Off Ball Expertise on Offense Is the Most Underrated Trait in Basketball

[dankok8]

Setting screens, cutting behind the defense, rolling off to the three point line, making runs to confuse the defense, decoys etc.

It's why someone like Klay Thompson is more valuable to winning basketball games than Carmelo Anthony. Or why Kobe Bryant is way more valuable than Russell Westbrook. Or why Reggie Miller is ranked so high by basketball gurus despite not having impressive stats; because he tied defenses in knots. What a player does when they don't have the ball is as important if not more important than what they do with the ball because most of the time on the court they don't have the ball.

[Dbrog]

Rip Hamilton certainly made a great career off pretty much exclusively this. I think he's a great case too because he's not particularly athletic or has ability to hit crazy Kobe shots, etc. I think it's also one of the reasons I hate watching most teams today because you see dudes just standing on the 3 pt line and doing standard screens or v-cuts. It even shows with bigs. You hear Shaq talk about it all the time how many of his baskets literally just came from gaining position on his guy off-ball. Bigs now don't really "gain position," they just go to a position...kinda like, "well I wanna post up so I'ma just stand around near the paint." It's also the reason guys like abadao move around so fluidly

[Bronbron23]

Setting screens, cutting behind the defense, rolling off to the three point line, making runs to confuse the defense, decoys etc.

It's why someone like Klay Thompson is more valuable to winning basketball games than Carmelo Anthony. Or why Kobe Bryant is way more valuable than Russell Westbrook. Or why Reggie Miller is ranked so high by basketball gurus despite not having impressive stats; because he tied defenses in knots. What a player does when they don't have the ball is as important if not more important than what they do with the ball because most of the time on the court they don't have the ball.

Yeah big time. It's one of the reasons why mj is better than bron scoring wise.

[trada7029]

Off-ball capability = ball movement..

Guys that can't play off-ball have underachieving Finals records or don't win at all

[StrongLurk]

I agree OP, too many guys wanna be like Jamal Crawford and not a Klay Thompson.

[HoopsNY]

Rip Hamilton certainly made a great career off pretty much exclusively this. I think he's a great case too because he's not particularly athletic or has ability to hit crazy Kobe shots, etc. I think it's also one of the reasons I hate watching most teams today because you see dudes just standing on the 3 pt line and doing standard screens or v-cuts. It even shows with bigs. You hear Shaq talk about it all the time how many of his baskets literally just came from gaining position on his guy off-ball. Bigs now don't really "gain position," they just go to a position...kinda like, "well I wanna post up so I'ma just stand around near the paint." It's also the reason guys like abadao move around so fluidly

Great example of Rip Hamilton. His role in that 2004 championship team is severely underrated. Hamilton gave teams fits with how well he moved off the ball, which kept defenses on their toes. Tayshaun Prince was similar in a way, and Detroit had to have a way to score without an elite offense or elite scorer.

[Smoke117]

Now that you can't play any real one on one defense nobody even bothers to play off ball anymore as you really only have to be an average ball handler to get space now. You don't see stuff like this anymore that's for sure:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGcaGE393Mc

[dankok8]

Rip Hamilton certainly made a great career off pretty much exclusively this. I think he's a great case too because he's not particularly athletic or has ability to hit crazy Kobe shots, etc. I think it's also one of the reasons I hate watching most teams today because you see dudes just standing on the 3 pt line and doing standard screens or v-cuts. It even shows with bigs. You hear Shaq talk about it all the time how many of his baskets literally just came from gaining position on his guy off-ball. Bigs now don't really "gain position," they just go to a position...kinda like, "well I wanna post up so I'ma just stand around near the paint." It's also the reason guys like abadao move around so fluidly

Yea... Rip was all off-ball destruction. I swear I rarely saw him take the ball and do something with it from a set position. He was always in motion catching it.

There's a whole other dimension when it comes to court vision. One side of it is the guy making the nice pass. The other side of it is the recipient knowing how to get open consistently from difficult positions! And the second aspect is rarely ever talked about because it's hard to quantify with stats.