TrailBlazing Offense (part 1)
In rewatching some of the plays I wanted to use for discussing Phoenix's poor pick and roll D, I kept noting to myself 'hey, that was a nice little action Portland ran to get into the PnR.' Meanwhile, my guy Zach Lowe noted "POR offense is gorgeous to watch."

Many of Portland's quick hitters come out of the "horns" set, which turns Portland's lack of a traditional post up big into a strength by bringing the defense to the top of the floor and keeping the lane clear for Lillard and to a degree Batum, Matthews and Mo Williams. The horns set allows for the ball to reverse from one side of the floor to the other fairly quickly, as we see here:
To this point in the season, when someone other than Lillard is starting the offense, this initiation seems to come a second or two slower. While Batum and Matthews are always likely to be slightly more methodical than a natural point like Lillard, Mo Williams seems likely to improve in this regard as the season goes on. Given that he is not used to playing with coaches who are offensively shall we say adventurous (the last 4 coaches he played for? Tyrone Corbin, Vinny Del Negro, Mike Brown, Larry Krystkowiak), I would expect it to take him some game time to become better used to a motion based offense.
In the next post about Portland's offense, I'll show some of the ways that Aldridge stands out in semi transition and as a passer.
Part Two - Part Three