New Orleans Pelicans Horns Sets

A breakdown of the Pelicans variations out of Horns.

The New Orleans Pelicans playbook is very deep and created from head coach Willie Green’s time in Phoenix and Golden State as well as specific sets for this team’s personnel. With so many players being out this flexibility has allowed the Pelicans to hover around the top of the west this season and a top-10 offense. If they consistently had their starting lineup available they would be competing for the best offense in the league, with that lineup only playing 230 possessions together while most NBA teams have lineups with 400+ possessions together. One of the most used actions for the Pelicans is their “Horns” series in which they have 20+ actions and counters out of for every player in their playbook.

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Horns Formation & Entries

The Horns formation is pretty simple, 2 players are at the elbows are typically bigs/wings, 2 players in at the corners spacing that are normally the better shooters/guards, and the point guard initiates the ball in the middle of the floor.

Originally most teams would call this an “A” formation because the alignment of the players formed an A on the court.

Up until about 7-8 years ago most teams would just come down the court in this formation and pass the ball to the elbows and then go into action from there - one of the most common being “Flex.”

As scouting and game preps became easier with the advancement of technology teams started to set a screen in the middle of the floor to open up the entry passes to the elbow easier.

I found when coaching high school (I had to include some Trey Murphy III high school clips!) that this was a much better entry for us but instead of screening we would have the players flash to the elbows to open up more opportunities for us to make backdoor sets and reads.

This also allowed us to disguise & setup special plays like Elevators, etc.

The Utah Jazz would open up more actions and entries by having the players at the top screen across (I call this Horns Out) and when Monty Williams took over the Suns this action became a staple of their offensive playbook.

Another wrinkle that NBA teams would use is to have the players exchange or switch places in the middle of going to the setup, this was especially useful when going into ballscreens since it could screw up the coverage and communication of the defense - something the Clippers under Doc Rivers would use all the time with Blake/DeAndre.

Horns Ghost Twist