Masters of Offensive Spacing: The San Antonio Spurs Spread Pick and Roll

The most well oiled, fine tuned offense in the NBA Playoffs (and for the entire season for that matter) has been the San Antonio Spurs. They have the personnel, experience and understanding of basic offensive concepts to create some beautiful offense. The staple play of their offense and the one that did the most damage in Game 1 against the Utah Jazz was the Spread Pick and Roll. The Spread Pick and Roll is a set where a high ball screen or high angled ball screen occurs while having 3 shooters spaced outside the 3PT line. The Spurs usually go to the Spread Pick and Roll exclusively when Matt Bonner, Stephen Jackson, Danny Green/Manu Ginobli are in the game, because they are all deadly shooters. Add that to the fact that Tony Parker is using the ball screen to get into the paint at will, while guys like Tim Duncan, Dejuan Blair and Tiago Splitter are rolling to the rim for dunks, and no wonder they have the best record in the West.