NBA Season Preview: 5 creative sets you need to know

2. Horns Rub

The Cavaliers made this play famous in Game 4 against the Toronto Raptors in last year’s playoffs when they used it to over and over again to overcome a double-digit deficit.

The reason “Horns Rub” is so effective is it creates five high quality options depending on how the defense reacts, with James acting as the facilitator at the elbow. He can turn the set into an isolation, where he’ll use his speed and athleticism to blow by his defender, if teams are too focused on what’s going on around them. Alternatively, he can use his pinpoint passing to set up cutters and find shooters.

However, it’s when the Cavaliers turn James into a power forward that the play becomes unstoppable. With his skill set and physical tools, there isn’t an answer to James setting a screen and rolling to the basket. It only made up 3.6 percent of his offense during the regular season, but James averaged 1.36 points per possession as the roll man to rank in the 95.4 percentile. He was even better in the playoffs with an average of 1.43 points per possession.

Those numbers obviously don’t take into the account the shots James creates for his teammates by simply rolling to the basket, either. The threat alone usually makes help defenders leave their assignments.