just because we're using a motion offense, doesn't mean we can't continue to use up all of the shot-clock. Once again, we are not going to be like the Suns. We can keep moving the ball around (like we do already) and then start the real "motion" say, when the shot-clock drops under 10 or 15. This also illustrates the unpredictability noted by some other posters here on this thread.

 

agree with new yorker 100%

 

I disagree.

We have the good passers at least.

Vlade and Peja were quick?

B.S. Under Adelman, the Kings were consistently in the top 3 in field goal attempts. Some years (01-02 and 02-03) they were #1.

Balanced, high percentage shooting is good. In 02-03, the Kings had 7 people averaging double digits in scoring. They probably should have won the championship that year if Dick Bavetta hadn't gift-wrapped the WCF to the Lakers.

Only a politician can be louder, more assertive, and more wrong than you.

 

I should pretty much apologize for calling my idea a "motion offense". It's creating all the wrong ideas. I don't want to see Bruce Webber's team out on the floor. I don't want to see T-Mac or Yao involved in this motion either. I just want to see the role players moving around without the ball, such as cutting to the basket or getting open. If they keep getting layups/dunks or wide-open jumpers, the defenders have to follow them, meaning they can't double team Yao or T-Mac. That's all I'm trying to say here.

Whoa, whoa, seriously? You don't think a three-man role-player combination involving the likes of Head, Hayes, Battier, Alston, V-Span, Bonzi, Novak, Padgett, or Lucas III is fast enough to even cause the defense to flinch? If that was true, how are we even 8-4?

There are 35 seconds on the college shot-clock. Anyway, even if you're right about it taking longer for them to get a good shot (I never actually analyzed the Illinois offense), part of it might be that they are college players. Regardless, that Illinois team almost went undefeated in the regular season and went all the way to the championship game.

I don't think you understand what we're trying to say. The defense can't control anything. They are at the mercy of what our two stars and our role players do if there is constant movement of the role players. That's the beauty of having an unpredictable offense. As far as who gets more shots, who cares? Would you rather have a role player taking a high% shot or T-Mac/Yao (or anyone) taking low% forced shots or turning the ball over because of double teams?

Oh yeah? That's enough for the defenses? Then why are we collapsing in the 4th quarter when both of them are on the court? The Wizards were doubling both of them, and our offense looked stagnant, led to turnovers, and helped them comeback. JVG was right when he said after the Bulls game that if the game was 49 minutes long, we'd lose.

On a broader perspective, if T-Mac and Yao are all we need, why don't we have a championship? I hate to bring back painful memories, but look at the box score of this game and see how the role players did. Compare the stats of T-Mac and Yao to the rest of the role players. This is what happens when your offense over-relies on two stars and doesn't capitalize on the strengths of your role players. Once we figure out how to do that, we will become the Lakers that won 3 straight with Shaq and Kobe; we will become the Heat that won last year with Shaq and Wade.

 

Vlade, Peja, and Webber were all excellent passers and scorers. Their whole team was stacked with passing big men (including Brad Miller)....who could all hit at least a 15 pt jumper. They played a high-post game for the most part.

We have low-post players in Yao....who doesn't have the greatest hands...and Mutombo and Hayes are not known as passer. Futher more, do you really want Yao running around all over the place and getting winded even more? We need him on the court scoring, not passing the ball to hayes/howard/battier.

Although they were ranked high in fga, they also were the worst at opponent fga. The reason they had the were high in fga is because they were a fast-break team - leading the league there - so of course they are going to have more fga - that's not the motion offense in half court sets, that's their quick tempo. And yes, they took a lot of shots early in the shot clock, but you can do that when your big man play high and have less distance to run.

If you have a balanced scoring team. We don't have that. We have two super-stars and a bunch of role players. We're not a balanced team, so why try to force balance scoring on us?

Watch it buddy - i'm tired of the personalization that's been going on - i'm fed up with it - so i ask you keep things respectable. You can disagree, but if you are going to resort to this kind of crapola, I'll stop responding.

 

You're not talking about a motion offense then. You're just saying you don't like the offense we have currently - which is pretty basic but effective in the sense that it designed around penetration, deep post position, and getting open three point shots. Very similar to Rudy-T actually.

 

who knows if true motion would or wouldn't work....

but from the games I have seen when the rockets are playing well they certainly have really good BALL movement, t

he player movement and screening certainly could be greatly improved particularly after a post feed to stop the D collapsing

 

I think out of the 3 role players on the court only one of them should be running and the others should be setting the screens. I'm thinking along the lines of how Rip Hamilton or the now retired Reggie Miller were constantly running around screens making it a miserable night for the defenders. This would go along with the original idea put forth in this thread and wouldn't be an actual "motion" offense. Tmac could contribute part time to save his stamina while people who are more rotation players, Head, Spanoulis, Snyder etc., can be more involved in coming off the screens set by the Battier and Hayes types. Especially considering the energy shown by VSpan thus far. If the guy can run let him run.

 

Guys, let's set things straight here. A motion offense doesn't have to be what the Fighting Illini run or what Eddie Jordan and Rick Adelman runs. In fact, Tex Winters's triangle is a form of motion offense too.

The key here is movement without the ball, and quick, decisive moves when the opportunity presents itself. As some of you have said, the way JVG's offense is structured right now, is basically as series of screens to free the key man up for an iso situation, where he goes to work, and react to how the defense plays him. It's a very standard offense. I'm not saying it's not effective, it is, IF there are quality shooters and good spacing, and if the iso'd player is smart enough to make sound decisions. Luckily, both Tmac and Yao are sound decision makers, so this offense works in our system, but I think the offense can still be further improved.

You don't have to switch to a full motion, but one negative point of JVG's offense is the lack of weakside movement. A lot of you guys have said players just stand around and wait for the kick-out after the defense collapses on Yao/Tracy, and it's true. It's a very stagnant and straightforward offense. If JVG were to look at his off-ball weakside movement, the team'd get much easier - and high-percentage - baskets imo.

And for those who said you can't run a motion without athleticism or you can't run a motion with a big man, think again. Phil Jackson basically turned the original triangle inside-out when Shaq came to LA, and look how effective it was. And the Kings didn't exactly have a top-notch athletic team either when they had Bibby, Vlade and Peja on the court at the same time.

 

i definitely believe that we should have the role players setting screens for TMac, Head, and Novak the way Indiana used to do for Reggie and the way Detroit still does for Rip.

 

We have an offense that isolates either T-Mac or Yao, dumps them the ball and lets them do stuff. If they score, then they score. If someone double teams them, they kick it out to open shooters for 3 pointers. Look at guys like Battier and Alston, who have both been reduced to spot up shooters. Those guys have more to their game than just jumpshots, but our offense really mitigates some of that because we were so obsessed with shooting. It gets very predictable after a while.

A full fledged motion offense isn't feasible at this point. I think isolation suits Yao because his game is so reliant on the post. However, I think set motion offense plays would work well. You just need guys to keep moving on set plays and have smart guys who can hold the ball on the floor. If you play Battier at the 4, then this type of offense is perfect because the 1-4 players all could handle the ball. And Yao could easily find cutters to the basket or kick out to guys who get free from their man and get open for three point shots.

 

i fully agree with the idea of a motion offence working for this team.

yao and tmac are excellent passers. we have shooters and quick/athletic players who can cut.

my vote is for adleman to take over this summer.

 

Yes, but Battier is new to the team and is probably still learning his role. Let's keep in mind that it's only 12 games into the season. Guys like Battier will take a half season before their offensive game really becomes fluid.

One thing to keep in mind folks - it's takes a lot of time playing together before the passing becomes good - that's why the same team gets better from one year to the next. They get more comfortable playing together...and eventually, they don't need as much structure and can create on their own...they can veer away from set plays but that takes time of understanding everyones game on an intutive level.

If you switch things around a lot and try different things, what happens is that the players never get comfortable with anything.

So you really have to measure offensive fluidity in passing by progress. Are the Rockets beginging to look more crisp on offense as time passes? And I think the answer is yes. So let's see how it progresses, not from game to game, but month to month.

If in late december we can say the offense looks better then it did in novemeber then lets keep seeing what happens. If not, then let's think about other offenses.

 

A motion offense requires moving Yao to the high post. (That ain't happening under Van Gundy). The high post is where Webber and Divac did all of their damage from. If it comes down to Yao in the low block or passing in the high post to Rafer Alston (and most other Rockets) cutting to the basket, I'll take the former.

While they are more athletic than they've been in recent seasons, the Rockets' personnel is basically a bunch of stand still shooters who wouldn't thrive in a high post, back screen offense. It doesn't play to the stregths of Padgett or Novak or Wells. (The Kings played less motion with Wells which is why he developed a low post reputation).

Can't prove it but I don't think you think run both a motion offense and play Van Gundy defense. There's a reason the Kings weren't noted as a defensive juggernaut. The Kings also had/have a fairly long rotation which does not include the likes of Deke and Juwan.

 

well, we do need better passing, but i think that will come with time. right now when the defense tightens up it seems we sputter on offense - so i think it's just a matter time until we get better at facing the pressure and exectute better in those situations.

 

While I have nothing against motion in general, comparing a 3 guard Illinois team (I grew up in Illinois) with Luther, Dee Brown, and a star like Deron Williams as your PG, and add in the fact they didn't have much of a low post presenc, then you can see that motion is good for them. But when you have the best center in the league, you do not want to be complicating the court with a bunch of motion cutting, when you want to primarily play a low post game to Yao. Doesn't mean we don't have cutters, we do, but we aren't going to be treating Yao as just another player in a 5-man motion offense like the Kings did with Divac.

JVG's offense is not stagnant.

 

Yeah we should have Yao in the post with the 4 other guys on the floor lined up in I-formation at the top of the 3 point line. One by one they will cut to the lane so Yao has 4 chances to pass to the open man. This is what motion offense is all about! 1-2 Cutters is not enough I'd say, all 4 must cut to the basket. And forget about clearing out for Yao, we him to constantly move around so he runs out of breath therefore he does not need to run back to play d but becomes a 100% offensive player only. Which brings me back to the the I-formation the others will line up in as he will be ready to pass as they zip pass him in the post. If he cannot pass he will run around randomly until again he loses his breath.

There's no other reason our 4th Q collapses happen. We need motion offense! Just ignore the first 3 quarters and it is obvious we can't score with our stagnant offense. And don't tell me it's fatigue because it only takes 5 people to play bball and i'm sure we use at least 7 players in our rotation and these guys are pros, well oiled machines.

 

Alston is stupid, pretty much why we pay dearly when he has the ball in his hands down the stretch. His decision making or passing off of picks in a half court setting is 1/100th that of Bibby's. Sacramento also had post players who were very comfortable from 15 feet out (Webber, Divac, Songaila)... and a very athletic bench. Bad comparison.

This idea of a motion offense, especially under JVG, is a pipedream. He's always going to put an emphasis on exerting energy defensively, not offensively, and pounding the ball into his two mismatches (Yao + TMac). It's going to very effective once Spanoulis gets more minutes (constant penetration + deft passing) and our perimeter shooting is consistent.