Center Fridays: Screen assists from the bigs

The Pacers have been setting some of the best screens in the league this year. Let’s take a look at how they are so effective.

Screens (picks) are one of the most simple actions in basketball. The purpose of a screen is using your body as an obstacle for a defender to navigate, which creates openings on the court. Often a thankless act, good screens are incredibly useful and make an offense potent and smooth. The Pacers, specifically their centers, are one of the more refined groups in the league at using screens to make positive plays on the offensive end.

To show this, let’s use a stat called “screen-assists”. Screen assists reflect exactly what it sounds like they would: the number of times a screen led to a basket that was a direct result of the screen. The Pacers have 346 screen assists this season, good for 13th in the league. But two centers on the team are carrying the squad significantly in this department, combining for 249 (72%) of the rosters total. The players in focus here will be Myles Turner and Domantas Sabonis; who have 125 and 124 screen assists, respectively. Those numbers rank the players 11th and 12th individually in the league, proving both of these players are effective screen setters. The interesting part of this is they are impactful pick setters for entirely different reasons.

Let’s start with Turner, who edges out Sabonis by a mere one screen assist with 40 more minutes played. Turner’s come less from his ability to set screens and more from his skills on the court. In fact, Turner isn’t that great of a screen setter at all.

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When Myles sets a screen, the defense often has to make a decision. Do they let Myles pop into space for a jumper, where he is an excellent mid-range/three-point shooter? Or do they switch and get a potential mismatch? In that split second, all the chaos and decision making that goes on for defenders gives the Pacers just enough time to attack and score.

Turner makes minimal contact on some of his picks because he is so eager to get into the open space, but sometimes that’s a good thing. Here he barely even bumps Gary Harris, but that’s all it took. Tasked with considering a switch or staying on their own men, Harris pauses for a split second to see what Kenneth Faried is up to. In that moment, Victor Oladipo blows by everyone to the bucket:

The reason Turner avoids contact at times is two-fold. One is that he just isn’t that physical of a screener. The other is that he is deft at slipping (pretending to set one before cutting away to the open space) screens, which makes things even harder to defend when done correctly.

In that same game against the Denver Nuggets, we saw him slip a screen and it led to a bucket for Oladipo. Mason Plumlee was ready to switch on defense so he came all the way out to stop the drive, but then Turner slipped the screen. Harris attempts to force Oladipo into the defender who has switched on to him, but Plumlee didn’t drop to the basket with Oladipo and instead lunged toward the direction Turner was moving because he slipped the screen. Harris had already opened his body so he could drop with Turner, and that left the lane wide open for a Victor layup:

It sounds more complicated than it is, but Turner’s quick decision making made Plumlee change his plans on the fly. Harris didn’t know the plans changed, and Oladipo caught them both with their pants down. Easy bucket.

When Turner does make contact on a screen, he can be deadly. The Pelicans were not going to switch on this screen for Darren Collison, but Turner’s great screen pinned Tony Allen behind the three-point line, and it led to a simple layup:

New Orleans had no plans of switching because of Turner’s deep ball. They wanted DeMarcus Cousins on him no matter what happened, and it backfired here.

Turner’s effectiveness on picks comes from his shot, but he is still successful nonetheless. Sabonis, on the other hand, is a totally different animal.

Sabonis racks up the screen assist because he is a top-notch screener. The treat of the roll is obviously something, but Sabonis just drills you and knocks you back, almost forcing players to switch. Watch him just smash into Dion Waiters with this screen:

That’s the modus operandi for every Sabonis screen; just be a truck. A subtlety within this is that Sabonis has mastered a slightly illegal tactic, but he is so good at hiding it and he never gets called for a foul.

What he does is he makes his body wider by keeping his elbows wider than his hips, a trick that Marcin Gortat has mastered (thanks to coach Spins for teaching me about this). Here is a screen grab from that clip you just watched, showing him using his elbows to his advantage:

Now that you know his secret, watch him do it here and completely hook DeMar DeRozan to give Oladipo the easy basket:

Credit Domas for being so discrete with this move. He pulls it off time and time again, and it leads to baskets night in and night out.

Next: Power Forward Thursdays: Maybe no power forward?

Screens are an integral part of the Pacers offense. Thankfully, the two centers that most frequently touch the floor are excellent at using them. Be on the lookout for the Pacers to get more creative with their screening big men as the season progresses.