This article is a facsimile of an earlier publication on The Basketball Writers (TBW), which recently closed its doors. One of Twitter's premier video coordinators (and a personal friend) Zak Boisvert is an assistant coach at West Point who has noted how the NBA has moved towards a shift in off-ball placement of shooters around a pick-and-roll. On side ball screens where there is one player placed in the corner on the same side, a single-side bump occurs. The terminology describes the do-or-die choice the corner man's defender has at the time of the screen: He can stay with his man, who raises out of the corner, and risk giving up a dunk to the screener, or help on the screen by tagging the roller to leave his man open for a three. It's a difficult action to guard, and most side ball screens are designed to develop such a situation:
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This article is a facsimile of an earlier publication on The Basketball Writers (TBW), which recently closed its doors. “No one tells you Rome is ending until you're the last one standing alone in a coliseum where a city had been.” - Thomas DiSabatino
When a revolution takes place, those who once conquered the old way of life have two options: They can adapt with the times or be thrown by the wayside, dispatched of as the game (metaphorical or, in this case, literal) passes them up. Many NBA players have been deemed expendable at the hands of such a (three-pointed) revolution. Role-playing bigs like Roy Hibbert, Kenneth Faried, Greg Monroe and Nerlens Noel are some of the names that have seen their roles greatly diminish or evaporate completely. (A few multi-tool centers like Andre Drummond, DeAndre Jordan, Dwight Howard, Tyson Chandler, etc. are able to hold on without ranged games. But those are all former or current All-Stars who bring other skills at a superlative level to the table. And even some of them have begun tinkering...) Those who adapt today—versus youngsters like Karl-Anthony Towns, Nikola Jokic and Joel Embiid who already had shooting in their arsenals—seek to save their careers with one last change. |
Adam SpinellaHead Boys Basketball Coach, Boys' Latin School (MD). Archives
September 2021
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