The importance of basketball IQ, in one play

A wonderful play-in game between the Grizzlies and Warriors came down to this after-time outplay with five seconds left, and there's been a lot of chatter afterwards about what Santi Aldama was thinking not inbounding the ball or what kind of play the Grizzlies drew up here, but I think this is a perfect example of the value of high IQ improvised reads. In our smartest plays of the year over on the NBA's channel, we have a nearly identical situation where the Warriors needed a three-to-tie, the Lakers were switching everything, and Draymond Green realizes that mid-play, and instead of going and screening Steph Curry's man, he says, if Max Christie's going to stay there while Curry cuts, and Austin Reeves is going to take him, then I need to be screening Reeves so I can free Steph, and that gives Curry a wide-open look, and Curry would never have been wide-open without that improvised football blocking from Draymond, then the possession would have just fizzled out, and everyone would say, what on earth were the Warriors doing there? Here's the play the Grizzlies called against Golden State, where the man in the far corner pulls a defender over to the near corner, opening space for a shooter to come off two screens as the first catch-and-shoot option, and that sets up Desmond Bain flaring off another screen into all that space in the far corner, and this one basically works because the Lakers are fighting through all these screens, but in the play-in game, the Warriors are basically switching everything here to stay high and take away the three-point line. I mean, Jimmy Butler starts by standing behind Luke Kinnard because they don't really care about giving up a two, and you can't even screen him there because it would be out-of-bounds, which is illegal, so Kinnard sprints to the corner, and when Morant comes up, they just switch it, so this doesn't threaten the defense at all. Now Jimmy is reading where Bain or Jarron go along the three-point line, he tells Looney to stay with Jackson, and starts looking for that pass to the corner, and by then we have a five-second violation because this play takes a long time to develop. When they ran it against the Lakers, that last option to the far corner took nearly five seconds to develop, so the ball absolutely has to be passed on that last screening option, but against the Warriors, they swapped Sante Aldama in as the inbounder, and he apparently didn't realize that. So defensive coverages influence how successful a play call looks, but so do these incredible improvisational reads by players, because if Bain had realized what the Warriors' coverage was when Jimmy yells for a switch, he can break the play and move to this space toward the ball. Remember, he's basically uncovered for a second as Gary Payton II switches onto Morant, so the counter to this switch everything had to come in the moment from the players, and then if Bain caught it right here, we might be wondering why the Warriors left him so open. But of course, maybe Steph Curry would have been able to jump out and contest it, although if he had to travel too far, then maybe Aldama gets it back on the inbounds for a good look. This is the chess match of basketball, where these cascades of reads and counters are happening at lightspeed. I mean, heck, if Bain breaks toward the ball here, and Jaren Jackson Jr. realizes he can flare to the corner, they probably get a good look that way too. Now, it's hard for a player to know when to break the play. You can't fault them for trusting the call. But a great counterexample is Damian Lillard's 2014 series-winning shot over the Houston Rockets, where Dame breaks the play right here and just sprints to open space looking for the ball. It's like, I don't understand that to this day why they just said switch was guard on guard on guard. That's what really made me just take off like that, because they were asking each other like, do you want to switch this? Do you want to switch it? He was like, no, you just stay there. And he was like, he was explaining to him, like, we should just switch it and you can just take Hugo high. And as they was talking, I was just watching. You took off. And as soon as the ref handed him the ball, I just took off. I mean, that's a historical shot. Yeah, it was crazy how it happened, because that was not the play. Like, I remember in the huddle when he drew that play of Mo Williams, he was just like, go get the ball. This kind of stuff is happening all the time and heavily influences how we talk about a coach or a player, even though these kinds of improvisational reads are almost never discussed or even fully understood by the public. But when they do happen, when players seem to always mysteriously be part of winning plays or winning teams over and over, it's because the totality of these kinds of reads adds up to make a pretty significant impact. To support this channel, patreon.com slash thinking basketball. That's where we have proprietary stats on teams and players throughout the year. We also have a discord community and you can get all of our extra video content over there or sign up on YouTube as a member where we also live stream the podcast. Thanks for watching all the way to the end on this one. Hope you enjoyed it and that you are having a great day.