Some guys need a shot. So many NBA-level talents hardly get a chance, and second chances are even harder to find. Making the most of that chance can change the fortunes of a player or a team in a big way.
Sam Merrill was once a 24-year-old rookie taken with the last draft pick, one who struggled to find a consistent role in Milwaukee. Even though he was delivering on his primary college skill, shooting the cover off the ball, he couldn’t stick. Merrill bounced to Cleveland by way of Memphis entering last year, managing 59 total minutes this past season. It felt like he had run out of chances.
Sam stuck around for an end-of-the-bench role this year, and the opportunity arrived. Cleveland was hit with an injury to star guard Darius Garland in mid-December. That setback (and a 13-12 record) felt like a potential early-season knockout for a team pushing further toward contender status.
Then Sam Merrill entered the rotation and started blasting.
Garland missed 19 games, and Cleveland managed a 15-4 record in no small part due to Merrill’s contributions. Sam let almost eight threes per game fly over his 22 MPG across this stretch. The Cavs had a new lease on their season, and Merrill had a new lease on his career. He’ll be needed even more with news of Evan Mobley’s fresh injury.
I love a good specialist, and I wanted to explore how Merrill’s strap has bought him another shot in this league, plus how coach JB Bickerstaff’s playcalling has augmented his skill. So let’s get into it.
The Mechanics
There are a lot of physical components that go into a good shooter. Squaring your body necessitates good footwork, high-level coordination, and the strength to generate momentum for the shot. To get a good idea of a shooter’s skill, looking at release speed and range are strong indicators.
Sam Merrill has a lightning-quick release:
He’s also more than capable of extending beyond the line when needed:
Quick release and deep range are important tools in what comes next. So many of these plays we’ll see would not be possible without these skills. Let’s start with the simple stuff.
Relocation Maestro
Movement is a necessity for off-ball shooters. Filling space behind drives, moving off of nail help, relocating across the baseline, or just staying busy while actions flow around you. There are many ways for Merrill to make an impact as a relocator, and he delivers:
Another relocation trait I look for is knowing when to lift from the corners to press an advantage. Merrill is quite adept at evacuating his spot at the right time to create a better passing lane and shake his defender.
Merrill also has Curry-esque moments of frantic off-ball movement that leave his man grasping for air:
The quick release and heady sense of movement have produced incredible catch-and-shoot results. Merrill sits at 45.2% on catch-and-shoot jumpers, good for a 67.8% eFG. It’s one of the best marks in the league, with prodigious volume to boot (12.4 threes attempted per 75 possessions).
That skill alone at 6’5″ would make him a viable rotation option. The play calls he enables for Cleveland take him to a new level of utility.
Off-Ball Screening
With a player able to fly off screens in either direction, you can layer extra problems for the defense onto existing actions, or call them as the initial action. There’s nothing like a pindown for a shooter with Merrill’s catch-and-shoot talent:
You can run them wide (when Merrill starts from the corner) or narrow (wing to the top of the key) and the result is the same. It puts the help defenders in a tough situation. Pindowns move toward the initial ballhandler, usually not a player the defense is keen to help off from. With the speed of the action, it’s hard to organize the help from the backside, putting a heavy burden on the defending big. However, if they choose to blitz or rise to the level, it opens up a potential slip if the shooter hits the big over the top. Decisions, decisions.
Staggered pindowns are another way of putting the defense in a decision-making nightmare:
Do you force the man guarding Merrill to navigate two straight screens? Do you switch or try to blitz one of the screens? If so, who would do the switching/blitzing? This is nearly impossible to figure out in the brief time it takes for Merrill to get around the screens and get a shot off.
Exit screens are another simple yet brutally effective way to leverage Merrill’s off-ball shooting:
With a pass coming from the top, it’s nigh impossible for the big to switch the action and contest the shot without allowing a slip from the screening big. The passer from the wing would recognize this and find the big for a higher-value shot. Instead, the onus is on the chasing defender to get around the screen, one that allows time for the screening big to adjust the angle right up to the last second. Essentially, a good exit screen is entirely on the offense’s terms.
Cleveland has also grown to employ more complex off-ball actions to spring Merrill. This “twirl” variant is a fun way to throw a series of possible screening and shooting threats at the defense:
First it’s a stagger for Merrill, then he sets a “rip” screen for Niang and finally gets a downscreen from Tristan Thompson as Niang drives to put a bow on the action. The confusion leads to three Wizards converging on Niang’s drive and by the end, nobody is within spitting distance of Merrill as he takes the shot. Confusion and misdirection are often the best weapons in a coach’s arsenal.
The use of a “rip” screen as a misdirection has been very present in how JB Bickerstaff runs actions for Merrill. Shoutout to my friend and play-by-play master Joe Hulbert for identifying this one: “rip veer”:
Merrill setting a backscreen gives his defender pause, sagging back for a second as a big or wing moves through the screen. Then a second screener arrives to give Merrill a downscreen, popping him above the arc for a three, while the defender has to process this and recover around the screen. It’s a beautiful chain of events that puts the defense in a bind.
Not all of Merrill’s success has to come from off-ball movement and layers of deception. Simple actions on (or directly around) the ball have shown some efficacy as well.
Dribble Handoffs
What’s the first play that comes to mind with any shoot-first wing? A good ol’ dribble handoff. It’s becoming the bread-and-butter play for specialists like Merrill. Kyle Korver walked so that these shooters could run.
It’s effective for a few reasons. The screen after the handoff is usually closer to the handler, opening up the shooting window faster. Depending on the handoff big, the threat of the roll/slip combined with a fake handoff forces the defending big to pick a poison. This may necessitate drop coverage of a DHO, which a shooter like Sam Merrill will destroy consistently:
Drop also invites more layered DHO actions. I enjoy this pindown into DHO concept, which places undue burden on the chase defenders as Alex Len is not a blitz/level kind of big:
With the right defenders present, playing to the level of the screen or outright blitzing becomes an option against Merrill. Even a crisp show and recover can give him issues when he feels the shot is taken away. His production against these coverages is far more of a mixed bag.
Switching the action outright is another way to take away his shot from the jump. A bigger defender will have a larger radius to contest the shot.
This switching is largely enabled by Merrill’s lack of ability to counter with drives. Though this is an article on shooting prowess, it’s important to understand how the absence of viable counters affects this shooting ability. Teams have learned to sell out to deny the shot and risk his drives, knowing he is unlikely to make them pay going downhill.
Even with aggressive coverages, the purity of Merrill’s release and footwork skill can burn them even in the tightest windows:
Double-pitch DHOs act as a way for Merrill to feel out the coverage while still pressing the advantage against the defense. It serves to find a new angle for more separation while buying important time Merrill can use to his advantage:
The DHO looks are by far the most common usage for Merrill in direct actions, and he’ll have time to work on his counters against non-drop coverages. Though simple and with plenty of utility, it’s not my favorite direct action Cleveland has deployed for him.
Ball Screen Actions
Shoot-first wings or guards as ball screeners have been a fun league-wide development over the past several years. Though not as complex as Golden State’s actions for Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson or the Isaiah Joe screens in Oklahoma City, Cleveland is feeling out some Merrill screens as a tool for their primary offensive weapons.
A tidy pick-and-fade puts the defense at a quick disadvantage:
This guard-guard screening brings uncertainty to the defender on Merrill. Guards are less used to navigating screen actions from behind than bigs. When setting screens for Donovan Mitchell, a prolific driver and pull-up shooter, a switch or over must be navigated quickly so Cleveland’s All-Star guard doesn’t get open space. It’s difficult to do this while properly covering Merrill’s fade.
The guards assigned to Merrill are not going to be the cream of the defensive crop, especially when playing off of Mitchell and Garland. This is a simple and effective way to put subpar defenders directly in the action against their star creators.
Bickerstaff likes to add layers to this action, sometimes by adding a flare screen for Merrill after the initial screen:
Good luck switching and navigating that one properly.
Processing a screen from Merrill is already difficult enough for the players defending the action. If he ghosts the screen entirely into a fade, that processing window becomes even tighter.
Amazingly, Cleveland can get utility from an action where everyone knows what Merrill is going to do. Is he going to roll to the rim or slip? Absolutely not. That man is fading. And still, it creates enough matchup difficulty that the defense cannot properly contain him.
Wrapping Up
With news of Evan Mobley‘s injury, Cleveland will once again find themselves in heavy need of Merrill’s talent. Their bigger forwards will have to slide down positionally, only furthering the need for his shooting off the ball to create space.
Under contract for one more year, it feels all but guaranteed that he has earned a place on the team going forward. Even if Merrill fails to grow beyond a pure shooting specialist, it’s a strong enough talent to keep him a place in the league for years to come. Both Merrill and the Cavaliers have reaped the benefits of this second chance, and I’m stoked to see him fight for a playoff rotation spot down the stretch of Cleveland’s most exciting season since LeBrexit.
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