The title is in response to a lot of the people that see us play and don't believe we're in fact teaching anyone anything on offense. Trust me we do. My favorite moment was year with our boys playing the best team in the province (at any level). After the game a local official said: "Your kids have to do something other then one guy dribbles and passes to the other guy to shoot it. There are guys on the floor watching those two guys play."
It was true we didn't execute very well and the only two kids who can compete against a team at that level ended up being the ones who could get open and get most of the shots. The point being I still felt we were running offense, our other kids just weren't skilled enough to run our stuff against them. We got open shots (or at least as open as we were getting when compeltely out matched). Isn't that what offense does.
As far as I'm concerned (and I've been wrong before, more frequently when my wife is present) offense is simple. You are trying to get someone a shot they can make. What makes offense complicated is lack of skills. If you can't shoot or people have to shoot from a certain area or range then suddenly you have to do all sorts of crazy things to get people the ball in those places. My feeling is that if we can shoot it, then all we have to do is beat someone one and one.
Once someone is beaten 1 on 1 with a cut, post up, mismatch off a screen, dribble drive, etc . . . then someone is getting an open shot. If no one helps then we get a layup. If someone helps late we get free throws and/a layup. If help is early then somone is open and by moving the ball someone should get an open shot.
Our offense basically is a lot of rules/concepts about spacing and movement to make it difficult for teams to help. We look to score by relying on individual skills. If we win then it is because we had better talent or we worked our but off defensively. If we lose its because we weren't better than their defense and our d wasn't good enough to get us the win by itself.
I know that there are many who feel the job of the coach is to put their kids in the best situation to win. Buld your system around the talent you have, blah. blah, blah . . . I'm coaching high school aged kids still learning to play the game. Most of them will play after school only in an informal or recreational way. Do I want their basketball experience for the rest of their life to be: go set a post screen and seal??? I want kids who can play. A kid who can get out and run with anyone and be able to shoot, attack, pass from all positions.
We have an offense. It is teaching kids to put themselves in situations where they and their teammates can use the skills they train to use. Why does it have to be more complicated then that. You can't do much better then an open shot can you???
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