Pete Carril Should Be Coaching Perkins

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  The Star-Ledger
Nets' intricate offense has center at its core 

Monday, October 13, 2003


BY BRAD PARKS 
Star-Ledger Staff 

So you want to play center in the Nets offense, and it's tough to blame you. It's fun. It's high profile. It's lucrative -- just last week they paid a guy $27 million not to play center for them, imagine what they pay the guys who do play. 

Now maybe you've heard playing center for the Nets is quite unlike playing center almost anywhere else in the NBA; that you'll have to handle, pass, and shoot like a guard; that the center truly is at the core of the offense. And maybe that scares you a little. 

But how hard can it be, right? Especially with this handy guide to help you. 

Start with one of their most basic sets, one that begins with the point guard passing to the power forward, and the center set up in the left block (that's the area to the left of the basket, just outside the painted area in case you're new at this). 

First, you have to read the defense: Is the opposing center playing in front of you or behind you? 

Forget, for a moment, what happens when he's fronting you -- it can get a little complicated. If he's playing behind you, the power forward is going to do one of three things: Dribble baseline, pass it back to a guard, or dribble to the elbow. 

If he dribbles baseline, you go set a screen for him. That's easy, right? If he passes back to the guard, you leave the low post and go to the elbow (where a bunch of stuff happens that you need at least a half hour to begin to explain). If he dribbles to the elbow, he's going to do a little two-man thing with the guard, and you have to set a screen, or seal off your man, or post up, depending on who does what. 

And that's really it. You've just learned one quarter of the first part of one of the six sets the Nets run in their offense. 

Now the bad news: There are still five more sets to learn -- plus some special plays -- and the preceding was actually just a gross oversimplification. 

"It's really a lot more complicated than that," Nets center Jason Collins said. 

In all but a handful of NBA cities, the name "center" is a misnomer. The center in the traditional NBA offense is, in fact, the center of nothing. He is a tall guy who is asked to stay out of the way, rebound and occasionally post up. He touches the ball less on less than half of his team's possessions, seldom being called to handle it anywhere but the low post. 

With the Nets, the center touches the ball on roughly three out of every four possessions. He has to read defenses and react accordingly. He has to set screens, make cuts, dribble the ball, pass the ball, read the defense some more, post up, pass again, post up again, set another screen -- and yes, rebound. Just about everything the offense does will involve him handling the ball at some point. 

"The center plays a huge role," said former Princeton coach Pete Carril, the man who designed the offense now being used by the Nets, Kings and Wizards of the NBA. "The center is the hub, and most everything goes through him." 

None of which makes it easy to learn. Just ask the guy who really has just taken on the job of playing center for the Nets. 

"I was so used to just coming down setting up on the block, maybe having somebody set a screen for me," Alonzo Mourning said. "That's what I did for years. This is a huge adjustment. I'm definitely not used to it." 

It's an adjustment some players just can't make. And there was perhaps no more dynamic example than the one that played out last week, when the Nets paid Dikembe Mutombo $27 million not to play for them, allowing the Knicks to sign him for $9 million. 

In lambasting the Nets and lauding the Knicks, critics asked: How could the Nets give away a center who is 7-2, healthy, and still capable of being one of the game's best defensive centers. 

The answer: He has the hands of a gargoyle, and in the Nets offense -- where the ball passes in and out of the centers hands so frequently -- it just didn't fit. 

When Carril was designing his offense, he had his eyes on a different sort of center. Carril was a young high school coach in Reading, Pa., who bought the cheapest seats at Madison Square Garden or Philadelphia's Convention Hall and watched a game dominated by Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain and their ilk -- large, graceful centers who could dribble, shoot and, most of all, pass. 

"There were a lot of centers back then who were good passers if not great passers," Carril said. "I just adopted some of the old patterns from the Boston Celtics and the New York Knicks and other teams." 

The offense he eventually brought to Princeton involved the center hanging out in the low post or at the top of the key and throwing precise passes to teammates as they made cuts and came off screens. 

The rest of the NBA changed over the years, falling in love with the pick-and-roll or with plays that isolated certain stars one-on-one against defenders. And with the exception of teams with dominant centers -- the Lakers with Shaquille O'Neal, the Spurs with Tim Duncan -- the notion of the center as a passer was taken out of most offenses. 

Except for the one Carril kept alive at Princeton. And it wasn't until the late 1990s the NBA rediscovered it. 

"It's surprising to me that there are guys playing the game now who don't realize this is something that's been done for 30 or 40 years," Carril said. "They're all finding out in this league what you can do with a center that can pass as well as score. To me, it just always made sense."