One of the secrets for the big players to excel in our sport is to use their body properly. Beyond size or strength (both help, of course) if they learn how to use the contact to their advantage they will be a defender's nightmare.
Let's see real quick how one of Europe's tallest centers use his body to create an easy pass from the outside.
Boban Marjanovic from Belgrade Red Star, sets a baseline screen for his teammate and immediately goes against his own defender looking for the contact, not allowing him to get the proper defensive position and creating the space for the easy lob pass.
I want to show today a high - low play from Obradoiro. A very well coached team which always shows interesting situations.
They start with "2" and "3" crisscrossing in baseline. Then "5" sets a screen for "2" (who receives the pass from the pointguard) and pops to the three point line. At the same time "3" sets a baseline screen for "4" who can either receive the pass straight from "2" or, as he actually does, establish his position inside for the high-low. It's a good self-pick move that allows the pass from "5"
We see in the second clip how they run the same situation even if "3" doesn't set the off ball screen. The selfpick, the high low pass... Nice spacing and nice passing skills are mandatory. "4's" cut towards the ball combined with the pass to "5" is a difficult situation to defend. The focus of the cutter is on one side, while the ball is going towards the opposite side.
There are many different ways to defend the low post. We can find some of them in this new LEB Gold’s post.
We will see some double team situations, and also some good help side action that keeps the ball off the low post. At the end, a pure good old one on one defense avoiding the go to guy to get the ball and also runnin the break afterwards to score.
The video starts with a serie of clips showing double teams. First, the trap is set before the receiver dribbles. Afterwards, it is set when the post starts dribbling. We have traps with the defender coming from help side and also some of them whith the defender coming from ball side.
In the very first clip we can see how the help side’s defender takes care of two players and goes wherever the pass is sent. He gets a nice steal and drives coast to coast.
Once we finish with double team situations, let’s take a look at how a good one on one defense, plus the right positioning on help side avoid the inside pass.
In the first clip of the serie, we have the mid post defender denying the pass, and we see how the cutter defender let his man go towards the opposite side and stays right under the rim, aware of a lob pass. Let’s notice how there is no high – low option because the defender is also doing a good denial job. Even when the high post player goes back door, the positioning of the defenders won’t allow the easy basket.
The second clip shows a wonderful one on one defense (without the ball) in which the defender not only denies the pass inside, but also keeps his guy off the paint avoiding an offensive rebound effort. What’s best, after this good defense, our man runs the break to score, punishing a bad defensive balance.
The Spanish second division (LEB Gold) is a really competitive league. Some of the best Spanish basketball projects as well as veteran players make it an amazing and strong competition. One of the latter is Darryl Middleton, who at age 45 still can show the way to the league’s younger players (that’s to say, to any other player)
What I bring today are some basic but important concepts to play as a center.
- When you are in the weak side’s low post, you shouldn’t stay in the same imaginary line as your teammate when he gets the ball. One step closer to baseline would be fine in order to be able to move properly when he plays his one on one. Helps are quite more complicated, and you will find good passing and rebounding options moving when the ball moves.
- When a teammate drives to the basket, move to create space for him. Your defender will probably try to help and stop the penetration, giving you the time to receive and have an easy shot.
- Against aggresive defenders who try to play defense in front in low – mid post, use your body to roll over them, and with a self screen, get the position to receive a pass from high post.
- After setting an off ball screen, go against your defender, to get a good position to receive. Most of the times, the screener defender will relax, and you’ll be able to place him behind your back and make it easy to get the ball.
Middleton knows well all these concepts, and his love for the game brings him again to the league, so we can keep enjoying his performances.
Nowadays a lot of teams want to play transition offense as much as they can. They feel fine with established positions when they aren’t able to finish off the fastbreak and the idea of not giving the defense the opportunity to settle is a valued one for many coaches.
Here we see a nice situation from Israel National Team, in which after the inside pass, they set a screen for the passer that will give the center two pass lines. So he can play one on one, give it back to the guard or pass to the power forward, specially when the latter is a good shooter.
A quick post to show you how an inside player can work to receive. He's Timofey Mozgov, from Khimki.
He moves and bumps against the defender as the ball goes from one player to another. To contact the defender is one of the keys for the inside player to be able to receive. Using his body he creates the space he needs to let his teammates feed him.
Here we have a nice inside move and also a defense reading situation.
First we see one of the best inside players in the Spanish LEB Gold, Ricardo Guillén,from Los Barrios (they have reached the Final Four, winning a playoff without court advantage) with ACB experience, receiving in the low post and making one of his favourite moves, spin towards baseline and pivot to get the best position to score.
In the second play, the defenders double him and he reacts by finding the pass for his teammate, who has cut towards the basket. He receives and gets the foul.
Once again, we realize how important it is not only to feed the post, but also to play without the ball when he's got it.
Another very interesting thing to watch in the final was how PAO decided to organize their defense when CSKA's center Kaun was playing.
Every time he appeared on the court, PAO's defense reacted by helping from Kaun's defender. Something that hurted CSKA's offense in the second quarter as we will see in the video.
Whenever a help had to be done, Kaun's defender was there. We can see Batiste helping in baseline, and not worrying about Kaun's pop to free throw line. Also a long flash to stop Siskauskas. Again Batiste jumping to stop Siskauskas' penetration. Then we find Kaun posting up, and PAO's defenders being outside of the paint, leaving him play the one on one situation, but never letting another player to receive an inside-out pass. Afterwards Pekovic is defending Kaun and we see him helping again. And finally, Batiste making three different helps during CSKA's offense.
Another one of F.C.Barcelona’s weapons is David Andersen. Whenever he combines his strength with the team’s forwards they create a lot of problems to the defenders.
As we can see in the video, in the last game against TAU, Barton went quite often to the low post and Andersen played beyond the three point line. When the defenders helped inside (Barton was posting up against smaller players) Andersen got the advantage by popping to the free throw line or receiving outside.
Being capable of shooting and also of driving against recovery situations or slower players, Andersen creates good options for his team and increases the risks of helping.
A player with so many honors (All-BIG EAST Conference first team for the second straight season. USBWA First Team…) should have a good professional career...
As we can read in the Fighting Irish web site, "he has scored in double-figures in all but two games this season. Overall this season, Harangody has reached double figures in 28 of 30 games. He has posted 21 double-doubles this season… Harangody has reached the 30-point plateau on five occasions during the '08-'09 campaign. His high-water mark was a 32-point effort against Louisville. He has grabbed 15 or more rebounds 10 times during the season, including a season-best 17 boards on three occasions. After averaging 25.2 points and 12.8 rebounds in 18 BIG EAST games this season, Harangody became the first player in league history to lead the conference in scoring in back-to-back seasons. As a sophomore in 2007-08, he averaged 23.3 points and 11.3 rebounds in league play en route to being named the BIG EAST Player of the Year. In his three-year BIG EAST career, Harangody has scored 1,031 points (19.9 ppg) in 52 league contests. Only three other players in BIG EAST history - Ray Allen (Connecticut), Richard Hamilton (Connecticut) and Pat Garrity (Notre Dame) - have scored more than 1,000 points in three seasons."
He’s actually playing the NIT tournament with his Notre Dame Fighting Irish, and they are already one step from the Final Four.
But although he’s so well considered in the NCAA basketball, not many people think Harangody's NBA future is clear. Maybe being an undersized center with limited athleticism brings doubts over him (take a look at my old friend Ryan Mendez’s opinion)
Can he play against NBA players? Can he develop his game to achieve a role in The League? As I won’t have to decide about those questions, we can just watch his video and comment about it.
The first thing I like about him is that he’s got a lot of ways to score. Hooks (take a look at his pictures when he was a kid… and you’ll know where that hook comes from), mid range shots, one on one from the high post, fade away jumpers, threes, makes over 75% of his free throws… and although his style is a little bit unorthodox is clearly effective.
His Basketball IQ is really high. He knows how to play without the ball, he plays well against helps, and his positioning on the court is great. That’s not very common in young players nowadays… and he can beat more athletic players that way.
He’s hard on defense, I’ve watched him playing against bigger, stronger and faster players, and he beats them anyway…
But, will he be able to do it at the next level? I think so, but in case he can’t, there would be a place in my teams for him…
As my twitter friends already know, I’ve been watching some young inside players during the last week (BTW you can follow me on twitter). I’m really interested in the development of inside players, and I like to watch those called to be NBA stars, to find out the way they improve during their NCAA career.
The first player I’m going to show you is Georgetown’s Greg Monroe. A very good Spanish blogger, el “Profe” Paniagua talked about him some weeks ago, and I started analyzing some of his games.
Monroe is a freshman, and according to NBADraft he will stay one more year in college before jumping to the NBA.
It could be a wise decision, in order to gain weight and improve his defense against stronger players, maybe his main weakness (take a look at the first images). He’s a good blocker and rebounder (both on defense and offense). He has long arms and big hands and he knows how to use them to steal passes and deflect many balls (as we can see in the video).
On the other end of the floor, he has something really important for a player his size, he’s a good free throw shooter and forgetting about percentages (near 70%), his free throw’s shooting technique is quite good. He’s a great player from the high post, he can shot from that range but what he likes the most is to drive to the basket to finish. He has some moves near the basket and is developing a good right hand hook (he’s left handed). Finally, watch him running the break…
He’s been called “the best freshman prospect in America” by Draftexpress.com so he’s a player to keep an eye (or two) on.
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