Getting Your Bigs Involved, Ilgauskas and Cavs Early Offense

I watched a couple of NBA games last night, Pistons destroyed the Suns, and Raptors blew up the Knicks. I recorded this game on the DVR, Cavs against the Grizzlies.

I like this clip because it's just good basketball. Zydrunas Ilgauskas makes a good defensive play with the block, then he's the trailer on the early offense and just cuts straight to the basket after a fake PNR. This is just smart basketball, because the best offensive looks often happen within the first 7 seconds (according to Mike D'Antoni anyways). Take a look,



I'm always tell our big guys to run "key to key" just as Roy Williams of UNC teaches. You get your big men to trail the break then just cut to the basket, good things will happen. As you can see from this screenshot, there is real confusion between the 3 Grizzlies defenders on who is supposed to guard whom?


Give this play another 5 seconds to develop and the defense will have already reacted and rotated to cover all 5 players. Again, I always like to re-iterate, just because you're not on your primary or secondary break, doesn't mean you can't push the ball and score quickly.

Coach Roy Williams has a great DVD on his Secrets of the UNC secondary Break. As always, please check out the X's and O's Basketball forum to talk hoops and exchange notes and ideas.