Paul Pierce and Paul Millsap have both become part of the NBA’s stretch-4 trend. (Dale Zanine/USA TODAY Sports)
During the 1995 Western Conference semifinals, Houston Rockets Coach Rudy Tomjanovich had never heard the term “stretch-4,” because it had not entered the basketball vernacular. The phrase “pace and space” did not exist. Tomjanovich only sought a means to guard Phoenix Suns forward Charles Barkley without double-teaming him, to prevent passes to open three-point shooters. And so Tomjanovich tried something new. He played usual small forward Robert Horry at power forward.
Tomjanovich quickly realized the defensive strategy actually created a more significant shift in the Rockets’ offense. With Horry on the floor instead of a plodding power forward, four shooters surrounded center Hakeem Olajuwon, and every player on the court had more space to operate. It gave Tomjanovich a sudden, clear insight: This is how teams should play.
How long does the widespread adoption of useful innovation take? In sports, drenched in cautious convention and baked-in tradition, it usually takes longer than it should. Twenty years after Tomjanovich rode his small lineup to an unlikely championship, mismatch-creating, sharp-shooting power forwards – “stretch-4s” – have become a staple of NBA offenses, which are playing with more free-flowing, quickened pace than ever before.
In these NBA playoffs, the teams who do not play small, spread the court, initiate plays with pick-and-rolls and test defensive rotations by whipping the ball around the perimeter are outliers. With the exception of the Memphis Grizzlies and Chicago Bulls, every team remaining in the NBA playoffs leans heavily on playing smaller lineups as a means to create space in the lane and launch open three-pointers.
That includes the Washington Wizards, who under Coach Randy Wittman supercharged their offense in the playoffs by shifting Paul Pierce from small forward to power forward rather than playing Nene and Marcin Gortat together. Pierce’s presence placed pressure on defenses by stretching it, allowing for efficient three-pointers and driving lanes for guards to exploit.
Hedo Turkoglu, now with the Clippers, served as a perfect stretch-4 when he played with Dwight Howard in Orlando. (AP Photo/Danny Moloshok) In the regular season, the Wizards attempted 16.8 threes per game (27th in the league) and scored 97 points per game. In the playoffs, the Wizards have shot 24 three-pointers per game and scored 105.8 points per game.
“It’s a big trend,” said Tomjanovich, who now runs a scouting and analytics consulting service. “There’s a few teams that don’t go by the formula. Numbers-wise, by the mathematics, you’re not going to have a high-octane offense if you don’t play that way. You’re not going to generate many points by possession. If you don’t play that way, you have to have a really good defense to win.”
The league-wide prevalence owes to several factors. Gradual rule changes made to increase scoring and allow zone defense allowed for greater creativity. The proliferation of advanced metrics made starkly clear the importance of three-pointers and layups and the inefficiency of isolation plays and long two-point shots. The success of coaches like Gregg Popovich and Erik Spoelstra – who coined the phrase “pace and space” while using Chris Bosh as a stretch-4 – promoted imitators.
The offensive principles included under the “pace and space” umbrella have become commonplace, most of all, because teams finally came to understand the value of three-pointers, even if Tomjanovich revealed it two decades ago.
At first, Tomjanovich liked playing Horry at power forward because it weaponized Olajuwon – with four players on the perimeter, he would have ample room to operate in the post. It also weaponized an even more powerful force: the three-point line. When defenses double-teamed Olajuwon, he would pass to the perimeter, which led to another pass or two, which led to the ball beating the defensive rotation, which led to an open three-pointer.
Today, there is a dearth of back-to-basket beasts like Olajuwon, and defensive rules have changed to allow off-the-ball double teams, thwarting post players even more. But the principle Tomjanovich unlocked with Olajuwon remains embedded in current small-ball offense: Draw two defenders to one spot on the floor, and then make enough quick passes for the ball to beat the defense’s rotation until you have an open three-pointer.
Which is why Tomjanovich can say former Phoenix Suns Coach Mike D’Antoni, another key innovator in how teams play offense, employed “all the same stuff” as, say, Stan Van Gundy’s Orlando Magic team that made the 2009 Finals. Van Gundy played four-around-one, surrounding Dwight Howard with shooters, including Rashard Lewis and Hedo Turkoglu, two 6-foot-10 forwards. D’Antoni ran breakneck pick-and-rolls with Steve Nash and spotted up Shawn Marion in the corner as a power forward. Both looked different but revolved around making defenses scramble in order to launch three-pointers or open a path to the basket.
Before the 2011-12 season, Spoelstra visited then-Oregon football coach Chip Kelly during the Ducks’ training camp in order to study how Kelly’s principles – playing fast and spreading the field – could translate to basketball. He came away convinced that creativity, like playing Bosh at center and then asking him to spot up behind the arc, would unleash the best version of LeBron James.
“The more that we’ve tried to think conventionally in terms of guys playing just a specific position, it restricted us a little bit,” Spoelstra told ESPN.com during that season. “We can put pressure on teams to adjust to us.”
For years, coaches didn’t understand the power of forcing other teams to adjust. They worried a smallish power forward would be exploited by a larger power forward on defense. But they didn’t understand the tradeoff, Tomjanovich said. A big power forward would take a two-point shot. A smaller power forward would help create an open three-pointer.
“Sometimes all it takes is a couple minutes of playing that way, and you get a little bit of a boost offensively,” Tomjanovich said. “It is going to cost you defensively if you have a strong big man who can overpower you. We would make sure our guy got more shots and then get him out of the game. You might get an advantage of three or four points. But that might be the game.”
Tomjanovich first used a standard small forward at power forward on instinct, before advanced stats and motion-capturing analysis validated the tactic. The Rockets now have become the vanguard in basketball analytics. A couple years ago, a member of Houston’s front office retroactively measured Tomjanovich’s teams’ efficiency. The executive called Tomjanovich. “I just wanted to tell you something,” Tomjanovich heard. “That was the right way to do it.”
On-Court Impact
How have stretch-4’s spread the floor in Washington? Here’s a look at the shot depth for the Wizards’ deep-shooting power forwards — Drew Gooden and Paul Pierce.
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