“Laker Cut”
Term: Laker Cut
Definition: a basket cut made by the player who passed the ball into the post
Origin: The Showtime Lakers, which used the Laker Cut a lot, especially with Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
How It Works:
In the diagram above, 1 passes to 5 in the post and then makes a Laker cut to the basket, either above (“high Laker cut”) or below (“low Laker cut”) his teammate in the post:
If the cutter doesn’t receive a pass, he continues his cut all the way through to the far corner to space the floor.
Why It Works:
First and foremost, the Laker cut embodies the popular offensive philosophy of always following a pass with a cut. Many offenses, but not all of them, teach their players that passing and then standing still is a sin.
Second, the Laker cut, much like UCLA and Chin screens, takes advantage of defenders’ tendency to relax after their mark has passed the ball. Defenders frequently take their attention off their mark and watch the ball — especially if that pass’s recipient is the NBA’s leading scorer of all time—and as a result, the passer is often open for a give-and-go:
Third, the Laker cut takes away the perimeter defender’s ability to dig down, or stunt/feign a double team, on the post player. Digs always come from the strong side, which makes it easier for the digger to dig and then recover to his man. (Double teams can come from the strong or the weak side, depending upon scheme.) A Laker cut takes the possible digger from the strong to the weak side, and although the offense often rotates over somewhat to make room for the Laker cutter, no perimeter defender is as close to the ball as the original digger had been. In this example, Evan Mobley feeds Kevin Love in the post and then makes a high Laker cut. Ricky Rubio rotates over slightly, and his defender digs down, but he’s too far to recover to Rubio and contest his 3:
(Whether the digger is at fault because he dug too deeply or whether Devonte’ Graham is at fault for not rotating over is difficult to tell without insider knowledge of what the Pelicans wanted to do in this situation. Simplistically, the digger is at fault if he was supposed to dig, but Graham is at fault if the dig was actually a double team.)
Fourth, a low Laker cut—in which the cutter veers below the post instead of above him—frequently concedes a layup because of the NBA’s “no middle” defensive philosophy. Most NBA teams defend practically everything, including post-ups, by funneling the ball away from the paint/middle of the floor and toward the sideline/baseline. In the following diagram, notice the positioning of both x1 and x5 relative to their matchups. Because x1 is enforcing no middle, he’s susceptible to getting beat by 1’s low Laker cut, and because x5 is also enforcing no middle, he might be unable to protect the rim in time:
In the absence of a Laker cut, x1 would dig down, and the low man—x2 in this example—would rotate over if 5 attempted to spin toward the baseline (x4 would close out to 2 in the corner, if necessary):
But the low man is usually too far from the ball to prevent a layup against a low Laker cut, which is why many teams teach their players to break their “no middle” scheme to stop low Laker cuts, funneling the cutter through the middle instead of toward the baseline. In this next example, the on-ball defender, Onyeka Okungwu of the Atlanta Hawks, subtly “moves on the flight of the ball” when Chuma Okeke of the Orlando Magic feeds Robin Lopez in the post, shifting in between Okeke and Lobez. As a result, Okungwu not only prevents a low Laker cut, but also forces any pass to Okeke’s high Laker cut to be a lob over the top:
Notice in the previous clip that three Hawks—Okungwu, Delon Wright, and Skylar Mays—shrink down and tag Okeke as he cuts through, as most NBA teams teach their defenders to do when anybody cuts through the paint. The Hawks help too much on the cutter in this example, however, and
Orlando’s Hassani Gravett is open off the flare screen that Franz Wagner sets on Wright—partly because, as mentioned earlier, defenders frequently focus too much on the ball itself. Gravett is especially open because Okeke’s Laker cut means it’s Wright’s responsibility to dig down,
Without adequate help defense, however, a high Laker cut can result in an open layup, especially if the cutter’s defender pays too much attention to the ball:
Fifth, a Laker cut, even if it’s defended perfectly during the cut, can confuse the roles and responsibilities of the help defenders. In nearly every defensive scheme, especially among NBA teams, the two help defenders farthest from the ball form a “weakside i,” standing parallel to each other (x2 and x4 below):
(Because the NBA has its defensive three-second violation, which awards the offense a free throw if any defender is in the paint for three seconds without being within reach of an offensive player, the two members of the weakside i often straddle the lane line on the far side, 2.9-ing in and out of the paint. At lower levels, the weakside i is frequently in the paint, perhaps on the rim line.)
In this screenshot, Trae Young (pink) is the low man, forming a weakside i with Bogdan Bogdanovic (blue), as Jrue Holiday feeds Giannis Antetokounmpo in the post and then makes a high Laker cut to the weak side:
Although Holiday is not open off the cut, his man, John Collins, turns to help when Giannis drives middle:
This creates a bit of confusion among the weakside i: Trae puts enough of his attention on Holiday (perhaps for good reason) that his original mark, PJ Tucker, slips behind him for a dump-off layup:
Sixth, a Laker cut can be effective even if it doesn’t directly lead to a bucket because it compromises the opponent’s post defense. Although post-ups might not be de rigueur in the NBA, their ineffectiveness has perhaps been overstated, especially among the most frequent users of the post-up. According to Cleaning the Glass, halfcourt offenses averaged 0.95 points per play in the 2019-20 NBA season. Among the 21 NBA players who logged the most post-ups that season, 15 of them (71.%) averaged at least 0.94 ppp (excluding assists from the post). Post-up scoring, furthermore, is frequently more effective than isolation possessions: 0.920 ppp vs 0.908 ppp, respectively, in 2019–20. Although transition buckets, cutting, and open 3s reign supreme, there are worse ways to end a possession than a post-up after a Laker cut:
(High) Laker Cut + Thunder Screen:
Wedge Punch Laker Thunder:
Punch Laker Thunder:
