Spacing made the passing read much harder

We spread the floor to create simpler decisions and ended up demanding a pass most players cannot make.

The pitch for spacing was always that it simplifies things. Move everybody apart, drag the help defenders further from the rim, and the correct play becomes obvious. Drive, draw two, kick to the open man. A child could see it.

What actually happened is that the pass got longer, and a longer pass is a different skill entirely. Ten years ago the kick-out from a drive travelled maybe fifteen feet to a man standing at the elbow extended. Now it travels twenty five feet across the floor to a corner, often across a defender who has been drifting into the lane and is now closing back out. That is not the same throw. It is barely the same sport.

Nobody talks about this because the failure is misfiled. The pass arrives half a beat late and slightly behind the shooter, the shooter has to reset his feet, the closeout arrives, and he pump fakes and drives into traffic. In the box score that is a missed shot or a turnover by the shooter. It was a bad pass, and the reason it was bad is that it was hard.

The consequence is that spacing rewards a much narrower group of players than the theory suggests. You need someone who can throw a live-dribble cross-court pass on time and on target with a defender in his chest. There are not many of those. Give the same system to a team without one and you get a lot of driving into two defenders and a lot of resets, which looks like poor spacing but is actually poor delivery.

I think this is also why the short roll became so valuable so quickly. It is a way of shortening the pass. Put a competent decision maker in the middle of the floor and the twenty five foot read becomes two twelve foot reads, and twelve feet is a throw most professionals can make under pressure.

The floor is wide open and the correct play is perfectly visible from the stands. It is just quite hard to actually execute, which the diagram never shows.