Alba Berlin: Breakdown of an Open Set
A perfect example of applied "Structured Freedom" to a classic set
Last week, I wrote about Structured Freedom, its meaning, why it's valuable, and presented our transition/flow offense from last season. Today, I want to delve into one of the most used sets from Alba Berlin, which perfectly exemplifies giving players multiple options within the structure of a classic alignment.
Starting alignment
The start of this set is quite common for European teams, with the ball passed to 4 in the guard position, sometimes using a screen at the FT line from 5 to get open, and both corners filled. In rare situations, you could see 5 catching the ball on the first pass.
From here, players have different paths they could take, but the main principle is to stay aggressive 1v1 both on and off the ball.
Let’s follow the initial ball handler in the different decisions he can make after the initial pass.
Weak side stagger
The play is usually executed with the guard as the first screener and the 5 as the second screener, but as seen in the second clip, this is not always the case. The team is adept at punishing the defense every time they anticipate the movement toward the screens. This is a common occurrence for almost every team that plays this specific set, but I have observed that few teams consistently punish the defense like Alba does.
In the third clip, you see how a strong back door cut can attract two defenders, leaving the skip to the weak side completely open.
If nothing happens during the screening action, one of the two players goes up using the 5's screen to receive the ball. In the following three clips, three different spacing are demonstrated:
In the first clip, there is another player on that side of the floor.
In the second clip, an empty corner pick-and-roll is used.
In the third clip, the player goes straight to take the DHO out of 4's hands and plays a top pick-and-roll with 5.
Their spacing is not always perfect, which will be a common theme throughout this analysis. I will show some clips where it is actively bad. However, the key is that the amount of unpredictability and the quickness of execution makes it impossible for the defense to punish bad spacing by the offense.
Flex screen
Similar to the first option, but this time the ball handler after the pass sets a flex screen toward the paint, providing the player in the corner a double-option: take the flex screen to attack the paint or the pin down by the 5.
In the first two clips, we see two different decisions being made. However, I want to highlight what happens in the third clip, where two important ideas are demonstrated:
Changing the timing of the action is as important as changing the decision. The player in the corner sprints up even before his teammate has set the screen.
The idea of "re-triggering" or recycling the possession by immediately playing a secondary action after the first one is not effective. Take a second look at it here.
DHO Ball side
The player with the ball has another crucial option at any moment.
They can turn their head toward the corner on their side, "connect" with their teammate, and play a dribble handoff with them. This is made more effective by the threats on the weak side, where the defenders are focused on guarding their off-ball actions and are not immediately ready to act as help defenders.
It is important to determine who is in charge of initiating this action. The player with the ball holds the power, and it is not the player in the corner who can start moving up to receive the DHO.
Clear principles and priorities must be in place every time more freedom is added.
In this video, you can also see an example of players being assertive in their 1v1 without the ball. They read the position of their defenders and perceive the opportunity to go backdoor.
Before, we mentioned the concept of “re-triggering”. Here, we see another example of that:
The defense does a good job denying the catch on the DHO, but the seamless movement from the weak side guarantees a quick second opportunity. Notice how they realize that the defense has switched, and immediately the big goes to the dunker spot to clear out space for the drive.
Corner split Ball side
This is a similar idea to the initial flex screen, but with different spacing now, playing on the ball side.
In the first two clips, the screener goes to screen with two different angles. The first one is a pin-down, and in the second one, he sends his teammate towards the paint. This is an interesting sub-option within this particular set.
We could prime our players to decide the screening angle based on who's in the corner and the defensive position, or simply let them mix and play with the unpredictability of this.
Imagine this action with a 3 and a 1 where the defense isn’t comfortable giving up the switch, it’s a great and simple way to generate an immediate advantage.
Plus, if they decide to switch the offense is already in a good position to punish it by feeding the 3 inside the paint.
In the last two clips, you can see how Berlin is able to mix different options:
Attack with the corner split but while that is happening using the pin-down on the weak side.
In the final clip you can see another example of re-triggering.
Unpredictability tops execution(?)
I'd like to conclude by sharing two examples that perfectly illustrate not only the principles of this particular set but the philosophy of playing this type of offense. While being both perfectly unpredictable and perfectly spaced all the time would be ideal, in reality, we sometimes have to sacrifice one of these qualities. From my experience, many coaches are willing to sacrifice some unpredictability, and I'm not necessarily saying that's a bad thing.
Let’s take, for instance, the spacing mistakes made by the offense in this play.
There was clear miscommunication between players, resulting in both the number 5 and a guard lifting up to receive the ball, even after this initial misstep, the spacing was still off, with an empty corner pick and roll being played too close to the median line of the floor, creating a side of three that, in theory, could be used effectively to help defend against the opposing team.
However, in practice, Berlin's continuous movement off the ball prevented the defense from being in a position to help effectively and timely.
Since the defense couldn’t predict that specific situation was coming, the side of three, which in theory could’ve helped quite easily since the space is shrunken, can’t be there on time.
While this type of spacing is obviously not sustainable in all situations, it works as a random occurrence within the context of Berlin's system and the pressure they put on the defense through their movement.
Another example here, I don’t have to make a long paragraph about it, look at the spacing on the final P&R, it’s played inside the 3pt line, while another player is sealing the defender on the opposite side of the paint AND a 4th player is inside the arc on the baseline.
Obviously, we cannot rely completely on unpredictability and play randomly! As we highlighted before there needs to be a healthy structure and boundaries in play for this to work, I think we may need to be more conscious about the possible trade-off between unpredictability and execution in our Offense.
That’s all, thanks for reading this, as always, subscribe if you want!
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