The NBA is shifting away from pick-and-rolls, but offensive efficiency is higher than ever

Photo by Jamie Sabau/Getty Images

NBA offenses were obsessed with pick-and-rolls until defenses adjusted. Now, offenses have found their next frontier.

For thousands years, the combination of horses and bows meant military supremacy all the world round. The mighty Romans lost battles against far less numerous foes, such as the Parthians, due to one side having horse archers and the other not. And such technology lasted; the high-water mark came more than 1,000 years later, when the Mongols conquered much of Eurasia with their horse archers. It was unknown when the Mongols were defeating armies in China and the Middle East and Eastern Europe, but the horse archer would never be so effective again.

It’s possible that the high-water mark of one of the NBA’s great technological advancements may be in the rearview, too. For decades, the league has been defined by the pick-and-roll. It was used by champions to defeat overwhelming favorites, like the Parthians did against Rome. It was used by MVPs to extend their empire across every time zone and stadium the NBA had to offer.

But now, we may be seeing the decline of the pick-and-roll. We’re far from the end of the play, to be sure. But things have changed.

On Nov 7, 2023, the Los Angeles Lakers faced Zion Williamson and the New Orleans Pelicans in the In-Season Tournament (IST). A few nights earlier, the Pelicans had topped the high-powered Sacramento Kings in their first IST knockout game by limiting Sacramento’s 56 picks to a measly 33 points, according to Second Spectrum. So what did Los Angeles do? They circumvented the pick-and-roll almost entirely, running only 13. It marked the second-fewest any team has run in a single game in the Second Spectrum database, which extends to the 2013-14 season.

Though the Lakers’ game may have constituted an extreme moment, it fits within a long-term trend: Teams are running fewer picks.

At the same time, offenses have never been better. This season’s league average offensive rating would have been the third-best offense only six seasons ago, behind only the defending-champion Golden State Warriors and James Harden’s Houston Rockets.

Running high picks with shooters in both corners creates options for guards who can shoot, drive, or pass to rollers. Players like Donovan Mitchell, Trae Young, and Luka Doncic built phenomenal offenses three or four years ago while running almost 100 pick-and-rolls per game. It’s repetitive, and it’s boring, and Quin Snyder told me in 2021 that oftentimes players complain about how much time they spend in the corner.

But it was the single most important tool for many offenses that year. It might have been the high-water mark of homogeneity. There are certainly still teams running spread pick-and-rolls with shooters in both corners, running dozens game after game, but they are no longer the class of the NBA. Now it is the Chicago Bulls, Houston Rockets, and Portland Trail Blazers who carry that torch. They are not nearly as effective as were the Utah Jazz in 2021.

What changed?

The NBA has always been defined by technological advancement, in the forms of rule change, skill growth, and tactical choices. For every step in one direction, there has been an equal and opposite reaction in the other. I’ve chatted with a few coaches in the league, and they all pointed to switching as one major stepping stone between high pick-and-rolls and today’s elbow actions.

Switching has been in the league for a long time, but nobody did it as much as the Houston Rockets and Golden State Warriors during their playoff runs in the late 2010s. They switched actions as a means of controlling tempo. Their success diffused to other teams, like the Toronto Raptors, Miami Heat, Boston Celtics, and others who collected huge wings and switchable bigs. Switching played a huge role in determining the 2022 playoffs. Over time, the trend has become clear; every year from the beginning of Second Spectrum’s database, 2013-14, to the last shows a meaningful jump in the rate of switching by defenses.

Switching defangs many of the superpowers of the high pick-and-roll. It invites an isolation, either from the small in space or the big in the post. Either way, switching forces the play into a static approach, low on movement and passing.

Yet the boom in offense has been driven by faster pace, if you ask any coach in the league. Switching slowed pace down. So what did teams do to speed it up?

They moved to elbow actions. From the elbow, teams can run a handoff, a pick, a post-up, an isolation. The ball-handler can see defenders coming from any angle while he waits for off-ball actions to develop and so probably won’t be forced into a turnover. Elbow operators like Nikola Jokic are simply too talented to have that many options and not score. When loads of actions chain together — say, a cross screen on the elbows for a post entry, combined with a double stagger on the weakside, followed by that cutter receiving a handoff from the post to attack the empty side of the floor — defenses can’t do much other than hope. (Or concede an open three-pointer by helping across long distances.)

If this doesn’t sound particularly new — it isn’t. The last time there was an offensive boom in the NBA, during the mid 1990s, triangle offense was all the rage. And modern elbow offenses borrow a lot from old triangle principles — they just moved them further from the net. Spaced them out, if you will. But those old principles of activity and creativity combined with the newfound spacing provided by the three-point era are the basketball equivalent of the Silk Road — opening the world — err, court — just to see it conquered

The Kings set the historical offensive record last year, with the highest offensive rating of any team in history, by also running the (then-) fourth-most handoffs per 100 possessions in Second Spectrum’s database. This year the Kings are setting the record for handoff frequency. Also this year, six teams are jockeying to break the offensive record, all currently with higher offensive ratings than the Kings last year. The offensive ceiling may not yet be in sight.

The two-step between offense and defense in the NBA is ongoing, but it’s clear who has the next move. Defenses responded to spaced-out picks by switching, and offenses responded to switching with movement and tempo. It’s like that old Looney Tunes cartoon where the two characters pull out increasingly larger weapons, but NBA offenses just pulled out a space laser. It’s unknown whether defenses have a comparable tool in the golf bag. It is interesting to note that this season for the first time in Second Spectrum’s database, switching frequency has decreased from the year prior — so defenses are cooking up something.

It’s not that pick-and-rolls are dead (they’re still the majority of all NBA actions), but just that they are no longer the only weapon you need to have a competent offense. In today’s NBA, if you run the same action over and over again, you’re not going to score well. Defenses have improved, even if the numbers don’t show it. Picks are no longer homogenous; now they’re simply one of many tools even a middling offense must employ.

That’s sort of what happened to horse archers, too. All of a sudden, horse archers were no longer the best and most advanced soldiers humanity could wield. But they still were effective for a long time after that. Gunpowder replaced bows and arrows, but the Comanche built quite an empire of their own using guns on horseback.

Horse archers ruled the military world for more than 1,000 years. The pick-and-roll has not had the same amount of time in the sun, but things happen faster in sports than in, you know, human history. And the unspoken variable to all this is rule change. As players become better and better pull-up shooters, and coaches become more and more committed to pace, the final variable of rule change may have to come into play. The league might be tired of seeing teams score 150 points. There are lots of potential ways for the league to slow down offenses — and Secaucus can’t bail out the offense when the league steps in. That could bring the pick-and-roll back to homogeneity or get rid of it entirely. Who knows? But right now, the balance of NBA power lies firmly with the offense, and that could become even more true over the next few seasons.

Things are changing so quickly in the NBA that the trends of four years ago are quite different today. Ultimately, that’s healthy. Constant reinvention and revolution makes for an interesting product. Even if you might have to get used to six teams jockeying every year for the title of “best offense of all time.” At the very least, we aren’t watching the same play 100 times a game.