Mavs Playbook: Delay Chicago (5-OUT Offense)
A dive into the Mavericks’ playbook: your first X&O breakdown
Digginbasketball is all about learning more about the Mavericks and basketball together, and today we’re diving into another part of the game.
After covering Player Profiles, Team Trends, Game Coverage, and Analytics Guides, I’m excited to introduce the Mavs Playbook series. In this series, we’ll break down Mavericks plays and sets to help us all get a deeper understanding of what’s happening on the court. Throughout the season, I’ll be sharing short posts that explain different Mavs plays.
Basketball is fascinating because there are so many layers to it—you can analyze patterns in data or study film by watching games. The best learning happens when you understand and dissect both, and that’s exactly what we'll do through both the Analytics Guides and Mavs Playbook series.
Now, while I’ve picked up as much X's and O's knowledge as I can from coaches, watching clinics, and talking to people who know the game, I’m not a coach. That’s why I’ve teamed up with my friend and X's and O's mentor, Luka Bassin. Luka is a former player, advanced scout, assistant for the Slovenian national team, and a player development coach. He’s also one of the best resources when it comes to scouting and breaking down plays. Luka has an incredible database of thousands of plays, many of which are available on his Coachtube account for anyone who wants to dive even deeper.
Mavs 5-Out Offense: Delay Chicago
The first play we’re going to break down is one that the Mavericks ran frequently in the preseason. It’s also one of the most basic concepts (so more of a concept than a set play) of a 5-Out offense in the NBA.
I’m calling it Delay Chicago because it’s made up of two key parts: the Delay concept of the 5-Out offense and Chicago, which is an NBA term for a pin-down screen followed by a a handoff or a dribble handoff (HOF = handoff, DHO = dribble handoff in the video clip). You’ll often hear the term Zoom as an alternative name for the Chicago action and I heard some of the Mavs coaches call this action 5-ZOOM during last year’s Summer League.
In a 5-Out setup, Delay is a common action that many NBA teams use to flow into their offense when the ball is centered to the trailing 5-man (usually the center). This sets up the early offense with 5-Out spacing and gives the center a playmaking role at the top of the key.
As you’ll see in the clips, this triggers screening actions on both sides of the floor, with the 5-man acting as a hub, distributing the ball to create scoring opportunities.
Zoom or Chicago action is one of the basic sets the Mavericks use in their sideline out-of-bounds plays (SLOBs). The core idea behind this action is to get the ball-handler moving with an advantage, often leaving a trailing defender.
Dallas frequently runs this action to get Luka Dončić or Kyrie Irving attacking on the move. With the addition of Klay Thompson and Quentin Grimes—both great movement shooters—this action could become even harder to defend. It can create a shot for one of the shooters (Thompson is one of the best ‘zoom’ shooters in the NBA) or use them as decoys to occupy the help defense on the opposite side.
If you want to dive deeper into the X&Os of Zoom actions, you can check out Luka’s extensive resources here.