Order vs. Chaos | How the Warriors & Rockets attack, with Jordan Sperber

One of my favorite things about basketball is how many ways there are to create offensive advantages. Screens and off-ball movement can lead to layups, but so can isolation drives that force defenses to scramble. And right now the two most efficient offenses in the league are facing off, but they create advantages with opposing styles. To understand the differences between Golden State and Houston, I've asked Jordan Sperber, former video coordinator at New Mexico State and creator of the wonderful YouTube channel HoopVision to break down just what makes these offenses so successful and yet so different. Jordan, take it away. Thank you for having me, Ben. So the most obvious place for us to start thinking about creating advantages on offense is in transition. A sudden turnover on one end of the floor can lead to a three on two or a four on three on the other end. The ball will then get pushed or thrown ahead while the players without the ball sprint down the court to convert that advantage. But in half court offense, advantages are a little less simple. Certain players can create advantages all by themselves and we'll get to that later, but first let's focus on scheme. Offensive schemes are built on some combination of ball movement, player movement, and spacing with all three elements working to create and then convert advantages. The Warriors' motion-based offense thrives on player movement. Here, Steph Curry gets a pin down from Draymond Green. You'll see different types of screening action regularly from the Warriors. The motion is purposeful in the sense that the Warriors are actively trying to create it, but there's a randomness component. The Warriors don't run many scripted motion plays. Instead, they just play naturally with motion concepts. The best example of this is their split action after a post touch. When the ball goes into the post for the Warriors, that triggers screening action at the elbow. Draymond could screen for Klay. Klay could screen for Draymond. Draymond could reject the screen and cut to the basket. So there's motion coming, but with improvisation involved. It's Iguodala screening for Curry here, who only needs the slightest advantage to convert it into points. No team in the NBA uses off-ball screens and cuts with as much frequency as the Warriors, and it's not close. Despite all that high usage, the Warriors still rank third in efficiency in those situations. That level of usage and efficiency is a testament to the Warriors' scheme, but also to how well the scheme fits the skill sets of Curry, Thompson, and Durant. The motion creates advantages indirectly as well. Here, Curry basket cuts to the weak side with Chris Paul chasing after him. The threat of a potential off-ball screen causes the Rockets to lose their help principles, even when one of the best scorers in the world in Kevin Durant has the ball. Basic defensive principles of seeing the ball and your man sometimes go out the window against the Warriors' motion. Watch here as Klay's movement puts all the weak side attention on him instead of the ball. Of course, that's in part thanks to Klay's personal gravity, but it's also the gravity of the scheme. Both the frequency and randomness of player movement opens up the floor. Now, before you decide that motion is unequivocally the best way to play offense, let's consider the Rockets. They're also one of the most efficient offenses in the NBA, but with much less player or ball movement. James Harden's ability to create advantages on his own is a huge reason why the offense works, but so is the spacing. Before Harden attacks, you'll often see the Rockets optimize their spacing to make help defense as difficult as possible. There's no motion like we saw from the Warriors, and all of the defenders are seeing both their man and the ball, but the results are the same for the offense. Again, the data shows just how unique the Rockets' scheme is. They're first in the NBA in both the amount they use isolations and efficiency in those situations. The Warriors and Rockets sometimes get grouped together because of the three-point shooting ability, but schematically, they are really on opposite ends of the spectrum. The Warriors rank 4th in the league in passes per possession, the Rockets just 29th. Because such a large part of the offense relies on James Harden creating an advantage, you'll see them target a defender and get him switched onto Harden. Against the Warriors, they've been hunting Curry, and watch how Harden directs traffic for spacing purposes as soon as they get the matchup. Here the Warriors try to fight against the mismatch by hedging instead of switching, which does get the ball out of Harden's hands, but still creates a 4-on-3 advantage for Daniel House. And here's another hedge from Curry, but this time Harden splits the defenders to create his own 4-on-3. The Warriors have some other ways of avoiding the Curry mismatch. Watch how he's initially guarding P.J. Tucker, but as soon as Tucker goes up to set a screen to get the mismatch, Steph has Draymond switch out instead. When you have a player like James Harden, or even Chris Paul, you don't need much ball movement to create an advantage. Here when Capella sets a ball screen, the Warriors put 2 on the ball. But where they do use ball movement is to then convert that advantage. While the Rockets are using ball movement, the Warriors are using their length and athleticism to fly around and defeat the advantage. Capella's strength certainly isn't putting the ball on the floor and making a play, but the combination of Harden drawing so much attention and the Rockets spacing minimizes the playmaking skills necessary by Capella to convert the 4-on-3. We already saw this play from the Warriors earlier and talked about how the weak side motion distracts the help defenders on the Iguodala roll. But this time, let's focus on the Warriors spacing. Here's an example of the Rockets optimize around the 3-point arc. And yet here's the Warriors with 3 players on top of each other. There's a tradeoff between motion and spacing. The more you move and the more randomness in those movements, the harder it is to maintain spacing. Theoretically, this spacing should be easy for the Rockets to defend. Capella should drop to the level of the ball, and since the Warriors are so close together, Paul and Gordon could split the difference and guard all three. But again, it's the Warriors motion that distracts the help defenders. So in order to take away that motion and lessen the burden on the defense, the Rockets try to just switch everything against the Warriors. Here's the post-elbow split, and this time Harden just switches out on the clay. This switching has consistently been the Rockets game plan against the Warriors, and the Warriors know that. Here's the first play of the entire playoff series. The Warriors clear out a side and have Draymond slip his screen, knowing that Capella is trying to switch. Harden doesn't execute his end of the switch here, so it's a 4-on-3 for Draymond, who unlike Capella, does have the ideal skill set for a big to be a playmaker out of advantage situations. The switching does work in the sense that it forces the Warriors to deviate from their normal style of play. But that's where the dominance of the Warriors shines through. Their motion and screening have proven to be one of the hardest things to guard in the entire league. But even if you take that completely away from them, they still have plenty of bullets left in the chamber. If they're forced to go to an isolation and spacing style of play similar to what we saw from the Rockets, well they have a couple of the best isolation players in the world to do that. Durant might start hitting one leg fadeaways like Dirk, or Curry might start hitting off the bounce contested 3s with a hand in his face. It's their offensive diversity, motion screens, creating off post touches, ball screens, isolations, and so on, that not only gives them a leg up on the rest of the league, but puts them in the best team of all time conversation. Have a great day.