When it comes to comparing sports and music, there are few tropes as tired as linking jazz and basketball. Hell, I’ve done it. But as it goes with most clichés, it comes up again and again because there’s a kernel of truth in it, because it can be a useful way to see the game. Like a quintet on the bandstand playing a standard, the five players on the floor in basketball are working within a structure that allows for fluidity and improvisation. The things they’re doing are all interconnected, interdependent, and when one of them shifts his approach, it affects the entire fabric of the play. There’s initiative, understanding, recognition, response. The idea of basketball players as jazz musicians rewards our conception of the game as beautiful, a work of art, even.

But there are other ways to expand our sense of the game via music. What if we instead consider the plays a team runs as being akin to the basic units of pop music: the verse, the chorus, the bridge? After all, the cagiest pop songs play on our expectations with each new section, adding wrinkles and subverting convention, much like Steve Nash does with the basic pick and roll.

Consider, for example, the chorus of Christina Aguilera’s “What A Girl Wants,” which begins at 1:11 in the video below.

The chorus to the song is essentially the same refrain repeated twice, a common enough structure for the hook of a pop tune, but there’s something a little off-kilter about this particular one. The first time, the first line is a pickup into the chorus—that is, “What a girl wants” is sung so that it’s the word “wants” that falls on the first beat of the chorus. The second time through, the line lands slightly differently. It begins on the first beat and the word “wants” falls on the second beat of the chorus. It’s a little rhythmic trickery that keeps it from being repetitive.

And rhythmic trickery is more or less what defines the relationship between the pick and roll and the slip screen. Here’s Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol running the pick and roll (excuse the ABBA—it’s just the cost of doing business):

Being one of the most fundamental basketball plays, the bread-and-butter pick and roll establishes expectations. The big man will set the pick and the guard will run his man into the pick, letting the big man roll to the hoop. It’s the first time through the chorus. But once the defense is anticipating the straight pick and roll, it’s time to bring out the slip screen. Here’s Bryant and Gasol running it:

As you can see, as soon as Cousins has bought the pick and roll and started hedging in an attempt to stop Bryant from turning the corner towards the middle, Gasol breaks for the bucket, gets the easy pass from Bryant, then feeds it to Lamar Odom under the hoop. This is the second time through the chorus, where a little wrinkle keeps us on our toes.

But that’s playing in a subtle way with expectations. In both music and basketball you can go with a giant misdirection. Consider a staple of hard rock dynamics, the quiet chorus after the bridge as demonstrated by the Smashing Pumpkins in “Bullet with Butterfly Wings” (bridge starts at 2:28 if you want to skip ahead):

At 3:06, just when the conclusion of the bridge seems to be building towards another full-blast chorus, everything except for guitar and vocals drops out, plus the vocals are down an octave from early iterations of the chorus. We’re primed for the big guns, but the song goes in a completely different direction.

Now take a look at the wide-open three-pointer Steve Novak managed to get at the end of the Bulls-Knicks game on Easter at the end of regulation:

Jared Dubin does a great job of breaking down this entire play right here, but the basic thing that made such an open look possible is that everyone was expecting it to go to Carmelo Anthony. Once Anthony gets the ball at the three-point line, he’s doubled, allowing Novak to float out to the opposite side of the floor. His shot, unfortunately, doesn’t go down, but regardless of that, it’s a great play, made possible because everyone’s expecting the big heroic chorus from ‘Melo. Instead, they get the quiet, guitars-and-vocals chorus from Steve Novak.

The thing about basketball, though, is that these patterns don’t happen in isolation, but rather overlap and affect each other over the course of the game. The pick is the foundation of several different plays and can also be part of a larger scheme in either a directly useful or misdirecting way. When it comes to layering motifs and patterns, there a few teams that do it better than the San Antonio Spurs and few bands that do it better than Menomena.

Menomena, from Portland, Oregon, compose their music in a fairly unique way. One of the members begins with a part that gets recorded and then looped while the other members add new parts that interlock with the original part. The early result is reams of rough material that is then shaped into songs as parts are pulled away or added. By the time the compositions are complete and ready to be recorded as full songs, they’re often staggeringly complex songs built from the simplest pieces. Here’s an example from their 2007 album Friend and Foe, a song called “Wet and Rusting”:

You can hear the song begins with a spare melody (“I made you a present …”) repeated twice, followed by a second part sung once (“It’s hard to take risks …”). Since these lines are barely accompanied it’s hard to conceive of them as verses or choruses—they’re just bits right now. The form begins to repeat, but then extends under the second part, this time backed by a guitar line instead of the ghostly piano that backed it the first time. When the piano returns with drums and bass in tow, the words evaporate. The middle instrumental section stays at home harmonically with the first two parts but explores new textures. When the initial lyrical part returns at the 2:21 mark, there’s a new vocal line laid in under it. As the song reaches its dynamic peak, it’s not achieved with new material, but rather by juxtaposing all the previously played parts against one another. It’s an unusual way to build a song, but it’s pretty standard for a basketball offense.

Take the San Antonio Spurs. In a recent game against the Lakers, they hammered the pick and roll with Tony Parker and either Tim Duncan or Tiago Splitter early, probably because the Lakers are notoriously weak defending it. They like to mix it up a bit, with Parker often dishing the ball off before running through the paint to emerge on the other side to receive it again and run the pick and roll. But eliminating transition baskets, the game on offense for the Spurs began with these three plays:

The first one is simple enough: Duncan steps out to set a screen, Parker gets separation from Ramon Sessions (who goes over the screen) and Andrew Bynum is too deep to defend the jumper. This is the first verse, the “I made you a present” of their sets. In the second play, Sessions tries going under the screen, but that still gives Parker room to shoot and he sinks it. This is the repeat of that first melody (“And when you unravel …”). In the third play, Splitter sets the pick and tries to roll, but Pau Gasol closes out and bothers the shot enough to force a miss. The Spurs have established the pattern and now the Lakers have reacted well enough to defend it.

So the next time they run a pick and roll, they run it a little differently:

Here, Splitter sets the pick twice and Bynum and Sessions both follow Parker while trying to shield Splitter from the pass as he roles. But in the meantime, Duncan has slipped away from his defender into the open space by the free throw line extended. He catches the pass from Parker and makes the jumper in rhythm. This is the development of the initial melody into the second melody, the “It’s hard to take risks” part of the Menomena song. It exists in the same general tonal world (that is, it’s not a key change or a big dynamic change), but it’s a little different approach, and just enough to throw us off guard.

But the Spurs haven’t forgotten about that first part. They go back to it, with Parker running a simple pick and roll again on the wing:

Sessions doesn’t want to leave Ginobili, so Parker has an open shot. It’s interesting to note that even as Parker makes the open jumper, Bynum has dropped too low in the post to defend Duncan if Parker had passed it off. This return to the fundamental pick and roll is not simply a rehash of the initial action, but instead is colored by the results of the earlier pick and rolls and Duncan’s made jumper. It is, effectively, the first melody supported by the xylophone and acoustic guitar from “Wet and Rusting.” It’s not just a play, but instead a play that’s been opened up by the plays preceding it.

As the game progresses and the Lakers try to counter the Spurs, the sets become more nuanced and layered. Look at these two possessions:

What begins as a pick and roll turns into multiple screens as the double comes on Parker. In both examples, Bonner’s initial pick is basically a decoy. It draws Gasol and Sessions to the ball and Bonner floats out to the three-point line on the opposite side of the floor. In the first clip, he dribbles closer before handing the ball off to Stephen Jackson and screening his man to allow Jackson the elbow jumper. In the second, Splitter steps out to set yet another pick that Gasol has to go around to get to Bonner, whom Bynum can’t effectively cover. Bonner drains the three. My favorite part of that second one is that Splitter’s screen is actually a slip screen and he’s rolling wide open to the basket as Gasol and Bynum try to close out on Bonner. If Bonner had wanted to, he could have dished it right to Splitter for an easy dunk or layup.

To me, this is the full development of what started as a basic pick and roll at the beginning of the game. That verse melody is now being layered against the secondary melody and a new melody on top of that while the rest of the band provides support. The Spurs have forced the Lakers to adjust and then adjusted to those adjustments. Looking at the second clip, by the time the play has gotten to this point:

… the Lakers are pretty much done for. Look at all the space that Bonner and Jackson have now on the right side of the floor. By the time it gets to here:

… Devin Ebanks has closed out on Jackson in the corner, creating space for Splitter to roll to the basket while Bonner lifts up for a three he’s more than capable of hitting. The Lakers have been manipulated into playing the Spurs’ game.

And by the end of “Wet and Rusting,” the listener has been suckered into Menomena’s game. We’ve heard each of the pieces that have come before in isolation and we’ve heard them pressed against each other, but by the time they all come together into a multiphonic rush of voices and instruments, we’re hearing something greater than the sum of its parts, something greater than that first melody, greater than a simple pick and roll.