Transition offense.
One of the top conversations that has surrounded Florida basketball over the last two seasons as the Gators’ pace and run out opportunities have been on a steady downward trajectory as they focused their efforts towards the half court.
This year’s iteration of the Gators was 238th in the country in offensive possession length, surprisingly higher than a year ago where they sat at 291st. When Mike White came to Florida five seasons ago you would have never thought the Gators would have back to back years in the 200s of this ranking, and White himself would certainly be shocked if he could look into the future and see his teams playing the more half court style they’re currently geared towards.
In his years at Louisiana Tech, Whites team’s ranked 63rd, 39th, 38th, and 40th in offensive possession length.
At Florida his teams have been 55th, 65th, 110th, 291st, and 238th.
At one of his first press conferences after being hired at Florida, White referenced his Louisiana Tech teams never having a shot clock violation.
This season, the Gators averaged nearly 1 per game.
Obviously, things haven’t gone exactly according to plan when it comes to Florida’s tempo and the Gators have never been able to play at the pace that White desired when he came to be the coach. Florida’s overall tempo has been trending downwards throughout the last five years as evidenced by the overall possession length numbers, but a better way to analyze how much Florida is getting out and running is to look at how many of their shots come in transition. Looking at average possession length can give some indication of how fast a team plays but that has a lot to do with what they run in the half court and isn’t necessarily an indication of how much a team plays in transition, so looking at the percentage of shots a team takes in transition gives a more accurate picture.
As a reference point, the average high major team takes around 17-18% of their shots in transition.
Here is Florida’s breakdown over the last five seasons:
2016: 17.4%
2017: 18.5%
2018: 20.4%
2019: 14.5%
2020: 11.2%
As some people would point out, the drop off in percentage of shots taken on the fast break coincides with the graduation of Chris Chiozza and the transition (no pun intended) to Andrew Nembhard at the point. Pointing out that losing Chiozza could hurt the Gators in transition offense makes a lot of sense as he was one of the best fast break point men in the league his senior season. Just how good, you ask?
Amongst high major players that qualified, Chiozza was second in the country in transition derived offense (his shots attempts and turnovers as well as shots that came off his passes) at an absurd 1.75 points per possession. Those numbers match the eye test, as Chiozza was one of, if not the fastest players in college hoops and also had the passing ability to find trailing shooters for open threes.
Fast forward to this past season where the Gators had their transition opportunities nearly slashed in half from two years ago when Chiozza was running the show. Andrew Nembhard is leading the way at the point, and Florida’s decelerated pace and the anger that followed from a lot of fans was pointed his way. His reputation as a “slow it down” point guard seemed to grow as the season wore on, and he was seen as the reason the Gators chose to play slow. Anecdotally, according to a lot of people, Nembhard was more of a methodical half court minded point guard and for that reason the offense needed to be slowed to play along his strengths, as well as the strength of Kerry Blackshear Jr. who was going to get the lion’s share of his touches in he half court.
Chiozza was so good in transition and the Gators had to drastically slow down for Nembhard, right? So what are Nembhard’s transition numbers like?
Hold on to your hats.
Remember how Chiozza was second in the country in offense created in transition at 1.75 points per possession?
This past season, Nembhard was at 1.76 points per possession.
Now, it’s worth pointing out that Nembhard did this on fewer possessions than Chiozza, but when he got the opportunities to get out and run he was incredibly effective and was one of the best fast break point guards in the league. Quite frankly, the narrative that he didn’t want to run in transition or that he wasn’t capable of playing up-tempo basketball isn’t true. This shouldn’t be surprising based on his play at Montverde in high school or his summer playing for Team Canada. Both scenarios saw him running the point for teams that made playing in transition a priority and he thrived in those settings.
So, Nembhard was actually way better in transition than perception, and when the ball was pushed the Gators had great success, and it’s clear he had a desire to push the ball when it was in the game plan, just like we saw with him in high school and with Team Canada. Those numbers should put to bed the notion that it was because of Nembhard that the team didn’t play fast, so who did benefit from playing slower?
The first player to come to mind would be Kerry Blackshear Jr., who, as a center, would be expected to be more comfortable in a methodical half court setting than on the break.
Well, actually he was the benefactor of a ton of easy buckets when Florida ran. “Drag” ball screens (an early ball screen from a trailing big) allowed Nembhard to find him on rolls before the defense was set up and equipped to defend it, and when the defense would suck in on the primary transition drive he had a handful of wide open trail threes. Overall, he was at a shocking 1.52 points per possession in transition (albeit, on a relatively low number of attempts) to 0.96 PPP in the half court.
Noah Locke shot the three a little bit worse in transition but was still at 40%, and overall was at 1.14 PPP in transition to 1.06 PPP in the half court.
The athletic wings Keyontae Johnson (1.35 PPP transition, 1.05 half court) and Scottie Lewis (1.05 PPP transition, 0.94 half court) both excelled when on the break too.
Hold on…if all these Gators were better individually in transition than in the half court, were the Gators actually that bad of a transition offense team like their reputation suggested?
No, they really weren’t. Their low number of transition possessions and the desire to play slower might have suggested that they struggled in that area and national and fan perception took that story and ran with it.
At 1.11 points per possession in transition the Gators were 8th in the country among high major basketball teams, one spot behind Kentucky and just ahead of Duke. To put that 1.11 points per possession number in context, they were at 0.92 PPP in the half court, making transition plays drastically more valuable than half court plays. Much like the numbers that show that Nembhard was a great transition point guard these numbers might shock you, especially because despite them saying that a shot in transition was much more valuable to the Gators than a shot in the half court they didn’t play that way and instead took far less shots in transition than what you would expect from a team displaying that efficiency.
It should be noted that it would be unfair to suggest that if the Gators took a much higher volume of transition opportunities that their 1.11 PPP number would hold, and it’s likely cranking up their possessions in transition would lower their efficiency. However, considering that even if their transition efficiency took a significant step down they’d still almost certainly be better than their half court number so even if they upped the pace by multiple percentage points from the 11.2% of shots they did take they’d still be noticeably better in transition than the half court.
Going through the film you can see why the Gators were so effective in transition. Florida wasn’t a team with many players who could get dribble penetration on their own making it difficult to get into the paint in the half court, but in transition against a backpedalling defense they were able to drive the ball which allowed for easy points at the rim or a collapsed defense that made for open shooters. The Gators shot 72.8% at the rim in transition versus 55% in the half court and they shot 40% from three in transition as opposed to 32% in the half court, showing just how big the difference is between playing on the break and playing when things are slowed.
Another reason transition offense was a good option for the Gators was that it eliminated an element of their offense game where they really struggled—late clock offense. When the shot clock was winding down, something that happened quite often due to their structured half court offense that would often go through multiple progressions, the Gators didn’t have the electric perimeter talent that could go and get a bucket on their own. In these late clock scenarios the Gators were only at 0.67 points per possession, a dismal number that speaks to how difficult it is to get a good shot facing a defense that knows it has an expiring clock on it’s side.
Playing against a defense that isn’t set also gives the offensive team an offensive rebounding advantage, and this can happen in multiple ways. First of all, imagine a team coming down on a 3 on 2 break. The ball is passed to a wing for a three-point shot, as is often the play in modern basketball when you have numbers. One of the two defenders will frantically try to close out to the shooter as the ball gets put up, and that makes a 2 on 1 offensive rebounding advantage. Additionally, whenever you play in transition and the defense isn’t set there are almost always going to be more scramble plays as defenses react to who is in help or deny positions away from the ball and when a shot goes up an offensive rebounder can be lost. For the Gators, this meant an offensive rebounding percentage of 35.7% in transition versus 28.1% in the half court, a significant jump.
So, we’ve seen how the Gators were actually stellar in transition when they chose to push it with one of the best transition point guards in the country, even though most people never realized it, so why did the Gators throttle their transition attack and instead favor the half court game?
When you look at the progression of the season, the decision to temper the transition attack came midway through the non-conference schedule after the Gators struggled on the break to start the season.
“I don’t know where our numbers sit today but I know going into the Butler game we were in the 16th percentile in transition offense,” White stated before the game against Providence.
“Of our transition offense opportunities, we were turning the ball over 25% of the time. ‘Why don’t you play fast, why don’t you play fast? We’re so talented, play fast.’ Oh my goodness. We’d be leading the nation in turnovers,”
At the time that was totally accurate, and a position that was rooted in statistics, something I am always a fan of. However, what was true of a young team that hasn’t played together much early in the season wasn’t true as soon as three games into the conference season when the Gators had already climbed up and passed the national average for transition offense from the 16th percentile before the Providence game.
It’s also no surprise that White mentioned turnovers because ball security is something he has always valued and, like many coaches, turnovers make him want to pull his hair out.
The Gators ended the season turning the ball over on 15.2% of their transition possessions. They were 243rd in transition turnover percentage, something that obviously looks unpleasant and seeing that number could have made the staff shy away from wanting to play in transition, especially given how they prioritize taking care of the ball. However, I don’t think that looking at that number is particularly fair, and I’ll tell you why.
They turned the ball over on 14.5% of their half court possessions.
So, if we’re talking turnovers, the difference between transition and half court was negligible. You can look at Florida’s turnover percentage and transition and it could look ugly, but when it’s nearly the same as their half court percentage I don’t think it can be used to defend the reasoning behind favoring the half court.
White’s opinion on the team’s transition offense early in the season that was rooted in facts and statistics was totally accurate at the time, but I fear he didn’t continue to value the numbers as they showed the team was getting better and better and was ultimately great in transition.
An observation while going through the film was that some of Florida’s turnovers in transition were truly terrible. They had 3 on 1s and 2 on 1s that turned into the ball getting thrown out of bounds, and plays that should have been layups ended up being passed directly into the chest of the lone defender back for the opposition. Sometimes balls were dribbled off of toes, and other times they were tossed into the 6th row. There were some objectively awful turnovers, and I’m sure there are many that you remember vividly just by reading this.
However, just because a turnover is ugly, it doesn’t mean it’s any worse than a regular turnover. Yes, the Gators had some brutal turnovers on fast breaks that were so unsettling that you’d think they were a bad transition team, but you can’t let a few bad plays overtake a large data set. It felt like some heinous turnovers in the first few games of conference play sealed the fate that the team wasn’t going to play fast, when one bad turnover shouldn’t ring louder than a multi game sample size. Those particularly bad plays are what a lot of people remember, more than the efficient buckets the Gators got far more regularly.
Even though the numbers got to an efficiency standpoint that would suggest they should go out in transition drastically more they still approached the fast break like the team was in the 16th percentile offensively and turning the ball over 25% of the time. I’m extremely glad that White was making a decision based on numbers early in the season, I just wish his decisions on the matter would have continued to be analytically driven the rest of the way.
In terms of how fast the team chooses to play next season, it may be advisable for them to look at the numbers to see how well the team played in transition this year and structure their attack accordingly. Personnel will definitely play a big factor in this, something still yet to be determined based on the decisions of Andrew Nembhard and Keyontae Johnson regarding whether they return or go pro. In terms of returning players every single Gator had a higher points per possession in transition than the half court, and with a year of experience under the belts of the young players they should only be better on the break. In terms of how much the team gets out in transition the biggest decision will be whether or not Nembhard returns. If he were to go pro that would put redshirt junior transfer Tyree Appleby at the point and while he’s a small guard with a lot of speed that you would expect to excel in transition he actually was a more effective half court guard than in the full court. However, it is worth noting that his full court efficiencies likely suffered due to Cleveland State taking 22.1% of their attempts in transition, nearly double what the Gators took and a mega-high volume that would lower any player’s efficiency. Given the pace he played at running the point for Cleveland State, Appleby’s experience on the break mixed in with a redshirt year to get stronger and more experienced means he could be valuable in this area.
The other thing to consider when talking about Florida increasing their transition attack is that if you’re going to make playing in transition a priority your defensive rebounding is likely to struggle at times. To play fast sometimes means playing smaller lineups, and to make the break a priority means you’re likely having guards leak out at times which limits the number of players you have on the defensive glass. It’s worth noting that the team that played the most in transition in the Mike White era, the 2018 team, was also 256th in the country in defensive rebounding and last year’s team that didn’t get out and run a lot was much better at 150th. On the other hand, the Gators still weren’t a great defensive rebounding team last year and improvement in that area could also allow them to better their transition attack.
For those of you who wanted Florida to play in transition more often, there are a lot of numbers to back up why they should have done so. At 1.1 points per possession in transition their average shot on the fast break had a higher expected shot value than a lot of their attempts in the half court. Yes, at times the transition attack looks scrambled and downright bad, but looking at the entire sample size they showed that they can thrive in transition. They have a point guard who excels on the break despite what a lot of people might think and they have players surrounding him that were efficient when given the opportunity. For these reasons you can likely expect the team to look to get out and run more often in 2020-21, and the data suggests that is a wise thing for them to do.