Our Scouting Philosophy: It's All About Space - Pt. 2
If drafting offensive focal points is about space creation, then a viable strategy is to build a team with players who can take away that space
In Part One of our series on overall scouting philosophies, we outlined the idea that being successful as an NBA player is all about spacing. We threw around terms like creating space (offensively gaining separation from a defender), negating space (preventing the best space creators from getting that separation), maximizing space (being able to convert when you operate within space) and discussed these ideas in the context of finding pillars that a franchise can be built around.
Our focus in Part Two is on negating space, all the tricks of the trade and important details that go into limiting opposing scorers from getting to their spots. If we hold true that the central tenet of offensive creation is on creating space and then scoring within it, a key tenet of defensive impact is in either making sure space doesn’t get created or quickly closing the gaps that can be created.
Defense is a really tough topic to dive into for so many reasons. First and foremost, scouting defensive impact at the college takes a lot more time than offensive impact. On the scoring side of the floor, there are enough counting stats, percentage indicators and analytic models to automatically narrow down the field of guys with worthwhile traits or skills. Such counting stats aren’t as prevalent on defense, nor are the ones that are available always definitive indicators of impact.
While it also takes more time, it’s also much more reliant on natural traits (athleticism, length, first step, natural movement patterns) than offense. Teaching defensive positioning as a helper or technique to get around an off-ball screen is much easier than some in the draft space will have you believe. Seeing a poor help defender at the college level who has all the raw, natural abilities to become successful on-ball should not dissuade you from drafting that player. You can teach the positioning and rotations, you cannot teach the athleticism.
This leads us to another important point: on-ball defense is insanely valuable for space negation. It’s a simple concept, but it’s vital to make sure we don’t jump ahead of ourselves. Offensive players require separation from their man in order to truly operate within space. If a defender is so good at sticking to his assignment one-on-one, it’ll be impossible for that offensive player to wiggle free. Some offensive players are so damn good that they don’t need the space (as we discussed in Part One) and just make shots in an absence of room. That’s why, even in the toughest scenarios, good offense trumps good defense.
Isolation scoring is much, much harder, though. Acquiring defenders who force scorers to take these difficult shots in an absence of space is really important and, over the course of a 48-minute game, is usually a winning proposition. To adjust, NBA teams have changed since the late-90s, running fewer elbow or mid-post isolations and transitioning towards a more ballscreen-centric attack in the half-court. Screens create advantages for at least a split second, and that advantage is enough for separation.
Pick-and-roll defensive scheme plays a major role in how — and where — those ball screens create an advantage. We won’t go into every single piece of minutia on the types of schemes, but there are two that are predominantly common in today’s NBA: switching and Drop pick-and-roll coverage.
Teams that utilize switching have more athleticism and length across the board, fearing the isolation mismatches less than most teams. Switching negates advantages at the point of attack resulting from ball screens, but then creates potential mismatches elsewhere on the floor. If a team can execute the scheme successfully, they typically won’t have a major weak link on the floor that can be exposed in isolations, either based on their size or their quickness.
Teams that utilize Drop coverage effectively tend to have one player whose specific skills are worth protecting and building the structure of the defense around. That player, typically a rim protector with great size and length, is fantastic at blocking shots or lowering the field goal percentage at the rim. On an NBA floor, the most valuable place to take a shot is, and likely will always be, at the rim.
Lowering the impact an offense can have at the rim has so many impacts on the game. It takes away the most efficient shot and forces shots elsewhere, serving as a deterrent. The presence of a cleanup defender on the inside can shorten some defensive rotations or, at the very least, allow guys to take more risks or pressure on the perimeter. Teaching elite rim protection is challenging and takes time, but it’s a great way to maximize developing a scheme where not every player on the floor has above-average defensive traits.
Versatility is always valued as a result, whether it’s in terms of positional versatility (guarding different player types individually) or coverage versatility (being able to deploy multiple pick-and-roll looks). Roster construction matters so much in determining which scheme is best, but success in the modern NBA has recently been built on one or the other at an elite level. A roster, therefore, needs either a fantastic rim protector or several strong POA defenders on the perimeter to reach a high-caliber level. In this piece, we’ll look at those two types of players, how they impact space and how to spot their indicators at a pre-NBA level.
Perimeter Lockdowns: The Elite at Negating Space
Not all roles on a basketball court are equal, as some are more important than others. Great offense bests great defense, so elite scoring remains the top tier of importance. But teams can fulfill the rest of their pillars with elite defensive players instead of elite scorers. Better yet, guys who are good but nonelite offensive players can become invaluable pillars to a team’s identity by combining it with tremendous defense.
If offense is really about space creation, the best defenders are those who take away space. Again, think about regions of the floor. There are guys who are great at defending the perimeter and point of attack, using their athletic traits to stop top scorers and space-creators from getting separation.
Working backward on the three types of defensive pillars, we start with the versatile guys. Their natural traits tend to carry them. Long arms, athleticism, quickness and strength are all required to guard more than just two position types. Those are somewhat easy to identify — or at least it’s easy to disqualify those who don’t naturally have it.
That defensive versatility usually lends itself to playing in switching schemes, as switching is the easiest way to negate ball screens (a great method for creating space) at the point of attack. Guys who are elite defensive pieces that guard multiple positions bring with them great basketball IQ. They know when to switch. They’re sound and ready off-ball to anticipate actions and not get thwarted by quick-hitters that typically destroy switches. They can cover up for teammates on the floor who are exposed to mismatches through switches. Evaluating IQ and help rotations becomes more important for those versatile pieces.
Guys who are great in switching schemes are, in essence, lockdown defenders but just at multiple positions. Their athletic profile is what causes them to guard multiple spots, and they are inherently more valuable than single-position defenders as a result.
There are very, very few single-position lockdown guys in today’s NBA, as most guys so elite to become pillars are of the multi-positional variety. Frankly, most of these guys have to be very above-average on offense as well, shouldering a load worth of being a top-four option on their team, and still need to be flanked by a rim protector to clean up the struggles of their teammates. Four great perimeter defenders who can only defend one position, but without a good rim protector behind them, are susceptible to be picked apart in the pick-and-roll.
So how do we look for and find factors for lockdown defense in the pre-NBA levels? We’ll use three subcategories: athleticism, physical versatility and IQ.
Athleticism
If defensive habits can be taught, the value in drafting for defense is in athletic indicators. Some of that is easy to spot, such as quickness to stay in front or the athleticism to get chasedown blocks. Other parts are about understanding what you’re looking for functionally based on position.
If guarding ball screens a lot, a huge part of athleticism is being able to clear screens over the top and quickly recover to your man. It’s a different type of athleticism than what you see in space or the open floor, but is how they move in tight spaces, get skinny against contact, whip their legs around screens to get through contact, and accelerate on the other end to get back in front.
Some guys who lack those traits tend to stand upright at the point of attack, raising their center of gravity and making it more difficult to get through screens. Others don’t have quick feet, laying on contact or slow to get above it. Weak cores — which can be corrected with weight gain and workout routine — go a long way in being successful while getting skinny and not pushed off spots.
Athleticism and natural traits are closely related. Length helps narrow the gap of separation. Vertical challenges help crowd airspace and contest jump shooters. Top-end speed is great for being able to recover.
Athletic traits are different for each position. Wings are athletic when they tap into their natural talents off one foot or two feet, and can play both quicker and stronger. Guards need to be supremely quick to either go past pressure or apply pressure far from the hoop.
This isn’t to say that all great athletes are good defenders. Guys who don’t catch up with their IQ or who constantly take risks while relying on that athleticism can hinder team performance quite a bit. But it’s much harder for a poor athlete to be a positive defender, as the margin for error drastically shrinks.
Physical Versatility
Length does far more than simply allow for recovery traits and shot contests on the perimeter. It allows players to defend multiple positions. From a coaching and a scheme standpoint, having multiple versatile, long pieces can change the tools in a team’s toolbox defensively. They can switch, front the post, help in passing lanes, apply pressure in different places while the backline stays protected, X-out and not be hurt by cross matches and so much more.
Athleticism is translatable in many different ways across so many different shapes, sizes and body types. Versatility has a much closer relationship with physical profiles. Longer guys who are about 6’6” to 6’10” and can move with their quickness on the perimeter can do almost everything that is defensively functional on a basketball court. The best defenses around the league — Miami Heat, Boston Celtics, even Golden State Warriors — traditionally load up on these guys. Their success is no coincidence.
Still, size alone isn’t just enough. They need outlier physical tools at their size to be multi-positional defenders. Finding a guy that size that is fast enough to stay in front of a guard is important for projecting their switchability. They need the frame to add that strength to guard up if switching across the entire lineup is in play.
The toughest part of the evaluation in these categories is that, prior to coming to the NBA, not every guy plays within a scheme that allows them to flash their versatility. The college game has more one-position defenders worth hiding or scheming around, and that means less switching or fewer instances where their versatility can come out.
The best we can do is to see the speed, violence and physicality of their ability to move in space. Most frames are projectable, even if the proof isn’t there in action.
Defensive IQ
As a basketball coach myself, I preach the importance of help defense and rotations on a daily basis. Our teams in high school are made and broken by our connectivity on defense. At lower levels of basketball, even college, this is the case for pretty much every team when competition is equal.
Yet we try not to punish guys too much for the level of preparedness they have as a help defender coming into the league. Help rotations and movements can be taught. Those same high school coaches who claim how much it matters (and then bicker when college guys aren’t good at it) are really overestimating their own ability in some regard. If teaching help defense was so difficult, it’s unlikely they (and myself included in that category) would be able to teach it effectively.
The reasons for being a poor help defender have to be apparent, though. If there’s a heavy offensive burden on a player, we’ve seen reasons why that leads to subpar defensive impact despite the tools and understanding being possessed (Anthony Edwards, Jayson Tatum and Ben Simmons all come to mind).
Those three all had elite natural and physical tools, which is a great way to make up for subpar help defense. They have what cannot be taught, and when the stakes are high and their understanding catches up with age, they’ll be positive defenders.
If a player is a poor help defender while being a turnstile on-ball, lacking those natural traits to be better or has one consistent Achilles heel that is exploitable, there’s reason for concern that the issues won’t change, even with improved understanding. Guys who frequently get backdoored are one example, as it’s less about understanding and more about natural reaction.
Commonly, steals and/or blocks get confused with productivity. They are a form of productivity, but on their own do not constitute positive defense. Some guys, who are really busy in the passing lanes or gambling for steals, can be poor defenders in other contexts and lack the discipline required for impactful help defense.
More than anything else, having exquisite rotations and defensive IQ is a separator that takes someone to an additional level. Non-elite athletes can survive due to their IQ but likely won’t turn into lockdown guys as a result (see Tyrese Haliburton, who is such a good team defender and is great in passing lanes). Good athletes can turn into great defenders thanks to superhuman understanding (like Draymond Green has done).
Elite defensive IQ is rare to see at the college level. It’s something that likely needs to be valued more for, at the very least, how it intersects with athletic traits. Players like Draymond Green and Herb Jones fall in the draft due to their offensive indicators when, very clearly based on their defensive film, they have the rare combination of IQ, athleticism and defensive versatility. Guys who have all three will find roles in the NBA, and our process of evaluation has changed to clearly delineate these categories so that, if a prospect checks al three, we value that appropriately.
Interior Design: Rim Protector
Important to the success of Drop pick-and-roll coverage are rim protectors, guys who are great shot blockers that lower the effectiveness of opponent attempts at the rim. Rudy Gobert has emerged as a great one because he’s mastered verticality, timing his leaps and defending frequently without fouling. Virtually no prospect comes into the NBA with a functional idea of how to communicate, play angles or be positionally sound in every situation — the best rim protectors do all that regularly, as NBA offenses are too good at exploiting the slightest opening.
Just like in the section above with perimeter players, rim protectors’ film is a product of the scheme they play in. Evaluating for NBA usage is challenging when a prospect only is used in hard hedging coverages — which are not very common in the NBA. Pick-and-roll reads are different in college than they are in the pros, with angles, floor spacing and single-side bumps vs. empty-side ball screens all varying throughout the country.
Athleticism plays a role here as well. Big men are generally athletic when they time their leaping ability well and are quick off the floor on both offense and defense. They have quick-twitch recovery (or at least the discipline) to stay low and react to dribble moves from guards who go right at them. Poor athletes either dig their heels in or overreact to moves, opening their hips like a gate where drivers can get to the basket after a simple hesitation or crossover.
Still, positive indicators can be present at those lower levels. If a prospect shows small instances of playing angles at a maturity beyond their years, it stands out as an indication of elite potential. The discipline not to bite on those aforementioned fakes or dribble moves and stay between ball, rim and roller/ cutter is somewhat feel-based and an indicator that, when angles are taught, positive rim protection will occur.
The sexiest part of rim protection comes from shot blocking, from meeting guys at the rim and stuffing them. Timing and the one-two-step that goes into the leap is important. Doing it without turning your hips like a turnstile is another. Staying square and extending arms out, jumping straight up… they’re difficult traits to master. The natural traits that often go hand-in-hand: vertical leaping, strong frames/ bodies/ chests, standing reach and quickness off the floor.
So much of rim protection is just about doing the little things incredibly well over and over again. It’s angles and positioning, discipline not to foul, more positioning and size/ athleticism to cover up space.
Increasingly, we’ve seen some rim protectors get played off the floor as teams transition to 5-out offenses and are willing to take triple after triple that is open. The right combination between rim protection and lateral quickness is becoming paramount, and where athleticism goes not just to succeed as a rim protector but be utilized in different defensive schemes as the coaching staff sees fit.
Defense is important, and defense does indeed help win championships. Very few elite teams get to that level without having strong individual defenders. But the scheme and collective identity of a team is more valuable than having one or two elite defenders to do the heavy lifting. Many of the important traits for defenders are therefore similar to role players, as it’s difficult to be truly dominant on that end. We’ll cover those traits when we go over role players in Part Three.
Part Three of this series will touch on how to evaluate the spacing impact of role players.