On August 31st, EuroBasket, an European competition featuring 24 countries and a high number of NBA players.  With the much anticipated exodus of NBA players to Europe not exactly happening (as of yet), this could be the last time you see some really good NBA players play in a true competitive setting for a really long time.  To get everyone more familiar with what we are going to see during the EuroBasket tournament, I am going to look at each team’s offense and break down a few interesting sets that they run, using game tape from the preparation games that are currently being played.

Being the host country, Lithuania is going to have an amazing crowd supporting them every single game.  If you don’t think that matters, ask Spain about Lithuania’s home court advantage.  After beating Lithuania in Spain by 12 points, Lithuania was able to return the favor at home, and hand Spain it’s only loss of their preparation schedule, beating them by 12 in front of a packed stadium.  Playing at home, Lithuania definitely needs to be considered among the contenders here at EuroBasket.

Halfcourt Offense

Pick & Roll Reverse

In my humble opinion, one of Lithuania’s greatest weaknesses is at the guard position.  They simply don’t have enough guys who can break down his man and either get to the rim or create for others.  Because of that, Lithuania leans heavily on the pick and roll (it was the pick and roll that powered them to a win vs. Spain).  It shouldn’t be a surprise that their halfcourt offense seems to revolve around the pick and roll, and here is their favorite set to run involving a pick and roll:

This play starts with a quick pindown screen set from a big trailing the play.  The purpose of this pindown is to get the wing player open to receive a pass.  This pass is important, because if it isn’t open, the play breaks down.

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As you probably already figured out, I am extremely interested in the video aspect of coaching and scouting.  In my opinion, it is always interesting to see how teams and coaching staffs use video to their advantage and how they try to get their players to use video as well.  So when I came across Texas A&M and their video set up, I had to learn more.  At Texas A&M, they have personal Macs for every player set up in their locker room:

These computers are in every player’s locker, and they can sit down and use them whenever they want.  My hunt for more information of this set up lead me to getting in contact with Stephen Gentry, the Director of Basketball Operations at Texas A&M.  He was kind enough to answer a few questions that I had:

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