For NBA Bigs, Offensive Versatility is the New Black
By Adam Mares
When it comes to power forwards and centers in the modern NBA, there are three main offensive skills that define those positions; spot up shooting, post ups, and rolling on pick and rolls. There are, of course, other ways for big men to contribute on offense, most notably, by cutting off of the ball, perimeter isolations, and through offensive rebounds. However, post ups, spot ups, and rolls are unique in that each allows for an offense to run certain types of actions.
Quality post up scorers allow an offense to throw it inside, collapsing the defense and initiating cuts and screens to open up the perimeter. Spot up bigs can spread the court and open up the lane for pick and rolls or isolations. And a proficient roll guy can force the defense to over help in the paint or to switch into matchups that favor the offense. The possibilities arising from having big proficient in these actions allow coaches to design his/her offense to maximize a team’s efficiency.
If a team doesn’t have a great post scorer, then the coach’s playbook becomes somewhat limited. If a team doesn’t have a solid low post scorer or a stretch four or five, then the playbook becomes even more limited. For teams that feature a player (or players) that can do all three, the team’s playbook becomes extremely versatile.
Bismack Biyombo is an example of a guy who is fairly limited in all three areas. While he is a good offensive rebounder, the Hornets rarely posted him up, never used him as a spot up shooter, and were inefficient whenever they used him in pick and rolls. When he was on the court, he spent a lot of his time in the short corner, taking up space but not contributing to the overall scheme.
In aggregate, teams use their power forwards and centers fairly evenly among the three types of plays. Per synergy data, roughly 16.7 percent of plays that end with a big creating a shot or turnover come out of a post up and another 17 percent come from rolls and19.3 percent come from spot ups.[1. For the purposes of this article, “league average” shall mean the average of power forwards and centers only, among players with at least 10 total possessions “used” per NBA.com’s Synergy categorizations.]
While the three types of plays are used fairly evenly on the whole, few players excel at all three. For example, Al Jefferson is primarily a post up big. Over 57 percent of plays that end with his FGA or TO are from post ups. He’s used fairly sparingly as a pick and roll threat and almost never as a spot up shooter. When he is on the court, the Hornets are somewhat limited in the effectiveness of certain types of offensive possessions, especially when he is playing alongside another big with similar strengths and weaknesses.
Matt Bonner, on the other hand, is almost exclusively a spot up shooter. Offensively speaking, he is a prototypical stretch four. He has other roles in the offense like setting off-ball screens and rebounding, but as a threat in the offense, he is primarily used to space the court.
Lastly, a player like Brandon Wright is used primarily as a roll guy. His length and athleticism forces the defense to over help when he rolls toward the rim, but he is almost never used as a post player or a spot up shooter.
It should be fairly unsurprising that most players specialize in one or two skills. The pick and roll requires a completely different skill set than low post scoring and a different skill set than catch and shoot efficiency, especially from behind the arc. Most teams balance their roster with two or three bigs who collectively can perform each task at a high level. The Rockets, for example, have a three-headed monster with Dwight Howard, Terrence Jones, and Donatas Motiejunas. Dwight can post up and roll, DMo can post up and shoot, and Jones can shoot and roll. Collectively, they have the pieces to run virtually any type of offense through their bigs and the versatility to exploit whichever matchup is favorable.
Most of the better bigs in the league are either above average in two out of the three play types or they are absolutely dominant in one of the play types. Out of nearly 200 power forwards and/or centers in the NBA, only one player attempted a higher than average rate of post ups, spot ups and rolls, and scored at an above average rate in each category: Chris Bosh. In 44 games, Bosh was involved in 3.8 rolls per game, 4.5 spot ups per game, and 4.25 post ups per game, while shooting above average for forwards and centers at each spot.
The demise of low post scoring in the modern NBA has been well publicized. Rule changes and a lack of dominant low post scorers have contributed to moving bigs away from the low block and out onto the perimeter for pick and rolls and jump shots. This is backed up in the data where forwards and centers average higher points per possession on rolls and spot ups than they do on post ups.
But the over-arching theme of the modern NBA isn’t simply a move away from the low block, but rather it’s a move toward versatility. Low post scoring still has a place in the league, even if it is used to accent the other two skills, and not the other way around. The last 5 NBA finals have featured some of the most versatile bigs in the league in Chris Bosh, Dirk Nowitzki, Tim Duncan, Draymond Green, and Serge Ibaka. Nearly all of those players have post up scoring in their arsenal and their teams are able to play through them on the block when the situation presents itself.
None of this takes into account the defensive end of the court where it is becoming increasingly important for bigs to protect the rim AND move well enough to guard the pick and roll. The small-ball revolution is predicated on the fact that bigs don’t have the versatility that smaller players do and can’t cover the more efficient pick and rolls and spot up jump shots. But it is possible that small-ball is just a stop on a greater evolutionary trend toward more well-rounded and versatile 7-footers and that the dominant low post player of the near future will also be a pick and roll threat and a catch and shoot threat.