Charlotte Hornets head coach Steve Clifford recently discussed what he likes about his team’s offense and areas where they can improve.
(via Roderick Boone/The Charlotte Observer):
“We want to run,” Clifford said. “This team was built to run, and so last year we actually did a good job in terms of our pace, getting the ball up and down the floor. But we were inefficient in the first eight seconds of the clock.”
Clifford briefly pauses to reach for a binder chock full of pertinent information gathered from those tedious game-film breakdowns. He flips through a stack of pages thick enough to make a doctoral dissertation look like a handwritten love note.
Within mere seconds, he comes across the data that he’s already familiar with. This is just a refresher to make sure he has the figures exact and correct.
“We were eighth in transition opportunities,” Clifford said. “Obviously, you are playing with pace, but we were 27th in efficiency. So, from watching that a lot of it is sometimes we weren’t good with our early spacing. Sometimes we weren’t good with our decision-making at the basket. So, then that leads to how do you fix it, how do you change it?
“The same thing is true, for instance, playing inside-out. Paint-touch possessions in our league are a big deal. So, we were actually sixth in the league last year in paint touches before we shot, which is a big indicator of efficient offense. But we were 27th in efficiency. So those are the things that you start with.”
