Are big man pick-and-rolls the future of the NBA?
The rise of position-less basketball has changed the way many teams utilize “point guards.” Whereas players under 6-foot-5 have long been tasked with acting as the primary creator on offense, we’ve seen the likes of James Harden, LeBron James and Giannis Antetokounmpo — a shooting guard and two small forwards by nature — take over that role in recent years as a way for their respective teams to maximize their ability to both score and create in volume.
Small ball has essentially dissolved positions and encouraged teams to put the ball in the hands of their best player regardless of their height, weight or speed. What remains to be seen is the extremities of this development. Shooting guards and small forwards usually have the skills to be primary creators as backcourt players who can pass, dribble and shoot, so it isn’t necessarily foreign territory for many of them. Power forwards and centers, however, are only just starting to develop the sort of skills they need to stay on the floor against teams that downsize in the frontcourt.
The main area we’ve seen this manifest is with 3-point shooting. Having a 7-footer who can protect the rim, switch onto guards and space the floor out to the perimeter is a huge luxury nowadays, especially if that player can also put the ball on the floor and make a play for themselves. If they can, the next logical step is putting them in a pick-and-roll as a ball-handler rather than the roll man, the latter of which is how power forwards and centers are traditionally used. It’s not something we’ve seen much of over the last couple of seasons, but there could be a noticeable shift next season as some of the younger big men in the league begin to refine their skills.
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To be clear, it really isn’t an option for many teams currently. According to NBA.com, Joel Embiid ran three pick-and-rolls as the ball handler last season, as did Nikola Jokic. Karl-Anthony Towns was involved in only a couple more, and DeMarcus Cousins (13), Kristaps Porzingis (16), Julius Randle (17) and Anthony Davis (19) barely broke double-figure possessions as the ball-handler in pick-and-rolls. The only big man to score over 90 points in those situations last season was Blake Griffin (98). Everyone else from that list scored less than 16 points.
While those players aren’t anywhere near as comfortable as Griffin in the pick-and-roll, there’s still plenty they can learn from him. What makes Griffin in particular a dynamic scorer as the ball handler is he can shoot off the dribble when given space, post-up smaller defenders on switches, drive to the basket against slower-footed defenders and find open teammates when he draws help defenders. Despite it being a simplistic look at his skill set, it basically gives Griffin an answer for every type of defense he is likely to face as the ball-handler in a pick-and-roll.
To get a better understanding of why more teams might turn to their power forwards and centers to run pick-and-rolls, let’s take a look at each of those abilities in more detail, starting with shooting off the dribble.
Griffin made 40.8 percent of his mid-range pull-ups last season, which is a decent rate for someone his size. It would be ideal if he could pull-up from the perimeter — there’s a reason why those shots are taking over the NBA — but establishing himself as a threat anywhere outside the paint is important because it means he can make teams pay for dropping under every screen. There aren’t many big men who are as comfortable as Griffin shooting off the dribble, yet Porzingis, Davis and Towns (all of whom are under 25-years-old) joined him in making around 40.0 percent of their mid-range pull-ups last season.
If the defense has to respect Griffin’s jumper, he becomes significantly harder to slow down. His combination of speed, strength and athleticism makes him a matchup nightmare for opposing bigs, and he has the skills to make a move off the dribble. It’s similar to what we’ve seen from Antetokounmpo. There isn’t much teams can do to stop skilled 7-footers when they get in the paint, so any semblance of a jump shot opens up their games because it forces the defense to play them honestly.
Even if they can’t attack the rim as well as Griffin can, putting a big man in a pick-and-roll can create a favorable mismatch in the post. Similar to how small ball lineups have punished traditional lineups by putting their big men on an island — think about what the Warriors have been doing to Kevin Love in the NBA Finals — turning a big man into the ball-handler has the potential to give them a taste of their own medicine.
After seeing how the Cavaliers used Kyrie Irving as a screener on LeBron James to create mismatches last season, teams would be wise to do the same for Towns, Davis or Griffin to put them in position to post-up much smaller guards.
Towns and Jimmy Butler might be the best example of how the above situation could work. Butler is a far more experienced pick-and-roll ball handler than Towns — they made up 36.7 percent of his offense last season compared to 0.3 percent for Towns — but having Butler set a screen on Towns could force a switch at the point of attack. Depending on which one of them has a greater advantage, they can either attack a guard in the post with Towns or a big man on the perimeter with Butler.
Sometimes the guard’s reluctance to switch in those situations will even create an uncontested basket for the ball-handler. Here, Jeff Teague refuses to leave Chris Paul and Thaddeus Young gets caught up in Paul’s screen. Guards like Irving and Paul who can pop to the 3-point line after setting a screen and break down their defender in isolation can thrive as screeners due to their gravitational pull.
If the big man can turn themselves into a legitimate scoring threat in each of those areas, teams may then decide to double team them to get the ball out of their hands, thereby opening up the type of 3-pointers the best offenses in the league are built on.
Those players don’t necessarily have to do all of those as well as Griffin to make it a part of their game, though, which is good news for someone like Ben Simmons. Despite not being a reliable shooter off the dribble, the Pelicans made Cousins the ball handler in a couple of pick-and-rolls last season with Davis acting as the roll man. Their willingness to step outside the paint draws both Mason Plumlee and Jokic away from the basket in the video below and forces a favorable switch for Davis in the post. If Cousins wasn’t a capable 3-point shooter, they wouldn’t have felt the need to switch immediately.
There was another possession from the same game where the Pelicans put Cousins and Davis in the pick-and-roll, only this time Davis was the ball handler. The end result was something you’d expect to see from Griffin — a pump fake from inside the 3-point line, followed by an explosive finish at the rim. Davis’ ability to shoot off the dribble and comfortably put the ball on the floor makes him the best candidate in a vacuum to run more pick-and-rolls as soon as next season.
When it comes to how viable of an option this actually is for teams moving forward, it’s worth keeping two things in mind. The first is that many offenses in the NBA are currently built around forcing and attacking mismatches, which putting a big man in a pick-and-roll as the ball handler can accomplish in theory. The second is that the next wave of big men — Embiid, Jokic, Porzingis, Towns, etc. — are known as “unicorns” for a reason. As raw as some of them might still be, the hope is they can one day be the types of offensive and defensive players who can do everything from protecting the rim to switching onto guards in the pick-and-roll to posting-up in volume to being legitimate options from the perimeter.
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With how dependent teams are on pick-and-rolls to generate offense, it isn’t crazy to think those skills could also turn them into ball handlers, especially as teams continue to experiment with smaller lineups. It would make sense with where the NBA is trending anyway. Based on the amount of non-point guards taking over as primary creators, why can’t skilled power forwards and centers be next in line?