New Orleans Pelicans: Illustrating Stan Van Gundy’s go-to offensive plays

To optimize 3 point shooting, Stan Van Gundy will probably use some Spread Pick-and-Roll action with the New Orleans Pelicans

When Van Gundy was coaching the Orlando Magic, he was at the forefront of the 3 point revolution in the NBA. His teams launched a barrage of 3 pointers and a lot of them came from a spread pick-and-roll action.

What this play does, is it takes a ballhandler and a big man and puts them in a simple two-man pick-and-roll while every other offensive player on the court spaces the floor for three-point opportunities. The idea here is that either the ballhandler or big man will score at the basket, or the defense will help the basket and leave shooters open to receive an easy catch-and-shoot look.

Of course, that’s only the simple version of it, just like “Horns” there are many variations of the spread pick-and-roll. You can see them all across the NBA when watching teams like the Dallas Mavericks and Houston Rockets.

Why Van Gundy’s Spread Pick-and-Roll works with the New Orleans Pelicans roster

Once again, I believe that this concept will work with the New Orleans Pelicans because they have the personnel to execute it. Pretty much everyone on the Pelicans roster can be a ball-handler, guys like J.J. Redick, Josh Hart, and Brandon Ingram can be shooters while Zion Williamson and Steven Adams can be excellent roll-men.

Making this even more interesting is this is a play that a lot of these players have experience with too. Ball, Hart, and Ingram all ran some Spread Pick-and-Roll with Luke Walton during their time with the Lakers, Zion Williamson ran both the Spread Pick-and-Roll and “Horns” during his time at Duke, while J.J. Redick ran Van Gundy’s version of the play in Orlando.

What you should notice the most is that both of these concepts are common in NBA but serve an excellent purpose for Stan Van Gundy and the New Orleans Pelicans. These sets, allow Stan Van Gundy to institute more control and defined roles for this young team which in turn can make them a more disciplined and dangerous group. That’ll be a far cry from what this unit was just a year ago under Alvin Gentry’s pick-up game approach.