Memphis Grizzlies Head Coach, Taylor Jenkins, was asked about the Grizzlies’ halfcourt offence at 2023/24 Media Day. His answer was an insightful look into how the team was going to approach improving the offence this season (love listening to Jenkins when he’s in a ~good mood).
To recap the Three Gears, Jenkins detailed:
Gear One — “Dead-ball situations, coming out of timeouts, maybe after Free Throws. Truly against a set defence that’s not on the move…”
Gear Two — “In-between game… more or less against a set defence… what we previously called our halfcourt offence…”
Gear Three — “Transition offence playing off of misses, steals, and long rebounds…”
The Grizzlies brought in a new “Offensive Coordinator,” Patrick St. Andrews who Jenkins had previously worked with in Milwaukee. Listening to Jenkins’s words and watching the Grizzlies’ offence, has the Gears approach produced a better offence?
Taking a look at the Grizzlies offence, I have hand tracked every non-garbage time possession of the season. Memphis has 3,847 non-garbage time possessions* on offence (does not include Rebounds, Heaves, End-of-Game Defensive Fouls, etc.) over the first 40 games of the season.
(*I am missing 5 possessions against the Portland Trail Blazers on November 03, 2023, that were not included in replay… Bally…)
Over these possessions, Memphis is averaging*
- 0.8970 Points per Possession (PPP) on Gear One,
- 0.9731 PPP on Gear Two,
- and 1.1027 PPP on Gear Three.
(*Now I should mention I am not absolutely certain this is how Memphis tracks it, or if they track it, but this is the most detailed breakdown I can concoct. Not only is the above video helpful in discerning the differences but if you listened closely during the Pre-Season, Jenkins was yelling the Gear-situation on possessions)
Below is a look at 5-Game Rolling Average for the three Gears over the first 40 games of the season.
I am going to use a few different sources to compare these numbers and explain why my overall numbers are different from established sources (and why I believe my numbers are more accurate though less comparable to other teams…)
- If we take all halfcourt possessions (Gear One + Gear Two), Memphis is averaging 0.9412 PPP over the season( or 94.12 points per 100 possessions). This is nearly 2 points/100 possessions better than Cleaning the Glass (excluding Putbacks) designation of 92.6 points/100 possessions. It is also slightly better than Synergy’s (includes garbage time) halfcourt tracking of 0.934 PPP. Cleaning the Glass puts Memphis 28th/30 teams in halfcourt offence while Synergy has Memphis 29th/30 teams. So while my number is not entirely comparable to other public data for teams, it is safe to assume Memphis is one of the worst 2–5 halfcourt offences in basketball.
Gear One
Gear one offence, as mentioned above, would be tagged to plays against a set defence in dead-ball situations.
This part is going to get a little more detailed — 68% of all Gear One possessions are set plays (something I talk about a lot on Twitter and will get to more below) meaning 32% of possessions are freelance possessions.*
(*Freelance possessions I will usually designate as Iso or Post-Ups — without secondary actions or help off double teams — but would also include Pick and Rolls, Denied Sets that turn into Isos, and some other freelance sets)
Sets, in Gear One, have scored 0.9136 PPP (Bad) while Freelance plays have scored 0.8595 PPP (Worse than bad).
The main situations out of Gear One are After Timeouts (ATO), After Free Throws (AFT), Sideline out of Bounds (SLOB), Baseline out of Bounds (BLOB), and various Halfcourt situations (ex. after an out-of-bounds turnover).
Memphis has one main set out of BLOB playcalls — the most used BLOB set in the NBA — Triangle. Memphis usually runs this as a Screen-the-Screener (STS) action. In addition to Triangle STS, Memphis uses 3 Comeback, Double Screens, and various other BLOB.
Memphis uses three (3) main SLOB sets — Delay Chicago, Horns, and Veer Screens.
The benefit of Gear One is the offence usually has time to discuss and execute a play call, whether it’s one of their main SLOB/BLOB calls or a designed ATO. Now the issue is, the defence is set and also has time to discuss their coverage.
ATO are too diverse to group together so I will leave you with some of my favourties from this year.
Has the Gear One Offence improved since the start of the season? Yes, if only slightly. Over the first 20 games of the season Memphis exceeded 1.000 PPP only four (4) times and at no point did they have a 5-game rolling average over 1.000 PPP. Over the most recent 20 games, the Grizzlies have exceeded 1.000 PPP seven (7) times and have exceeded the 1.000 PPP 5-game average multiple times. For the season they are trending up (although still well below what I would assume is league average — according to PBP Stats Memphis is 21st in Dead Ball situations but 10th in ATO*).
(*Now I will mention again, PBP Stats is not a perfect website for ATO stats as it contains all ATO including transition after a timeout… so take that with a grain of salt. The difference between PBP tracking of dead-ball situations vs. my tracking of Gear One offence is nearly 20 points/100 possessions further highlighting the issues with PBP stats as an only source)
Non-ATO (mostly*) and non-SLOB/BLOB play calls in the halfcourt come down to a few different sets the Grizzlies use — Pinch, Horns, and Motion Strong/Stagger Away. All three of these sets I have detailed recently either on twitter or via previous articles.
(*mostly because the Grizzlies do call Horns ATO, Stagger ATO, and Pinch ATO)
Gear Two
Gear Two offence would consist of most plays against a tilted defence (or semi-transition). Taylor Jenkins stated that Gear Two offence accounted for roughly 50% of all possessions. So far in 2023/24 Gear Two possessions have accounted for 49.23% of all possessions from my tracking.
The overwhelming majority of these play calls are 4-Out/5-Out P&R — Spread P&R, Knicks, and Empty Side P&R are by far the top-three (3) play calls this season. The other, non P&R, most used sets would be Double Drag* (and Double Drag Shallow) and various calls out of Memphis’s Wide set. One thing Memphis nearly-completely (?) removed from their offence this season was their Zoom sets — something I noted was probable when Patrick St. Andrews was hired from the Bucks.
(*Double Drag is still P&R technically lol)
Back to sets/freelance, Memphis Gear Two sets are averaging 1.0764 PPP while freelance offence is averaging 0.8778 PPP. So while Jaren is having an elite season in terms of Isolation and Post-Up scoring, the sets have been much more productive than other forms of freelance offence. While Gear One possessions had a strong tendency to be set play calls, Gear Two is the opposite. Sets account for 24% of all Gear Two plays meaning the remaining 76% are either Freelance or Freelance P&R.
Another distinction I have to make at this point is the difference between Gear One and Gear Two sets because Memphis has used, for example, Motion Strong/Stagger Away against tilted defences on more than a couple occasions. To maintain consistency I allocate all of these sets to Gear One or Gear Two because I believe this is how it would be taught (this would minimally affect overall numbers either way).
Has Gear Two Offence improved over the season? Yes, but again only slightly (though well above Gear One). Over the first ten (10) games of the season Memphis had two (2) games where they scored over 1.000 PPP on Gear Two possessions. Over the most recent ten (10) games, Memphis has averaged over 1.000 PPP in seven (7) games.
Gear Three
Gear Three is the most volatile source of offence simply because it is the least frequent possession type (15.18% of all possessions). Gear Three mostly mimics Transition Offence but may differ based on what happens during the possession.
- For example — from the most recent game against the Golden State Warriors, at 10:29 of the 1Q, the Grizzlies had a halfcourt possession where they set up their Motion Strong/Stagger Away set into a trailing 3PA for Luke Kennard. While technically a Transition Offence play, the Grizzlies were setting up a halfcourt offence possession — where I tagged this as Gear Two (semi-transition) possession, Cleaning the Glass/Synergy tags this as Transition Offence.
Has Gear Three Offence improved over the season? Technically no, the trend line is sloping down even if it’s nearly flat, but like I said this is the most volatile offence. Gear Three has improved since a large dip between games 15–25 when it was at its lowest (Ja Morant partial return?).
***
The main point of the article is investigating whether Memphis’s teaching, and execution, of their Gears offence has improved since 2022/23. Teaching, I have no idea but the execution has not improved — it is a little more difficult than that due to injuries. The important part is the offence is improving as the season progresses.
My main concern (apart from injuries) would revolve around Memphis’s three-point shooting (I fully acknowledge that, for the rest of this season, against most teams three-point shooting is the Grizzlies most obvious path to winning games). Memphis is shooting threes at a much higher rate than last season (41.3% of all possessions this season compared to 34.0% of all possessions last season) while at the same time Memphis is shooting worse (34.8% in 2023/24 compared to 35.7% in 2022/23) this year.
Memphis has moved these shots from early in the shot clock to later, looking for better scoring opportunities in the flow of offence, nearly halving the percent of 3PA early in the clock (22–18 seconds). Memphis has four (4) players shooting better than league average on 3PA and two (2) of those players are on two-way contracts.
Besides three-point shooting, P&R efficiency has dramatically declined from last year — missing the lead guard (Morant) dues to injury/suspension and two highly-efficient, in previous years on low volume, P&R guards (Smart and Rose) has hurt. Memphis has moved away from 4-Out/5-Out P&R recently (under 20% of all possession in 4 of the previous 5 games) towards a higher share of both Freelance Offence and Sets.
Offence, and judging this offence, probably continues to be a work in progress until at least October 2024. At no point in the Jenkins/Morant era have the Grizzlies been a top-half of the league in halfcourt offence and this season that continues to be worrisome.