The Future Of Basketball's Low Post

The essence of sport is at its most potent when broken down to its simplest form. There’s winning and there’s misery, in football. In today’s basketball, there’s the three pointer and there’s the dunk. Both sentiments offer up very little in between and so with that, comes the obvious death of the mid range jumper and the post up. This is the top search return when 'low post' is googled: basketball's historically high percentage play is due a re-brand.

Children growing up in countries where basketball doesn’t dominate, means most come to the game with an outline understanding of it being a game for tall people. While that base logic still holds true, the role of the biggest looks more and more like that of the smallest. The interior has become the perimeter in a way that should make the memory of Manute Bol an even happier one.

Analytics don’t lie. The inefficiency of the mid range jumper when compared to the three ball and that of a hook shot as opposed to a lay in, simply don’t stand up in today’s game. Yet, while the long held belief that one who lives by the jumper, will die by the jumper may well have been found to be false, post play is suffering from a potentially misguided final rite of passage.

Even with some innovative thinking, it’s tough to make an 18 foot jumper any easier to make in order to fight the statistics in your favor. In both a numerical sense and a technical one. It will forever be marred by the same numerical value as a shot some 18 times easier to make, when attempted right under the basket. However there is something about the low post that can break in its favor. Something yet to be thought through.

Junior players always have been and judging by college hoops, still are taught to fight for position on the low block. Don’t allow yourself to be fronted, but don’t get pushed off the block. Get round in front to make the pass as easy as possible to make. Once in possession of the ball, set to work. Step throughs and step backs. Up and unders. Square up or back down. From a literary sense it still sounds great. One counter follows another. A chess game where a door is closed by your opponent, another simply opens. Championships and legends were made of such things.

This rationale isn’t to promote a return to the old ways of contested five foot shots where permissible contact is way more liberal than that allowed on the perimeter. No, this is to stump for a different way to manufacture dunks and lay ups. A new outcome from an old process. After all, there’s never been more space within which to operate. Most common four out sets allow for post players of any size to occupy space that their predecessors could only dream of. Patrick Ewing fighting to operate in a cramped space with Charles Oakley “spacing” the floor at the foul line. Ask MJ or Kobe about the only good part of the Triangle and they’ll likely tell you the pinch post at least offered a quarter court to work alone in.

Power players still exist in varying shapes and sizes. Marcus Smart can still bully most point guards to a back down lay in or a wide open team mate’s three should the helpful defense feel so inclined. Boban Marjanovic, given the space and time can still overpower many foes with his sheer force of frame. Possible, but not ideal play calls admittedly. The drop step and quick back down are still analytically favorable options which certain teams continue to employ. If more for the double team and ensuing open three, than the lay in or dunk.

But what of a match-up that’s pound for pound a fair fight? Simply go back to the lab and discipline young players to only instigate moves that result in a lay in. Go against the grain and welcome being fronted down low. Encourage it and then work in reverse of the game's historic teachings. Push your defender higher up the lane towards the passer. Enact the old “High Low” of years past only this time from the three point line with a snappier pass to cover the extra seven feet or so from foul line to arc. The same trigonometry can be applied in reverse, to utilize the corner passer offering up both a shorter pass and shorter three point shot. Fear not coaches. Post footwork can still be taught. Just not with the ball any more.

While the sky or jump hook may never again be the darlings of mathematicians, they still have a role to play in the under part of the up. The fade away fake works along similar lines in dangling a carrot that human nature will forever struggle not to bite at. The presumption that advanced scouting will likely remove such tendencies is a fact that makes a folly of this theory however. Witness DeMar DeRozan pump faking his pull up jumpers early last season, to great effect. Only to be thwarted down the stretch as teams got smart to the notion as the playoffs rolled around.  

Therefore it seems there can't there be an under without an up. Frozen in the restricted area with the three second count ticking down, marooned on your own private turnover island. Hardly a change teams are desperate to implement. But this is exactly where bigger players mimicking smaller ones comes into play once again. The savior of this low post notion by the one thing that made it redundant in the first place. Building more purposeful movement into an already motion filled offense shouldn’t be difficult. Steve Nash became a master of the movement assist during his time with the Suns and not always without the help of his team mates. It’s that diagramming that will add indefensible value down low.

The number nine play of this always enjoyable reel, shows Steve doing the guard equivalent of the thwarted up and under. Dribbling laterally eats west into traffic with no eye of the hoop, he opens up a direct cutting lane for Amar'e to dive towards the hoop. His purposely selfless dribble drive is the only way to open up this cut from the foul line. Extending this in the modern game from the same post spot, Steve occupies with a cutter from the arc, takes nothing more than an earlier notion from the cutter to provide the correct timing. The hidden benefit of Steve setting the lightest of brush screens against the recovering defender, would only benefit the modern application further given the girth of the post player delivering the hand-off.

The seventh play of the same reel offers up a similar notion, this time with the cutter being a secondary or even tertiary option for the action. The focus here should be on the challenge of the corner defender, to not only avoid ball watching and lose focus on his player, but also the quandary of not helping the dribble action and staying home. The human nature of all defenders will be challenged on any possible post move, not just the interior defender in question.

The initial screen roll action looks familiar as the rolling big sucks in the defense, even if the perimeter players are failing to space accordingly in the modern manner. Even without that added benefit, let’s say Dudley’s defender (#45) stays home on the arc, to bring the clip roaring into the modern day, it’s the corner defender who the offense really wants to put under the microscope. The hockey cut by Dudley if you will. The cut that leads to the cut that leads to the score.

So good is Nash, that his timely step back and up fake coincidentally right on the left block removes his defender from the play, as the Richardson swoops in from the corner. Should his defender have been more attuned to the action and cut with him, a perfect 45 degree angle was created for a two step backdoor cut around him for a bounce pass to Steve’s left. Offering the same lay in as the hand-off to his right did on the film. The takeaway being, four defenders had a foot in the lane and with the primary (Nash), secondary (Amar'e) and even tertiary (Dudley) movement, some simple basketball know how by Richardson rendered enough space to lay the ball in. Number crunchers rejoice.

With scoring on the rise this season and rules concerning freedom of movement being strengthened, it’s only a matter of time before those with the ball are once again stymied by new defensive tactics. Here's one way of engaging those away from the ball, while involving those traditional rebounding, screen setting and rim running players who set the table for their team’s perimeter success. Or more pertinently, without those three actions from a willing big, the space part of a pace attack could grind to a halt with defenders glued to their defensive assignment around the horn. Only one of the eight players selected by the NBA for their season opening promotion is a traditional big, and one being coerced into shooting more threes than ever before. But there's a future down low. It just looks nothing like the past.

@instagrahamwilson