NBA Defenses Can't Stop the Spread Offense

Defense wins championships. It's a phrase that's repeated by NBA analysts and fans alike, a mantra with an almost moral undertone, suggesting that the hard, unglamorous work of preventing points is more noble than the glory boy fun of scoring them, and therefore should be held in higher esteem.

But is that really the right way to think about today's league?

It's certainly true that elite defense has been an essential component of title-winning teams; however, the same is true of elite offense. Over the last ten seasons, no NBA champion has ranked outside of the top ten in defensive rating (DRTG), and only once has a team ranked outside of the top ten in offensive rating (ORTG).

This season, the league-average ORTG has increased by 2.4 points per 100 possessions since 2015-16. Seven of the eight remaining playoff teams rank in the top nine in ORTG, while just three of them rank in the top ten in DRTG. The top four teams in three-pointers made per 100 possessions are all currently favored to make the conference finals, with three of those teams also ranking in the top three in field-goal percentage within three feet of the basket.

In other words, good offense is dominating the NBA, both during the regular season and in the playoffs. While the Golden State Warriors own the league's second-best defense and are favored to win the championship, the league-wide trend toward improved offensive efficiency raises an interesting question: Are NBA offenses outpacing defenses?

More specifically, has an abundance of elite shooting made offense more important than defense?

Two teams, the Houston Rockets and the Cleveland Cavaliers, seem to be putting this theory to the test. They ranked second and third in ORTG during the regular season, respectively, but were 18th and 21st in DRTG. Most years, that would be a recipe for playoff failure, but both teams may have found a roster and a of play that make their offense largely unguardable, even by the most elite defenses.

The Rockets and the Cavs are fairly similar stylistically. Both teams use lots of different wrinkles, secondary actions, and misdirections, but the staple of each offense is the pick-and-roll with elite shooters around the arc. The simplicity of spread pick-and-roll is part of what makes it so effective. Shooters are able to spot up and prepare for an open catch-and-shoot three-pointer, while opening up the paint for their star player to attack off of the screen, force a switch and operate out of the post, or isolate against the mismatch from the top of the key.

James Harden is the engine of the Houston offense, and has the perfect skill set for running these types of actions. He starts with an incredible ability to knock down open jump shots off of the dribble. Go under the screen, fail to fight through quick enough, or drop back too far with the big, and he'll pull up for a wide-open three-pointer. He averaged 6.8 of those per game this season, more than anyone else in the league, and scored .99 points per attempt, not including the numerous times he was fouled in the process.

If you switch the ball screen, you're usually counting on your center to defend Harden in isolation—but Harden led the league in isolation attempts, with 6.8 per game, and scored .97 points per possession, the sixth-highest mark among players to take at least three shots per game out of isolation. That number almost certainly climbs higher on possessions where Harden draws a mismatch.

If you hedge the ball screen, you can take the ball out of Harden's hands in the pick-and-roll, but that strategy comes at a steep cost. Hedging isn't easy. It requires the defensive center to read the timing of the screen and cover a lot of ground in order to jump out and block the ball-handler. Arrive a step late or take a wrong angle, and Harden can split the screen for a five-on-three situation, an advantage that is automatic for the MVP candidate.

Even when the hedge is perfectly executed, Harden has the height and feel to get the ball into the hands of the roll guy, who can either roll toward an unprotected rim or, if the defense rotates, kick out to an open shooter. The Rockets bigs are excellent roll guys. Nene scored 1.25 points per possession on the roll, and Clint Capella was close behind at 1.14. Swap either of those two guys with Ryan Anderson, and roll to the rim, pop out to the three-point line for additional spacing, or force the switch and then operate out of the post on a mismatch. Anderson scored 1.12 points per possession on rolls and 1.16 points per possession on spot-ups.

Opposing defenses are in a picked every time Houston comes down the court. Harden is nearly impossible to contain without additional help, but his teammates make that nearly impossible to provide. The Rockets have four players shooting 40 percent or better from the left corner, five players shooting 38 percent or better from the right corner, and three players shooting 37 percent or better from above the break. Simply put, you cannot leave those guys open.

Harden makes helping off of shooters even more difficult by being one of the best in the league at throwing off-rhythm passes. Most players have the same rhythm to their game, and you can anticipate and time when the shot goes up or when the pass begins. With Harden, that rhythm can change in an instant. What looks like a dribble will draw the help side away from the corner, like a linebacker trying to perfectly time the snap on a blitz. No sooner does the help take a step away from their man than Harden abruptly changes his rhythm and rifles a pass to the open corner shooter.

On top of all of this is Harden's incredible ability to draw contact and get the foul. He led the league in free-throw attempts, averaging 10.9 per game. Many of those fouls are drawn early in pick-and-roll situations where Harden will penalize defenders for trailing the screen too closely. This skill makes defending the Rockets' spread pick-and-roll that much more difficult. You cannot guard Harden too close or trail too far behind. There simply is no right answer.

All of the things that are true of Harden and the Rockets are even more true of LeBron James and the Cavaliers. James has been one of the best offensive players in the league for over a decade, but this season he is surrounded with more shooters than ever before in his career.

That extra spacing has elevated his game to new heights, and in turn has made Cleveland's offense insanely efficient. Through six games, the Cavs have a 120 ORTG on possessions following a made basket. These are typically possessions in which the defense is set, organized, and matched up properly, all of which should make it more difficult for an offense to score. Instead, the Cavs are spreading the court and putting teams in the same, simple pickle the Rockets do. Even more impressive is that the Cavaliers are actually better in the half-court than they are in transition.

This nearly perfected of spread offense causes even elite defenses to struggle to prevent open shots. While so far the Cavs haven't met much resistance from opponents, the Rockets have a 113 ORTG through seven playoff games despite going up against two of the top ten defensive teams in the league.

Not every top team in the playoffs relies on pick-and-roll action as much as the Rockets and the Cavs. The Golden State Warriors owned not only the best ORTG of the regular season but the best single-season ORTG of all time, and they did it with much more ball movement. They average nearly 50 more passes per game than either the Rockets or Cavaliers and more than five additional assists. They also use isolations nearly half as frequently as either the Cavs or the Rockets.

And yet even the Warriors seem to reach a new level when the offense is less balanced and flows more frequently through Steph Curry out of the pick-and-roll. And it's not like they lack outside shooting—they have three of the best three-point shooters the game has ever seen. For all of their great ball movement and cutting, it's the constant threat of their outside shooting that makes everything else possible.

The trend of more spread offenses and better shooting will likely increase in the coming years. More talented shooters are entering the league every season, and teams are placing a higher priority on outside shooting at the draft, knowing that that one reliable skill can open the game up for more well-rounded superstars.

Longer defenders will be one counter to this new style of spread offense. The more ground a player can cover, the easier it is to force the ball-handler into difficult reads out of the pick-and-roll. The same goes for positional versatility, since switching is the best way to contain the pick-and-roll, assuming a team has five perfectly interchangeable players on the floor.

The Milwaukee Bucks are the poster child of this next paradigm shift, led by one of the most unique physical specimens the league has ever seen in Giannis Antetokounmpo. The Warriors have also gone all-in on length and positional versatility. But in most cases there is a weakest link. For the Warriors in last year's NBA Finals, that weak link was Steph Curry. Golden State featured interchangeable defenders in spots two through five, but their MVP point guard was too slow to defend Kyrie Irving and too small to defend James. The Cavs were relentless in forcing Curry onto one of those two guys and going at him, most notably on what turned out to be the game-winning shot in Game 7. In that series, the Cavs had a 109.1 ORTG, much closer to their 110.9 regular season ORTG than the Warriors' 103.8 DRTG.

If the two teams meet in the Finals once again this year, the Cavs will look to do the same thing. Even if the Warriors have the league's second-best defense and can cover a lot of ground collectively, it's almost impossible to prevent the Cavs from putting Curry into the pick-and-roll. That's why even elite defenses can look pedestrian when they have a vulnerability.

Neither the Cavs nor the Rockets are good defensive teams. Perhaps the mantra will prevail again and the team with the top-ten defense will be the last one standing. There are plenty of signs that the league is trending in a direction where the best offenses are immune to the best defenses. If that is the case, the rest of the playoffs might just come down to offensive firepower.

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