P&R: When & why we want to cut?
Prevent the help or punish it? Tactical skills and strategy
As the offense has evolved in the last decade, becoming more and more centered on P&R situations, one of the biggest focus for coaches has always been “What do we do with the other 3 players?”.
Great teams play P&R as a 5-men action, they are able to include every player in the flow of the offense and find the right answer for every coverage that the defense can present. Off-ball movement and cutting are huge parts of this.
Let’s now focus on what coaches can do with the 2 players forming a “double side”, to examine different approaches that we can have with cutting choices.
Coaches can try to move the players in a way that makes a specific help harder, create a double gap in front of the ball if we know the opposing team relies on stunt from 1-pass away a lot, or the opposite, creating a high-single side behind the ball if their main help is supposed to come from there, and they can teach their players how to react when a specific type of help comes, a stunt from 1-pass away or a high-tag on the weak side.
We can do this in hundreds of different ways on the floor, but the concept behind every action can be included in one of these two categories:
Punish the help: It is a tactical decision (more on this later) made by the player, he reacts to a specific cue that appears in the moment (defender turn his back, his head, makes a step in the wrong direction). It is not predetermined by the coach or set.
e.g. During a side P&R the defender on the weak side wing stunt and turn his head to the ball ==> The player on the wing makes a cut.
The consequence of this is that the player can decide not to cut if the cue is not there.
Here we see some examples of punishing the help, specifically punishing a stunt from 1 pass away.
Prevent the help: It’s a strategic decision made before the action happens by the coach (or also by the player). The player doesn’t react to something that’s happening at that moment, but he cuts to make impossible for his defender to help. A decision like this can be made also by the coaching staff during the game preparation vs. a specific team.
e.g. “They are very good defense at stunting from 1-pass away “ ==>
“Every time we will have a P&R going to a side of 2 the corner will make a baseline cut and the wing will shift to the corner”
To be consistent with the examples that we saw before here we can see how Fenerbahçe is able to prevent that same stunt from 1 pass away by making their players cut before the stunt even happen, every time the ball is moving toward a side with 2 players.
Is one way better than the other? Let that help happen and trying to punish it or trying to taking it away before it happens? Both solutions have pros and cons and different teams can be more suited for different options, obviously, this is not a “either/or” type of problem, there is a balance between these two principles and it’s important for us as coaches to be conscious about our choice.
It’s not the action that determines what’s happening, is the timing and the purpose behind the action:
am I cutting when I see my defender helping or am I cutting because I know that by doing this he will not be able to help?
The same exact cut can have different functions if the timing changes, if the wing player makes his cut before his defender his helping, anticipating that it would happen, he’s preventing that, clearing space for his ball handler to operate. On the same note that baseline cut that we saw can be made later in the play reacting to the help of his defender.
To conclude I’ll go deeper on the theory beyond this I’ll share some of the terminologies from the Italian model that’s been taught in the coaching courses that I find very helpful for coaches, we can break-down any action and fundamental into three aspects:
Technical: HOW to do something, in this example a cut: changing speed, giving the passer a clear target, keep balance while running, etc.
Tactical: WHEN to do something — Ability of a player to pick the right tool from his bag and the right moment to use it. “My defender is helping SO I will cut” — “My defender is tagging the roller SO I will lift from my position”
Strategical: A movement prescribed BEFORE the action (game preparation, time-outs, instructions from the bench) e.g. A cut from one side of the floor to the other to take away a defender behind the action.
I will come back to this topic with more considerations in the next weeks examining how to prevent the coverage or punish it (terminology stole from Ross McMains) examining the case of a team that wants to be very aggressive on ball-screen situations, as always any feedback would be highly appreciated, on twitter (@Franz_NanniBk) or via mail (fr.nanni@gmail.com).