Mike Brown’s Offense & Kobe Bryant
When Mike Brown got hired as the head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers, the decision left a few people scratching their heads. While coach Brown has a reputation as a defensive coach, his reputation on the offensive end is quite the opposite. In my opinion, that isn’t really fair to Mike Brown. While he is deserving of criticism at times, in actuality, coach Brown’s offense is better than the general public’s perception of it. In fact, during coach Brown’s final two seasons, the Cavaliers had the 4th best offense in terms of offensive efficiency (points scored per 100 possessions). Now, the response to that statistic is that Brown had LeBron James. Well, that’s true, but in Los Angeles, you have a player just as good (or better, depending on who you ask), and I think that is where you need to start when looking at coach Brown and how his offense will translate to the Lakers.
One of the biggest advantages of the Triangle Offense was that it created terrific spacing, giving Kobe Bryant opportunities to catch the ball with a lot of room to operate. How will Bryant get his opportunities under Mike Brown? I think looking at how Brown set up LeBron James in Cleveland could help us determine what sets Brown will use – and have success with – in Los Angeles.
For the most part, I am going to be looking at Brown’s offense during the 08-09 season, the last season John Kuester was on Cleveland’s staff. Kuester was the de facto offensive coordinator of those Cleveland teams and with rumors that he will be fired by Detroit and that Mike Brown wants to add him to his staff, it makes sense to focus on this season.
Post Up Opportunities
Outside of isolations (which were 30.3% of Kobe Bryant’s possessions), highest percentage of possessions used by Kobe Bryant (14.8%) came in post up situations. While LeBron didn’t have a reputation for having a strong post up game, he did post up 113 times in the 08-09 season, with Mike Brown running a few different, yet simplet, sets to get him the basketball on the block.
Post off of a Downscreen
Aside from a straight post up, this might be the simplest post set that Brown ran for LeBron James. As you can probably guess, it involves LeBron James posting after coming off of a downscreen:
