One of the toughest things for young post players to learn at the NBA level is passing out of the post. Considering that most big men have never been asked to distribute that often throughout their careers and how hard passing out of double teams is, it often takes a few years and a lot of mistakes for players to truly become great at passing out of the post. Every once in a while though, a young player comes around with a natural gift for delivering the pass at the right place and time from the post and Karl-Anthony Towns looks like that player late in his rookie season.
On Wednesday night he showed off that talent again by dropping a fancy no-look bounce pass to a cutting Tayshaun Prince for a dunk against the Memphis Grizzlies.
(Vine via The Cauldron)
The pass itself is great for a few reasons. First there is the delivery, as Towns tosses a behind-the-back no-look pass in the perfect spot for Prince to easily grab it and dunk. The skill involved in making that pass is one even the best big men don’t usually have. The timing of the pass is also perfect, and may even be the harder part of the entire package. It should take many more repetitions and minutes for Towns to perfectly deliver this ball, that it hasn’t is amazing.
So yeah, Karl-Anthony Towns is already threading perfect no-look passes out of the post that lead to Tayshaun Prince dunks. Now imagine that is Zach LaVine instead. Good luck defending that for the next 15 years, rest of the NBA.
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