The San Antonio Spurs are renowned for their motion offence. The foundation for motion offence is ball movement and floor spacing.
“Motion Strong” and “Motion weak” has been popularised by the Spurs, and historically featured a four-out alignment. More recently, many NBA teams use the same principles with a five-out alignment.
The offence usually categorises players into wings (2’s and 3’s), bigs (4’s and 5’s) and ball carriers (1’s).
The initial set up has the 2 and the 3 running to the wings/corners. The 4 and the 5 work in tandem with first big running to the rim and then to the low post position on the same side as the ball, and the other big trailing to the opposite the ball carrier.
The offence can be executed from both sides of the floor. The diagrams above provide an example from the right side.
The offence is initiated by the pass from 1. The “Strong” action begins when the pass is made to the trailing big (4 in the diagram above). If the ball is passed to the wing (2 in the diagram above) this triggers the “Weak” action.
After coming off the stagger screens and a shot or drive is not available, the set usually continues into a “horns” action or a middle on-ball play.
