This move makes Chris Paul totally unguardable in isolation

How do you defend Chris Paul in a pick-and-roll?

It’s a simple question that doesn’t have a simple answer. Have Paul’s defender go underneath the screen, for example, and one of the best off-the-dribble shooters in the NBA will pull-up from wherever there is daylight. Have his defender go over the screen, and one of the craftiest guards in NBA history will have all the space he needs to manipulate the defense and exploit a mismatch. Have the big man trap him to take both of those options away, and one of the purest facilitators we’ve ever seen will set his teammates up with layups and 3-pointers.

Another option is to switch at the point of attack to force Paul, a 32-year-old point guard who is officially taller than only five players currently in the NBA, to score over someone with a significant height advantage, but he has been feasting on those opportunities this season as well. With an average of 6.2 points per game, Paul trails only his teammate James Harden in isolation scoring through 58 games. He has also been incredibly efficient on those plays. According to NBA.com, Paul has scored a total of 173 points on 145 isolation possessions (1.19 points per possession), which is good enough for him to rank in the 94.4 percentile.

The only player to have converted those isolation opportunities at a higher rate on at least 100 possessions: Paul’s teammate James Harden.

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Paul has always been a handful for defenders to deal with in 1-on-1 situations, but he’s kicked it up a notch under Mike D’Antoni. Whereas he generated 17.5 percent of his offense in isolation in his final season with the Clippers, those plays represent 28.6 percent of his offense this season. (It’s the difference between 3.0 isolation possessions per game and 5.2 isolation possessions per game). That transformation hasn’t been an accident, either. The Rockets have basically turned Paul into Harden 2.0 by putting him in similar positions when the ball is in his hands. It starts with pick-and-rolls and turns into isolations when teams begin to switch.

The skills that make Paul a dominant pick-and-roll scorer also make him a dominant isolation scorer. He can pull-up from anywhere when defenders dare back off of him and he’s still quick enough to blow by anyone off the dribble for acrobatic finishes at the rim. (The best isolation scorers in the NBA can score at three levels and there aren’t many players who score at each level as efficiently as Paul does).

There is, however, one particular move Paul relies on to create the space he needs to score against big men on switches. This is what it looks like:

There are two important parts to pulling off the move, the first being the jab step. Because those defenders are sometimes a foot taller than him, Paul uses it to get them out of position. You can see in the image below that Dragan Bender wanted to funnell Paul towards the left side of the floor (from offensive team’s perspective), so he positioned his left foot in front of his right foot.

Bender then reacted to the jab step by dropping his left foot, thinking Paul was going to put the ball on the floor. Doing so gave up any advantage he had in the first place because it meant Paul had control of the possession, not Bender. In addition to putting Bender on his heels, it tested his explosiveness and his reaction time.

Bender still managed to get a hand in Paul’s face, but Paul doesn’t need much space to get off a shot. According to NBA.com, he has made 49.5 percent of his tightly contested 2-point field goals and 38.7 percent of his tightly contested 3-point field goals this season. There isn’t much the defender can do unless they can block Paul’s shot — something that has only happened seven times this season — which is why a well-executed jab step can make all the difference.

The second part of the move is usually more exaggerated. To maximize the space between himself and his defender, Paul uses the foot he jab steps with to launch himself in the other direction for a jump shot, simply known as a side step. When Paul combines the two, it forces the defender to change directions twice within a split-second. The best defenders in the league might have the tools to stay in front of Paul in those situations, but, again, we’re talking about 7-footers who aren’t nearly as comfortable defending the 3-point line, not Paul George and Kawhi Leonard.

Here’s a better example. Keep an eye on how John Henson, a 6-foot-10 center who has a massive 7-foot-5 wingspan, moves his feet on this possession. Like Bender, Henson drops his left foot when Paul jabs at him, only this time Paul creates even more space with a side step going towards the left side of his body. Henson contests Paul’s shot, but even he doesn’t have the length to recover from Paul’s side step.

Nasty, right?

It helps that Paul can execute the move going in the other direction. Play up on his left side, and he’ll explode towards his right side, much to the surprise of Joffrey Lauvergne on this possession:

While it’s an incredibly difficult shot, it’s one that makes Paul totally unguardable in isolation. Because if he continues to make it consistently — as he has to this point in the season — then defenders will have to play him a step closer whenever he puts them on an island. And if they have to play him a step closer, Paul will break them down off the dribble and create equally efficient shots for himself and his teammates. Either way, they’re doomed.

Next: The Encyclopedia of Modern Moves

So what is the answer to defending Paul in a pick-and-roll? Who knows, but switching a big man onto him certainly isn’t it.