You’ll often hear coaches talk about playing through the elbows as a key tenet of why their team won a game. Operating in those spots gives an offense a lot of options, from running dribble handoff (DHO) action to split cuts to facing up and taking the ball to the basket.
It’s not as heavily correlated with offensive success as one might imagine – the top three teams in elbow touches last season were Sacramento, Memphis, and New York, all of whom finished in the bottom third of the league in offensive rating – but it remains a large part of most teams’ offensive attacks. In particular, the Golden State Warriors use a lot of elbow and mid-post touches to facilitate their split cuts, something…
