Optimizing the performance of a basketball offense may be viewed as a networkproblem, wherein each play represents a "pathway" through which the ball andplayers may move from origin (the in-bounds pass) to goal (the basket).Effective field goal percentages from the resulting shot attempts can be usedto characterize the efficiency of each pathway. Inspired by recent discussionsof the "price of anarchy" in traffic networks, this paper makes a formalanalogy between a basketball offense and a simplified traffic network. Theanalysis suggests that there may be a significant difference between taking thehighest-percentage shot each time down the court and playing the most efficientpossible game.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures