What Princeton Offense?

TNR is re-running a 1998 David Plotz article attacking the "Princeton offense." Richard Just, Princeton alum, takes exception to the view that this is an offense designed for inferior talents:

Since Plotz penned his piece, Princeton's system has been adopted by a long list of teams across the country. In the NBA, the Sacramento Kings, New Jersey Nets, and Washington Wizards have used versions of the offense. Meanwhile, the system has spread throughout the college ranks--to N.C. State, Vanderbilt, Northwestern, Air Force, Richmond, and Arizona State, among other schools.

I'm not sure I fully recall the offenses Eddie Jordan ran when he was an assistant coach for the Nets, but no matter how many times what the Wizards do gets described as a "Princeton offense" I just can't see it. Is that the part where Agent Zero takes outrageously long threes, or the part where Jamison hits those runners in the paint? Wikipedia says to run the offense "all five players in the offense-- including the center-- should be competent at making a three point attempt, further spreading the floor." That doesn't sound like Brendan Haywood or even Caron Butler. It also states that "the offense is a very slow developing one . . . often used by teams facing opponents with superior athletic talent, to maintain a low-scoring game." That doesn't sound at all like the Wizards, who have the league's #4 pace. On the other hand, this really is what everyone says, so I'm genuinely curious. At the same time, Jason Kidd and Gilbert Arenas seem like radically different star points guards, and I'm baffled as to how there could be a single offensive system that was built around both of them.

Comments

Don't casual fans think that "Princeton offense" and "occasional back cuts" are the same?

Posted by ogged | March 26, 2007 12:59 AM

I should have mentioned that when you consider that the Princeton Offense is supposed to be unusually low-paced for college it's obviously going to be impossible to translate it to the NBA's 35 second shot clock. Even a slow NBA offense is fast by college standards; a slow college offense is against the NBA rules.

Posted by Matthew Yglesias | March 26, 2007 1:05 AM

Is that the part where Agent Zero takes outrageously long threes, or the part where Jamison hits those runners in the paint?

Seeing as this description is very familiar to anyone who saw either player with Golden State, I can see why you're confused.

The reason Jordan is associated with the Princeton offense is because of the time he spent with the Sacramento Kings, who did adapt the offense very effectively in the early part of this decade (Sacto GM Geoff Petrie is a Princeton alum and brought in longtime Princeton coach Pete Carril as a Kings assistant).

But in the limited amount of JV league -- umm, I mean Eastern Conference hoops I watch, I've never seen Jordan's Nets or Wizards teams run anything that looked much like the Kings offense -- which isn't surprising, since they haven't had big men who could shoot from outside or pass the way Divac and Webber could.

Posted by Swopa | March 26, 2007 1:28 AM

Princeton once came within a couple minutes of knocking off Georgetown in the first round of the NCAA with that stuff.

Posted by SqueakyRat | March 26, 2007 1:30 AM

Georgetown beat UNC today using elements of the Princeton offense (John Thompson III is a Pete Carril disciple).

Posted by Mike P | March 26, 2007 1:43 AM

Yeah, Eddie Jordan used to use a variant of the Princeton offense when he was with the Nets. All it really means is a motion offense that runs through the center. The back doors are the plays everyone remembers - and the Nets used to get them often enough, often on Kidd to K-Mart or RJ alley-oops - but the real trademark is when you see a lot of ball movement especially with the center doing a good amount of the work uptop with the ball - Todd MacCulloch used to be quite good at it with the Nets (Vlade Divac and C-Webb played that part for the Kings).

I don't follow the Wiz enough to know how much of the offense they run, but even at the Kings, NBA teams don't run "pure" Princeton - they run variants that take advantage of things like, e.g., Jamison's midrange jumpers.

Posted by Al | March 26, 2007 2:30 AM

Don't mean to be the skunk at the garden party here, but anyone ever actually won anything using the Princeton offense?

Posted by charles pierce | March 26, 2007 8:20 AM

Well, Princeton won a lot of conference titles running their offense. And, as previously noted, Georgetown just made it to the Final Four running a version of the offense. West Virginia made it to the Elite 8 a few years ago running a version of the offense.

As an expansion on what Al noted above, the back cuts, frontcourt shooters, and motion running through the center are all linked concepts. I think one of the hallmarks of the offense is having an empty lane for periods of time, which is required in order to open up the back cuts. In turn, if you have an empty lane it means that your bigs are out on the perimeter, which works best if they can shoot from out there and are good passers.

It is useful in playing more talented teams since it can neutralize an opponents height advantage by bringing their big men and shot blockers away from the basket and making them guard on the perimeter, while also putting pressure on the guards with all the back cuts. It also (at least in college) uses screens and cuts much more than guys making plays with the ball to create shots.

Posted by Doug T | March 26, 2007 8:36 AM

"Don't mean to be the skunk at the garden party here, but anyone ever actually won anything using the Princeton offense?"

The Kings won 55-60 games for four consecutive seasons, plus going fairly deep in the playoffs. If you're using the common blustery exaggeration of saying "won anything" when you mean "won a championship," you should probably learn to say what you mean.

Posted by Swopa | March 26, 2007 9:47 AM

The term "Priceton offense" is abused in basketball writing the same way "West Coast offense" is abused in football writing. In basketball "Princeton offense" is often the term given to any team that runs backcuts; in football "West Coast" is given to any team that likes short passes.

While there are certain elements of the Princeton offense in teams coached by Carrill disciples (Bill Carmody, John Thompson III, etc.), it has been continually modified to allow for the creativity of more athletic players. Georgetown is much more opportunistic in transition than any Princeton team I've seen (and they should be). Likewise, they have players like Hibbert and Green who can score on the interior, so they emphasize post-ups much more than the Princeton offense would generally prescribe. To the extent Princeton uses a man in the pivot, it's usually for ball movement purposes or keeping the defense honest.

In the end, the pure Princeton offense is designed for inferior athletes to compete against more bigger and more athletic teams. The goal is to have a lot of guys who can shoot, use a lot of motion and passing, and basically hope that the defense gets tired and/or loses focus, allowing for an open jumpshot or quick-hitting backdoor layup.

Posted by CJH | March 26, 2007 10:01 AM

cjh is right on the button here. GU has integrated elements of Carril's theories -- which themselves date back to Clair Bee, at least -- in such a way as to use them as a kind of strategic "change-up" at critical times. They do it better than any other college team I'ver ever seen. And the WC offense parallel is an exact one; the New England Patriots do not run the west-coast offense specifically, but elements of it, just as every team now runs the shotgun, but nobody runs it exclusively.
There is a more odious subtext here -- too often, back when Carril was nearly winning games in the NCAA against superior competition, the "Princeton offense" was too often used as a synonym for "the way white people play" by folks who should have known better. I believe there was a rank TNR piece on that very theme.
And, please, do not cite Princeton's Ivy League titles as proof of anything. It's silly.

Posted by charles pierce | March 26, 2007 10:57 AM

The hallmark of great coaching is adapting to your strengths and weaknesses. "System" coaches usually get exposed at some point for example; Billick's 2 down linemen 5 linebacker takedown of the Colts, the death of the Run n' Shoot offense in Houston after Buffalo's 35 point comeback, the Giants and 49er's undressing of Buddy Ryan's "46" defense in the late '80s and Ryan's undistinguished tenure as a head coach, the disappearance of Westphal's Run n' Gun offenses as spotlighted at Loyola-Marymount, the undistinguished performance of Bob "motion offense" Knight's teams since the '80s etc.

Coming up with a system is a bright idea, knowing when to adapt that system is a hallmark of genius. Bill Walsh's genius wasn't the West Coast offense per se, it was knowing what to do with noodle armed quarterbacks with a modicum of mobility and decent accuracy. Walsh himself was adapting the original "West Coast Offense" of Sid Luckman and Don Coryell which had relied on strong armed quarterbacks and fleet receivers and is now known as the vertical passing game or ironically the "East Coast Offense" when run by the New York Giants. The better Walsh disciples have adapted the system to their needs, Holmgren has one of the better running backs in the league in Shaun Alexander and thus calls more power running plays in Seattle, it would be charitable to call the Philadelphia receiving corps of the last decade mediocre, so Reid has called more passes to his undersized but shifty halfback and to the tight ends than a classic West Coast approach.

Similarly the idea that the Princeton offense precludes post play, high tempo or requires centers with long shooting range has more to do with the fact that Carill's Princeton teams lacked tall, strong forwards or centers, guards or wings who could outsprint the opposition and that most coaches don't teach taller players perimeter defense so putting a long range shooter at that position helps mitigate the weakness of Princeton's interior defense on the other end of the court. Incidentally, Hibbert shows good form shooting free throws and may have more range on his shot than he shows in general, but given his efficiency down low why would he waste time launching threes? The faster pace other Princeton Offense teams employ is a function of the fact that their players can establish an offensive advantage earlier in the clock than the Princeton teams could, Princeton rarely has more than one player who can generate their own shooting opportunity so needs to take the time to run a few screens before they can unbalance the defense. There's nothing inherently slow about the Princeton offense except that it emphasizes working until a high percentage shot is open as opposed to the Run n' Gun which has less emphasis on a high percentage shot as opposed to getting a lot of shot opportunities. If the high percentage shot is a 30' alley oop pass 7 seconds into the shot clock, which was almost never an option for Carril's teams but is for the NJ Nets, then that's the shot you take, backdoors be damned.

But other's have said this far more pithily than I have, especially Bum Phillips explaining why Don Shula was a great coach in spite of the lack of a catchy moniker for his "system", "He can take his'n and beat yours'n and take yours'n and beat his his'n."

Posted by Ssezi | March 26, 2007 12:46 PM

An excuse to tell my favorite Bum Phillips story. He worked under Sid Gilman, who was a fanatic about breaking down tape. Late one night, Gilman said, "Bum, this is better than making love." Bum replied, "Sid, either I don't know anything about breaking down tape, or you don't know anything about making love." I read this in a family publication, so the quotes may have been cleaned up a bit.

Posted by CJColucci | March 26, 2007 1:55 PM

The other thing about Princeton's athleticism, or lack of it, to remember is that when they had their streak of 'surprising' NCAA games, they also had to play defense. So, even if their offense was magical, they also had to play defense as well as anyone else.

Posted by American Citizen | March 26, 2007 3:42 PM

Don't casual fans think that "Princeton offense" and "occasional back cuts" are the same?

Bingo. Though GTown does show what a Princeton-like offense is capable with top tier athletes. Hibbert and Green both make a lot of nice plays with the ball in the high/mid post. Really, the salient feature of "Princeton" is the fake dribble hand-off, back door play - the Hoyas ran this several times yesterday where Hibber/Green would dribble across the FT line and instead of circling around, the guard/wing would jab to the top of the key and sprint back door - (the prettiest one was where two consecutive guys made the same move and the second, Ewing?, was open for the dunk.)

Also, for the record, the '98 Princeton(?) team was really good - they lost two games all year (once to UNC at the Deandome and to Mich State with Cleaves/Peterson/Richardson(?), in the tourney), in which they shot a combined about 10-50 from 3.

Posted by Pooh | March 26, 2007 4:35 PM

The main thing I remember about those Princeton teams is that all five guys would rush back to the defensive end as soon as anyone took a shot, not making any attempt at offensive rebounds.

Posted by Mike | March 26, 2007 7:50 PM