Half-Court (Set) Plays and Fast-Break Focussed Attacks

    Hey, welcome to my blog again. I have not blogged here in a long time but now, I want to write more than the previous year.

    Today I want to talk about the teams that focused on the fast-break or half-court attack systems and their differences. Let's start. 

    First of all, I want to talk about fast-break teams. When I think about these teams, I think of Memphis and Sacramento. In my opinion, these two teams are the best examples of fast-break teams in the NBA. Their roaster is young, dynamic, and athletic and they have a flow. You can imagine being young, dynamic, and athletic but having flow is not a very concrete characteristic. As you know, if you want to make a fast break or be a fast-break team, you have to shape your defense according to that. You can make the full-court press, and you can make the trap or double team on the playmaker. Thanks to this defense style and you can steal the ball, as a result of that, you do not have to attack prepared defense. This makes your life easier. Besides that, your team has to be fast and they have to take good decisions. I gave Sacramento and Memphis as an example, if you look at their playmakers you will see these names; Ja Morant, DeAaron Fox, Dillon Brooks, and Davion Mitchell. The biggest advantages of these players are their speed and athletism and if you look at their defensive skills, you can realize that they are not very bad defenders. They have to stay at the three-point line in defense because, if the team steals the ball, they are the first names, and will make fast breaks. If they stay on a low post or lane, they can be late according to the enemy team's players. As a result of that, I think fast-break teams are more enjoyable to watch if they are good at that. There are lots of teams that try to make fast break their mentality because of their incapacity. 2019 Phonix, Houston, or Charlotte (without Lamelo Ball). Now we can talk about half-court teams. 

    The second topic of this article is half-court teams. I think we can not separate them as a team. We have to look at them as a player. Let's think NBA's best half-court players. They are LeBron James, Nikola Jokic, Luka Doncic, and Chris Paul. LeBron's situation is different, we will talk about him later. Jokic and Doncic are the best set players. Their game IQs are higher than other playmakers. They can find the best options under the stress and they make that as short as they can. You can say, the coach helps us with set plays, but coaches can not set every play in the game. Their pass skills and visions are very developed. They can find the space and they can feed other players thank to their intelligence. As you guess, if you have a player like that, you do not want to fatigue with a high-effort defense like a full-court press or trap. You can make your attacks with very basic tactics like pick and roll, pick and pop, give and go, cuts, drive and kick, handoff, and low post... They can adorn these simple plays and makes them more effective. I think half-court basketball is more effective but fast-break teams give more pleasure. 

As a result, we will watch and see which playing style will be more successful. As you know playoff and normal season are very different, we will evaluate when the playoff run. Have a nice day, and stay with the basketball.