There’s a particular action that Real Madrid Baloncesto ran repeatedly during their 2024-25 EuroLeague campaign - a Spain Pick-and-Roll variation where the ball handler rejects the screen entirely, the big man slips early, and a third player cuts weak-side off the defense’s natural rotation. NBA teams ran versions of this in the early 2010s. Most quietly dropped it because it demanded too much from role players who were being paid to space the floor and stay out of the way.
EuroLeague teams never made that trade-off.
The compression of NBA offenses around three-point shooting and isolation creation has produced an unintended consequence: the middle of the floor is being abandoned at exactly the moment defenses are most prepared for perimeter actions. Drop coverage - even as it’s been criticized - has largely neutralized the standard pick-and-roll when the ball handler’s primary read is a pull-up three or a dump-off pass. EuroLeague coaches, working with players who were never going to win a spacing battle against NBA-caliber athletes anyway, built around the problem instead. They never stopped treating the dunker spot as a live option. They never stopped using the short roll as a decision point rather than a dump-off. Their bigs are coached to read the defense from the nail, not just catch and finish.
Panathinaikos’s approach under Ergin Ataman has been particularly pointed in this regard. Ataman runs sets with two legitimate post threats on the floor simultaneously - something most NBA coaches would dismiss as spacing suicide - and generates open looks precisely because defenses have to choose which coverage they’re willing to abandon.
The Personnel Excuse Doesn’t Hold
The obvious counter is that EuroLeague teams play at a slower pace against less athletic defenses, so naturally more complex half-court schemes can breathe. That’s true, but it’s also a bit circular. NBA teams chose a style that favors athleticism over scheme. Saying complex schemes don’t work because NBA athletes make them difficult is just confirming the original choice - it’s not evidence the schemes themselves are flawed.
What’s actually happening is that EuroLeague coaching staffs, operating with smaller budgets and thinner rosters, have had to stay current with how defenses evolve. NBA teams, particularly those with max-contract wings who demand touches, have less incentive to.
The gap in scheme sophistication between elite EuroLeague programs and mid-tier NBA teams is real and probably wider than it’s been at any point this century. That’s not a knock on NBA athletes. It’s a knock on what their coaches are asking them to do.