Utah Jazz 4-out 1-in Motion Offense

While it is true that many of the NBA teams have resorted to 1-on-1 play with little semblance of a true offensive set or team basketball, there are a few teams that still play basketball the right way. The Utah Jazz are one of those teams. Many times you'll watch an NBA game and 1 guy will have the ball, and 4 guys are standing there watching. Not the case with Utah. They are always moving, cutting to the basket, setting off-ball screens, making the defense guard them. In this clip, you'll see a sequence where the Jazz start out 4-out 1-in and run through a variety of options before Carlos Boozer takes it into the paint for an And1 play. Watch the video and then you can read my thoughts below.



Setup:

This starts out very much like Bo Ryan's Swing offense, the emphasis is to get the ball into the post, O5, where Carlos Boozer is nearly unstoppable against 1 defender.

Once the ball gets into the post, Boozer can choose to make a move and score. O2 comes and sets an upscreen for O1. Instead of scoring, Boozer decides to pass it to Deron Williams, O1. Now lets give NJ credit, they actually play pretty good M2M defense as Jason Kidd cuts off the baseline drive on Williams.

Now on the weak-side, Andrei Kirilenko cuts hard to the basket looking for the pass. He doesn't get it so he circles back out.

Next, Deron Williams passes back to Carlos Boozer who has popped out to close to the elbow.

Now, again you'll notice that always everyone is cutting and filling. Nobody is idle. So after Deron passes the ball, he goes back to the corner and circles back up to the wing. O2 now moves to fill the top of the key. O3 is at the free-throw line and does a basket cut looking for the pass, doesn't get it so clears out.

In this final sequence, Andrei Kirilenko, O4, comes and sets a quick ball-screen and rolls to the basket. Boozer doesn't really use the screen but it works somewhat anyways and he just does a quick hop step into the paint and baby hooks it and gets fouled to boot.

Summary:

If you're looking for some drills to help with the 4-out 1-in, take a look at a few breakdown drills I wrote about earlier. When you watch good players run this kind of motion offense, it looks really tight. It's easy to see why Jerry Sloan is the longest tenured head coach in the NBA, his players play the game the right way. They pass the ball, the move well, and they get good shots. And in case you are wondering, Utah did win this game handily 102-75.

There are plenty of notes on motion offense principles but I would highly recommend taking a look at coach John Carrier's notes, he does a great job breaking down the many options out of a 4-out 1-in, he's a guru of the offense. You can find them at the X's and O's Basketball forum. For video instruction, one video worth taking a look at for sure is Jay Wright's DVD on Breakdown Drills for the 4-out Motion Offense. Coach Wright is the highly successful coach at Villanova, currently ranked 20th in the latest AP Poll (Nov 19, 2007).