Sorry, I first posted this in the dead SAS/LAC thread. With the effort I placed here, please forgive me for pulling this response out to its own thread. Especially because I cherish other takes who probably won't read a dead thread. I'm not sure if this is the best thread to give my take on Motion Offense vs Attack Offenses. I sometimes read the Texans thread and am mesmerized by how knowledgeable people are there at that game of football. I grew up in one of only two states (ILL and IND) who like basketball more than football. And now I call myself a Texan (I was conceived in the Body of Christ -- Corpus Christi--before my dad retired from the Navy and moved us to ILL, and returned to Texas as soon as I could at age 17), and notice the difference in the two sports fans and knowledge. I think my effort deserves its own thread. But since both durvasa and A_3PO asked me,,,here goes in the abridged addition. Me and popeye discussed this many years ago. My take is well documented on this website...because I love basketball so much and respect all offenses and defenses, especially defenses. Motion Offenses, aka Read and React, They have an analogy to football schemes. I hate making football analogies, but it seems to help on this board. If you send out your wide receiver to run patterns based on what the defense does, that actually means the defense dictates what you do. You are not actually attacking their weaknesses directly, you are trying to expose a weakness. What if the weakness never gets exposed? Motion offenses historically are great in the regular season, yet can fail in playoff 4th quarters because they have no go to play. That is why Adelman never won with Princeton...albeit he got screwed by bad officiating and Horry's 3 tipped out by Divac. That team was awesome. But the media and fans critiqued it by saying Webber wasn't a go to player. This is because the defense can dictate who you pass to. When you prop up Motion Offenses, do not disrespect defenses designed to make them do what they want. Attack offenses like The Triangle (and Rudy/Hakeems and the Rockets now) also have flaws in that they can go stagnant. But their advantage is that in the 4th Q, they have go to players and the scheme is to get them the ball. Notice we beat the Mavs by owning the 4th quarter. GO COACH!!! Hakeem---"Gif me da ball" Moses to Cheeks--"There's a rat in the house and he wants the cheese. Fo Fo Fo" Sloan PnR Phil Jackson/Tex's triangle for 9 chips Popovich attacking with Duncan and Parker and Ginobody for 3 chips. It is a lack of respect to go to players to say the coach is not creative. The coach is playing the odds, correctly. Attack offenses take advantage of mismatches and drive the ball down your throat....Hakeem 1 and 2, and Spurs for Title 2, 3, 4. Motion Offenses try to bamboozle you into leaving your defensive assignments...which works a lot, but not much so in the 4th Q of tight playoff games. But motion pretty much always beats bad defenses. We thrive on that. But growing up in Illinois, we all played motion except for the Chicago Public League. We could only beat our opps by playing defenses designed to force motion to pass to the worst player. We succeeded by doing that. But Pops won last year by having the best 3 point shooting team in the league to make it impossible to defend. By comparison, Adelman's motion also lost because Peja choked so bad. Cheers durvasa and A_3P0, look forward to more basketball talk.
Thanks. More knowledgeable people than me can respond on the merits of your argument that a motion offense doesn't work in the playoffs. I think there really isn't a great sample of teams to draw such a conclusion. Most teams in a position to win have 1 or 2 superstars, and understandably they will design their offense with such players as the focal point. With Duncan past his prime, the Spurs haven't had that kind of team in recent years. The Spurs reached the Finals two years in a row with their motion offense. I contend that this is a great success, given their lack of a superior superstar talent, and it is a testament to superior coaching and preparation.
Pops always picked the best offense for his teams. I never denied that. I just don't like people saying motion is the best way, and critiquing attack offenses like they have lack of fundamentals. We don't do that in football analysis. Glamorizing one method in basketball seems to be strickly a lack of knowledge of the game. I have never said motion can't win. I was a big fan of Adelman's Princeton with the three of the best passing big men ever. I also loved watching Walton destroy Kareem in '77 I'm saying there is no silver bullet, and people claiming "this is the right way to play basketball" are both disrespecting Attack Offenses and NBA defenses who can take motion out of it's game plan.
I think that's totally fair. I would not say any offense is inherently superior to another. There's no "right way to play" ... other than do what you can to put more points on the board than the other team, while respecting the rules of the game. I think a motion offense is perhaps a more aesthetically pleasing brand of basketball, but I suppose this is a subjective view. Some may prefer watching a one-man offense. Hell, I know I liked it in those stretches when Hakeem or MJ were putting on a show. The other part of it is that it might be more impressive to get 5 guys to play offense on a string. When a coach can just run a few simple plays for his dominant player while the other guys just watch and play off of him, we tend to appreciate the work that went into the gameplan less.
Illinois doesn't prefer basketball to football. The value of an NBA offense and which one is better in large part depends on the current rules in place. The rule changes over the last dozen years have made the attack offenses far harder to execute.
btw, before someone corrects me, Walton and Ramsey did not play a motion offense. They destroyed the league with a Wooden-proven UCLA cut with Walton. I just loved how Walton pulled Jabbar out of the way. So awesome
You must be from Chicago. And even then, you are not correct. What? because of Da Bears? That's like saying Indiana is a football state because of Notre Dame. There is a whole nother part of the state. You call us, "down state." Don't tell me about Illinois HS Basketball vs football, and the religion of basketball in Illinois. Just because they made a movie about "Hoosiers" does not mean the cornfields of basketball stops at the Illinois/Indiana state line. That's a very naive statement that you are trying to make. Just to test your knowledge, can you tell me who owns the copyrights to the phrase "March Madness"? And as an added bonus, can you tell me what decade that phrase was coined.
I'm glad you started this thread because I was just thinking about that after watching two Motion offenses yesterday, with one wildly succeeding (GSW) and another one choking bad (Atlanta). It's weird because supposedly Memphis has a better defense than Wizards, but Wizards are more talented offensively. Does this mean Wizards outscored Atlanta or did Atlanta choke? If GSW choked as bad as Atlanta in fourth quarter, would they still be able to find another way to win? After all, they have a go-to scorer (Curry and Thompson) despite playing Motion offense. It's really interesting because Atlanta and GSW both play similar Motion offenses, yet GSW is better at it - is it because they have a superstar or because they have better overall talent? Or because they are superior defensive team? Because yesterday, at times Memphis seemed totally clueless on offense and GSW took advantage by playing passing lanes hard and doubling Gasol/ZBo, coming away with lots of steals. In the meanwhile, Atlanta had great difficulties defending p&r with Gortat and also left a lot of midrange jumpers open, which Beal and Wall exploited.
Let me just leave you with this...I have $100 on a bet in Vegas on Pierce and Wall. Kwame will confirm. It's looking good. Atlanta is a regular season team. Classic Motion playoff issues. btw: who told you GSW runs motion?
Consider more passes means more opportunities for defenses to get that pass. Although my main point was about getting the offense to pass to the weakest player...we still have the turnover issue of releasing the ball too much vs just giving it to Harden...MJ...Hakeem...Moses We can't just say, more passes are better. When all the analytics say more possessions are better...Turnovers are lack of possession, and often result in the easiest buckets in the game. Attack Offenses are about percentages. Rudy explained those analytics a long time ago. JVG also chimed in about how important possessions were. And Thibs agrees. Kill them with defense...get the turnovers...and protect the ball on offense. Boring... but so be it. To use another football analogy...run the ball down the opponents' throat is the safest way to protect the ball and control possession. And they must stop that first...
Noone, I figured they do since Kerr is coming from Spurs' school and his offense is always looking for a better shot, kinda like Atlanta and Spurs. They have shooters at 1-4 positions and a decent passing big in Bogut. Maybe they are a hybrid between Motion and Attack offenses? I'll admit I'm not that knowledgable about basketball as some of you guys here...
also, before anyone corrects me on the turnover and possession comment about attack offenses and Harden. I have a graphic that is extraordinary about how bad we are this year in the history of NBA playoff teams...I just can't post it while we are in the playoffs. GO COACH!! GO ROCKETS!!
The rule changes have closed some avenues and opened others The Hand checking rules . .. opened up the motion offense more IMO The defensive 3 second rule and allowing zones r****ds the ability to attack The 5 second back down rule also slows down points of attack I always said The League made rules to STOP HAKEEM They also made rules to HELP MJ The result is the league has alienated the low post big man game and made the game more perimeter oriented I often wonder if this was done to make the game more accessible to the general public which are all less than 6 ft [not make it a Tall guy Only game] Rocket River
Atlanta has been struggling for several months now. Their problems are not anything new in the postseason.
It's probably fair to say that you need a dominant player to win with attack offense. Whereas, in motion offense, you don't need a dominant player. Instead, you need a bunch of good and smart players. On the surface, it seems to be more difficult to get a dominant player. But in reality, it may be more difficult to field a roster full of good and smart players. (I actually have no idea. Just a guess.) If anyone one can build a motion offense team, it's Morey. Getting a dominant player involves a lot of luck. Finding good and smart players is a matter of good scouting and roster management.
The question is. . . is it easier to stop the non dominant players versus a dominant one. Seems the motion is easier to stop Rocket River
