Half-Court Offense

[Srzly]

I rewatched every Kings half-court offensive possession from the Rockets game and tracked how many passes we made, even if they were little handoffs like “here you take point.”

Here’s how I counted:
- half-court possessions that resulted in a shot attempt
- no fast-breaks or number advantage possessions
- no counting possessions occurring after an offensive rebound, as that would skew the numbers to lower pass possessions unnecessarily
- any pass counted, even little handoffs right past half court, which sadly accounted for much of the passing

Passes Per Possession	# of Occurrences
0	22
1	29
2	15
3	5
4	3
5	3
6	0
7	1

Of the zero-pass possessions, here are the culprits:
Monk - 11
Westbrook - 7
DDR - 2
Nique - 1
+1 I forgot to note who it was but it would have been Monk, DDR or Russ.

~30% of the possessions had 0 passes.

65% 1 or less pass, many are either right at the start of the possession or late in the shot clock after dribbling around in iso.

How are guys supposed to get in rhythm if they are rarely touching the ball and when they do they are shooting contested looks because there is no ball movement to get the defense moving?

There is very little action outside of PnR, which Max has been very good in.

 

[ESP47]

I think this is pretty much why Keon hasn't been all that good offensively. He has to jack shots up quickly or else one of Russ, DDR, Lavine or Monk will gladly take shots for him. I think Nique is suffering from this issue as well. No one is finding good looks for anyone other than Russ finding the big man here and there. Just a lot of standing around and watching veterans "do their thing".

It's great for the tank but not so great for building trade value and developing young players.

 

[Spike]

The good:
This looks like Team USA basketball

The bad:
Not the good years.

 

[Srzly]

I think this is pretty much why Keon hasn't been all that good offensively. He has to jack shots up quickly or else one of Russ, DDR, Lavine or Monk will gladly take shots for him. I think Nique is suffering from this issue as well. No one is finding good looks for anyone other than Russ finding the big man here and there. Just a lot of standing around and watching veterans "do their thing".

It's great for the tank but not so great for building trade value and developing young players.

Exactly. Then you see the other guys forcing up contested looks because:
1. It’s late in the clock and a shot needs to go up.
2. Now that you finally have the ball you feel like you have to shoot it, because if you pass it then you know it’s not coming back to you.

The problems are compounding with this. It’s teaching bad basketball.

It seems pretty clear that Doug has no offense he expects them to run other than “vets go play offense”

 

[Padrino]

I expected this particular Kings team to trot out a bottom-five defense, but even with my pessimistic outlook heading into the regular season, I didn't suspect their offensive efficiency would be bottom-five, as well. There are certainly personnel issues that compound the team's inefficient one-on-one impulses, but there's just no imagination whatsoever to the coaching staff's offensive gameplan. It's among the reasons I'm so sour on the idea of Doug Christie as a head coach. If he can't hang his hat on coaxing reasonable defensive efficiency from his roster, and he's got nothing even remotely modern to offer on the offensive end, then what is his value ever going to be on the sideline?

 

[dude12]

A guy like Nique who is or can be a very good connector gets wasted in this offense. Like this is pitiful bad. Been this way for awhile. The only thing positive coming out of this season is a potentially top 3 pick, some growth with Maxime, and then I have a hard time thinking of anything else. Keegan isn’t really growing as there are too many guys trying to get their own shot.

The crap going on with Devin Carter makes me so angry. If I’m his agent, I’m ask8ng for them to move him so he can actually begin his career. Beyond bizarre.

 

[hrdboild]

I expected this particular Kings team to trot out a bottom-five defense, but even with my pessimistic outlook heading into the regular season, I didn't suspect their offensive efficiency would be bottom-five, as well. There are certainly personnel issues that compound the team's inefficient one-on-one impulses, but there's just no imagination whatsoever to the coaching staff's offensive gameplan. It's among the reasons I'm so sour on the idea of Doug Christie as a head coach. If he can't hang his hat on coaxing reasonable defensive efficiency from his roster, and he's got nothing even remotely modern to offer on the offensive end, then what is his value ever going to be on the sideline?

As a counterpoint, there have been head coaches who excel primarily at organization and motivation and let their lead assistants handle more of the X's and O's. One of the big advantages that Mike Brown had as a head coach is that he's been coaching so long that he has a long list of coaching contacts who want to work with him and he had no problem delegating responsibilities to assistant coaches that he felt they were well-suited for (which is probably why guys like working for him). Doug could be this type of a coach who is mostly a cheerleader and a defensive teacher on the practice court while someone else schemes the plays and runs the film sessions.

With rookie players, when you're watching them stumble through their early career mistakes the judgement call is whether they are learning from those mistakes and building a skillset which will enable them to continue to improve throughout their career or if they're just maxed out at this level and won't get any better. I think the same is probably true for coaches and I'm not ready to declare which it is with Doug but I did warn people right after Mike Brown was fired that we were potentially entering another coaching carousel. Sure theoretically there is some perfect coach out there waiting to be uncovered but realistically they all have their strengths and weaknesses and what this team (and really any team) has needed most is one consistent voice of leadership who is fixed in place. And then we need to give them time to mold the personality of the team to fit their preferred style of play.

The early returns on Doug as a head coach have been mixed and lately pretty bad but we did also know that this roster was going to be a mess (at least most of us did) so I'm not sure that a rookie coach failing to wrangle an aging and unbalanced veteran roster is indicative of anything long-term which should dismiss him as a candidate to be that voice of leadership. As the veterans fall away and get replaced with younger legs and more capable defenders, if he continues to struggle then at that point I would start looking elsewhere for a replacement and I would strongly lean toward finding someone with more experience. A young coach might be a good fit for a young roster but we'll never know at this rate and given the lack of patience exhibited by the man in charge with any personnel decisions, we probably lack the organizational structure here to support a young coach anyway.

 

[The_Jamal]

A guy like Nique who is or can be a very good connector gets wasted in this offense. Like this is pitiful bad. Been this way for awhile. The only thing positive coming out of this season is a potentially top 3 pick, some growth with Maxime, and then I have a hard time thinking of anything else. Keegan isn’t really growing as there are too many guys trying to get their own shot.

The crap going on with Devin Carter makes me so angry. If I’m his agent, I’m ask8ng for them to move him so he can actually begin his career. Beyond bizarre.

We saw in SL, Nique is a very unselfish player that looks to make the right play over and over. He's a talented playmaker too. But our offense has just devolved into all the vets taking their turn with an ISO possession, which is what these stats more or less prove. Again, what a devolvement from 2 years ago where we lead the NBA in passes/game with the #1 offense in basketball. Not only that, but the primary engine of that offense, Domas, has been neutered this year and essentially been made an after-thought. It's just pathetic all around.

 

[The_Jamal]

Exactly. Then you see the other guys forcing up contested looks because:
1. It’s late in the clock and a shot needs to go up.
2. Now that you finally have the ball you feel like you have to shoot it, because if you pass it then you know it’s not coming back to you.

The problems are compounding with this. It’s teaching bad basketball.

It seems pretty clear that Doug has no offense he expects them to run other than “vets go play offense”

What's even more frustrating is going back to that MEM game. We found a 5-man unit that was flat out awesome for a stretch:

Monk
Keon
Nique
Precious
Maxime

That went on a big run, was +9 in 6 minutes.... that was never seen again the rest of the game. Those were the only minutes Keon got all night. Nique got one more rotation. So instead of leaning into a unit that played great... he just defaults back to his normal rotations and making sure the vets get their minutes.

I mean, what a perfect scenario for the young guys to get extended run, even if it's just for that game. ESPY brought it up last night too, Carter somehow can't get on the floor in the 4th quarter during a blow-out? Like what are we even doing here?

 

[QWERTYLICIOUS]

Carter somehow can't get on the floor in the 4th quarter during a blow-out? Like what are we even doing here?

Stuff like this kind of tells me that it is more of a Vivek decision than it is a Christie decision. I highly doubt that Doug, a great defensive player in his days, would just decide not to play Keon (who has an immense amount of potential on the defensive side of the ball) virtually at all. He has to be given instructions from the higher up (in this case, Vivek)...No other explanation makes any sense to me whatsoever.

If you ask me, this mess has Vivek's name written all over it. It's just unfortunate that he has decided to make Doug his puppet.

 

[The_Jamal]

Stuff like this kind of tells me that it is more of a Vivek decision than it is a Christie decision. I highly doubt that Doug, a great defensive player in his days, would just decide not to play Keon (who has an immense amount of potential on the defensive side of the ball) virtually at all. He has to be given instructions from the higher up (in this case, Vivek)...No other explanation makes any sense to me whatsoever.

If you ask me, this mess has Vivek's name written all over it. It's just unfortunate that he has decided to make Doug his puppet.

I guess, but then do we ever attribute anything to Doug? What happens if we rip 20 wins off in a row? Is that Vivek or Doug?

 

[ShastaKingsFan]

I guess, but then do we ever attribute anything to Doug? What happens if we rip 20 wins off in a row? Is that Vivek or Doug?

It would be all credit to the players. Nothing to do with coaching or front office at this point

 

[Krunker]

I thought the half court offense would be a lot better, even before Sabonis got hurt it seemed pretty stagnant. OP's data matches the eyeball test and it seems like our main plays are either 1:1 or a high pick and roll. Doug's gotta get most of the blame for the offensive sets.