I want to dig into some of the film to explore how Watson has become one of the premiere defensive event-creating forwards, along with quality perimeter stopping. There has also been an increasing sense of finding the offensive niche that I want to take a look at.

Defensive Event Creation

Oh boy, is this some fun stuff.

Peyton Watson paces the league amongst all qualifying forwards with a 3.8% block rate, improving from his 3.3% rate this past season (also a league-leading mark, albeit in 9 games). Not only does he rack up a hefty amount of swats, but he seems to do it in highlight-reel fashion every time.

For those counting at home, that’s three (3) blocks on Derrick Rose in a single possession. I labeled this clip “massive disrespect” in my files.

What impresses me the most about the blocks is the variety of situations they come in. Most come in trail defense; when he loses a step on a driver, he’s never truly out of the play.

Watson also has a knack for making the right rotations after a ballhandler has committed to the drive, using his ridiculous length to erase shots:

Jamal Murray gets beaten handily on the drive by Russell, so Watson fully commits off Gabe Vincent, gambling that D-Lo won’t make the wrap pass back to the perimeter. Finding the ball at the absolute apex, he sends a gift into the crowd. That’s outstanding awareness to pick up his teammate.

Peyton also has a penchant for ridiculous recovery blocks, especially in transition. Once again, he victimizes Derrick Rose, flying back into the play with the speed and explosion of a panther:

Getting put in a help position on a Luka Dončić? Not a problem for Wats:

The patience to wait out the drag-step and still meet the shot at the apex is so, so impressive.

How about a transition 2v1 block for the road, as Peyton does his best Draymond Green impression?

It feels like he manages to meet every shot at the exact right moment. That kind of awareness for a player with 18 career games cannot be taught.

Watson being a shot-blocking threat both on and off the ball is a huge boon for this Denver defense. You might have him beat on the perimeter, but he will still find a way back into the play. You can beat his teammates on the drive, but he will get there and affect your shot. Considering how many subpar perimeter defenders are in Denver’s rotation (especially the starting lineup), Watson has an important ability to plug up the holes they create.

His steal rate is also 80th percentile amongst forwards through the first tenth of this season, showing a solid dig/tag ability to get strips. I came away impressed with his ability to anticipate passes and break them up as they arrive, as you can see below:

Watson has incredible strength, often using that to his advantage in help. Jevon Carter is no slouch when it comes to his strength, but Peyton looks like he’s bullying a middle schooler on this play:

He also has a knack for creating steals on the ball, which we will explore in our next category.

Perimeter Stopping

Though still working on general technique, Watson’s strength and lateral athleticism give him plenty of room to make up for that. He has a few distinctive plays when watching the tape where he purely overwhelms the ballhandler with his strength:

There weren’t a ton of standout technique-based perimeter stops that caught my eye, but this one in particular on Vasilije Micić showed a lot of the goods:

The quick hip flips and foot speed, the hand placement, and how low he gets to increase his mobility. That is the sort of technical skill that will turn him into an elite perimeter stopper in the coming years. I’m very excited to see him put more pure stopping tape on this year, but already teams are learning that it’s wise to just avoid him entirely if they can help it.

Here’s a play that I think well-summarizes the technique being a step behind his athleticism: trying too hard to force Kyrie left, he still gives an opportunity to reject the screen and go back to the right.

You can see how athleticism helps to bridge the gap. He closes down all of the space Irving gains on the drive, and makes it a tough layup attempt with the help arriving. Soon, when the technical aspects catch up, he’ll have to make these plays less often. It’s good knowing he can make them when needed though.

Filling in Gaps

This is where I’m waiting for some improvement from Peyton. He’s a pretty middling rebounder (38th percentile amongst forwards) and generally inconsistent with his rotations and positioning. It’s great that the explosive impact plays are there already, but the learning from Peyton will come in terms of general court awareness, when to crash the glass, where to be, and at what times.

It’s not going to happen overnight, but he has as strong of a base as any for exponential defensive growth.

Now, let’s see how Watson has figured some things out on the offensive side of the ball.

Corner-Based Offense

Watson for the moment is your classic low-usage off-ball wing. Operating out of the corners (predominantly the left), his job is to shoot when open and make slashing/cutting reads based on how the defense plays him. It’s not glamorous, but it’s honest work.

His shot chart, per Cleaning The Glass, gives a better idea of what that usage looks like:

He’s still struggling to make the shots needed from the perimeter (2/8 from the corners, 3/11 above-the-break) but it’s what he can do with or without the shooting that intrigues me.

Teams are largely going to forget him in the corners, but he will still draw a closeout from time to time. Defenders aren’t perfect; when split-second decisions have to be made, sometimes you see a guy in the corner and want to close him down. And when that happens, Peyton knows how to take advantage.

Jaden Hardy is stashed on Watson, and instinctively closes him down in the corner, opening up a chance for the drive. Josh Green makes a great rotation to draw the charge, but Watson side-steps just enough to avoid the contact and finds Nikola Jokić filling the lane for the bucket. That’s an awesome chain of decisions in quick succession: driving the closeout, avoiding the charge, and finding the open man.

On the more basic side of things, Peyton can leverage that same athleticism and length on the closeout attack to draw contact on the rim, even if he’s not the most adept finisher:

Teams often stash Watson on their roamers, which was especially evident against the Thunder and Chet Holmgren. Even with all of Chet’s length, Watson’s athleticism is tough to contain.

He’s got the coordination to stay tight to the baseline, and again seeing the athleticism pop with the reverse slam that not many NBA guys can pull off.

If teams get REALLY lazy with who they try to stash on Watson, he’s shown enough chops on the drive to make bigger, slower guys pay for it:

This is a nice bit of functional athleticism to boot: avoids the travel by slowing his drive, then kicks out to the open shooter. He’s not exactly a dazzling playmaker, but you can see the potential to make some solid reads off the drive.

Watson already having sufficient skill to make plays out of corner drives and closeout attacks is a huge boon. It’s a cliche at this point for off-ball players, but the lethality of his perimeter shot will define a lot of his growth in these areas. If teams let him shoot and he continues to be in the mid to high 20s, opportunities like the ones above will be few and far between. But every percentage point he can raise that shot will only add more to his potential as a driver.

Cut/Fill Synergy with Nikola

This stuff really excites me about Watson’s long-term offensive potential in Denver. With a player like him on the floor next to Jokić, teams are going to send hard doubles at the two-time MVP and force others to beat them. Watson has shown a good sense of when to make himself available, especially by cutting into open space:

He fills the space abandoned by John Collins as Jokić spins out of one double and into another, leading to an easy basket. These kinds of simple reads will be made available to him when playing alongside the Joker, and you know the man from Sombor is going to find him.

It’s much of the same coming out of Jokić rolls. The defense is going to collapse at all costs to prevent Joker from getting into a clean roll, so it’s up to guys like Watson to make themselves available by cutting out of the corners and taking advantage of an empty weak side as you see here:

Similar cuts will also be available off the drives of his teammates, and you can once again see how Watson recognizes opportunities to fill the space given to him for easy baskets:

Considering the attention that teammates like Jokic and Murray will consistently be drawing, Watson’s cutting and filling will be heavily rewarded if he can keep this kind of timing up. Of course, his finishing around the rim shouldn’t be forgotten as a skill; an 80% mark on the season is nothing to sneeze at.

Leakout Specialist

The last component of Watson’s offensive repertoire (at the moment) is the transition running. It’s also the most tied to his defense. Watson can run out after shot contests, rotations, or even after creating steals/blocks. This is another way for Peyton to create offensive value in his low-usage role, because he can gallop like a thoroughbred in the open floor and put his ridiculous athleticism on display.

It doesn’t hurt to have the best passer in the league running these breaks, but that shouldn’t take away from the good Watson does by filling lanes and making himself available for easy finishes. Jokić is constantly on the hunt for leakout passes, and it’s up to players like Peyton to make the runs needed.

Overall, I’m maintaining cautious optimism about Watson’s offensive game. He knows how to find gaps, when to leak out, and shows strong coordination and power in his finishes. Even if the shot doesn’t come around, he will find a way to make his impact felt. For now, Denver is going to have to find a way to build lineups around him that can bring enough offensive talent to make up for his deficits. Their offense is -17.7 points per 100 possessions worse with him on the floor, and that’s not entirely on Peyton: Denver has the kind of offensive talent to make up for that gap.

Potential For More

With such limited available tape and play experience on Watson’s part, it is hard to predict where his overall ceiling lies. It’s clear that he has All-Defensive kind of upside if he can maintain consistent minutes, but much of that falls back on the offense. Can he develop skills beyond cutting and closeout attacking to stay on the floor?

Denver is the right environment to bolster his overall potential, and the minutes are there for the taking. I’ll be watching him closely throughout the season, excited to see what Peyton Watson has in store for us.

The post Finding a Role: Peyton Watson appeared first on Swish Theory.

This funny tactic forces the player setting the screen to either try and quickly set a second screen or to abandon the screen entirely and reset the action. The former often results in a moving screen violation because Caruso is already in movement as the second screen is set, attached to the hip of the ball handler; the latter shaves valuable seconds off of the shot clock. If the screen is legally set, Caruso’s hop allows him to get better position on the play and quickly negate any advantage created by the screen. 

Caruso’s hop is one of many examples that illustrate how defenders use something called cognitive athleticism to become playmakers, bending opposing teams to their will on the defensive end of the floor. Much like their offensive counterparts, defensive playmakers are adept at controlling the action around them to maximize each possession and prevent the other team from running their sets effectively. Yet despite defensive playmaking’s indispensable importance to winning basketball, the impact of its major component – cognitive athleticism – has largely gone under the radar. 

I want to explore why that is and illustrate how we can get better at recognizing cognitive athleticism’s impact on defense and defensive playmaking specifically. To do that, it’s essential to first discuss: the inherent difficulties in quantifying defense; what the goals of good defense are and how those are, at times, misaligned with the statistics that attempt to measure them; and how untracked or unique defensive traits that have an outsized impact on defense are often difficult to pin down or reproduce in data. 

Finally, I’ll examine what cognitive athleticism is, how it manifests, how it allows players to raise both the floor and ceiling of a good defense, and how we can get better at identifying it. I’m going to illustrate this largely through the lens of two players that demonstrate, in my estimation, elite levels of this athleticism – Alex Caruso and Nikola Jokic. 

The Problem with Quantifying Defense

The basketball world has gotten increasingly obsessed over the years with collecting and organizing data in ways that can accurately estimate the impact of individual players or lineups of players on winning games. You know, the “VORPs and schnorps” Zach Lowe loves to talk about. These various metrics are not perfect, nor are they intended to be, but significant strides have been made with offensive metrics in particular, such that they tend to provide a fairly accurate picture of who is doing good things on the offensive end and how they are doing it. Lagging far behind, however, are defensive metrics. Zach Kram at The Ringer had a great article last year about the inherent issues in attempting to create accurate defensive statistics, which is highly recommended reading. The gist, though, is that defense remains extremely difficult to quantify in any consistent and meaningful way, and the best path to learn a player’s impact on defense is still the long one: watch an exorbitant amount of film and develop a deep understanding of what is happening on the floor on each possession. For the foregoing reasons, highly impactful defensive players have always gotten a lot less shine than their offensive counterparts, if they are even properly identified at all. 

The art of defensive playmaking has remained especially underappreciated. When we discuss elite playmakers, for example, the context is always on offense. Players like Nikola Jokic, LeBron James, or Luka Doncic have the remarkable ability to survey the basketball court and efficiently process the movements of their teammates and opponents in real time. They master every angle, every eyeball shift, every foot movement to create just the right amount of space for an open shot or deliver a pinpoint pass at just the right moment. You’ve heard announcers and analysts alike rave about how these players always seem a step ahead of the defense and how they create unique advantages with that precognition. That same prescience – the ability to know what will happen before it happens – is the key skill with which players can become impactful defensive playmakers. As illustrated by the initial example involving Alex Caruso, defensive playmakers use cognitive athleticism to create game-altering defensive events that can completely transform a team’s defensive aptitude. To understand its importance, it is essential to understand what good defense is and what it looks like.

The Goal of Defense

At the risk of insulting your intelligence for a second, I want to lay out defense at the granular level in order to demonstrate that cognitive athleticism is at the heart of every good defense. As we know, basketball is a simple game: put the ball in the other basket and prevent the other team from putting the ball in your basket. Conceptually, then, winning a basketball game comes down to maximizing each possession and creating more possessions for your team while limiting possessions and making them inefficient for the other team. 

At its core, the goal of any team or player on defense is to end the opponent’s possession without surrendering any points. There’s various defensive events that can occur or be generated to help accomplish this objective, and the following major ones are currently tracked: turnovers, steals, offensive fouls, deflections, contests, blocks, and rebounds. Each of these events have varying defensive value:

• Turnovers: turnovers encompass multiple defensive events, such as steals or drawing offensive fouls, but also things like stepping out of bounds or bad passes or recovery of a loose ball. Turnovers are very valuable because they end the opponents’ possession without sacrificing points and often lead to transition opportunities or the accrual of fouls. 
• Steals: these are consistently the most valuable defensive events because they immediately end the opponents’ possession, sacrifice no points, have a demoralizing component, and often create a transition opportunity on offense. Over the last decade plus, offenses have scored 1.04 points per possession in transition versus 0.87 points per possession in the half-court. Additionally, with the new take-foul rule in place that grants a free throw plus possession for a foul in transition, steals will likely become even more advantageous on average.
• Offensive fouls: drawing a charge or illegal screen are the most common offensive fouls. Individually, they are generally not quite as valuable as steals because they don’t create transition opportunities, but their value can exceed steals as the opposing team gets into foul trouble and generates free throws (1.3 points per possession on average).
• Deflections: deflections disrupt opposing offenses, eat up valuable time, and often lead to steals and offensive fouls. 
• Contests: getting hands raised in front of a shooter can be valuable to alter shots or discourage players from taking them in the first place, and can also result in blocks.
• Blocks: blocks force a missed shot and can be especially valuable when the rebound is secured immediately afterwards. Blocks are also demoralizing and can be an effective way to coerce teams into taking less efficient shots.
• Rebounds: these end the opponent’s possession without sacrificing points and often lead to transition opportunities. 

While these tracked defensive events are often markers of a good defense, the statistics themselves do not always have meaningful probative value, as previously illustrated in Zach Kram’s article. Instead, understanding how these tracked events are generated is often more important than the event itself, and that is where cognitive athleticism manifests.

For example, you might have two players who generate a high number of steals and therefore rate favorably on various defensive metrics. Assume Player A generates steals because he consistently anticipates passes and intercepts them due to good positioning and anticipation, while Player B generates a lot of steals because he gambles on the perimeter and is often successful in getting possession of the ball due to his long arms. While both players generate steals, Player B sacrifices good positioning to do so and may create multiple disadvantaged possessions for his team between acquiring each steal. Defensive metrics struggle to capture this important distinction; all we see is that a steal was generated. 

Additionally, there are many defensive events that are not tracked at all or cannot reasonably be tracked, making the effects of cognitive athleticism even less visible to the untrained eye. A player who is consistently in the right position to create opportunities for defensive events, for example, may never generate a single steal, deflection, block, or turnover and yet can still be a quality defender. That’s because the impact of a player on defense is far more complicated to determine than simply looking at a box score. You have to understand the details of each and every possession – the offensive scheme, the personnel executing it and their effectiveness in doing so, the defensive scheme, the defender’s role in that scheme, and how effective all five players are at executing – which all must be taken into account. It’s a monumental task that requires both sophisticated basketball knowledge and a lot of repetition, and no one person has the bandwidth to do this across the entire league. Thankfully, there are physical and mental traits that can help us prognosticate a player’s aptitude and tendencies on defense across a variety of situations. Just as the trained eye can sense that certain offensive players are or will be gifted playmakers, we can identify gifted defensive playmakers by learning what to look for. 

Defensive Athleticism

Every player leverages three types of athleticism when they play basketball: hard, soft, and cognitive – as illustrated and discussed by Thinking Basketball’s Ben Taylor.

Hard and soft athleticism, often described as physical tools, are essential to be effective on both sides of the floor. In the defensive context, players who have long limbs, can jump high, can change direction and speed quickly while maintaining balance, are mobile and also immovable, and/or can be highly active for long periods of time are typically more likely to have a consistently positive impact on defense.  

That’s because defensive activity most commonly occurs in reaction to the opponent. And while defensive schemes are often pre-planned as a result of good scouting and coaching, players are put in positions to react to the others currently on the floor in order to maximize the team’s defensive impact against that unit. For example, players involved defensively in a pick and roll action react to the screen: the on-ball defender attempts to navigate the screen and regain defensive position on the ball-handler, while the screener’s defender either blitzes the ball-handler, or drops back as the screener rolls, or does whatever else may be called for by the defensive scheme and the offensive action being executed. Hard and soft athleticism are especially helpful in reactive defense, as they can minimize recovery time and allow for quicker rotations to diminish any advantages created by the offense. 

Cognitive athleticism, on the other hand, allows defenders to flip the script. Instead of just reacting on defense, defenders use cognitive athleticism to become proactive, anticipating the future to create defensive events. Cognitive athleticism is commonly referred to as “feel” or, more clumsily, as “basketball IQ,” though it has little to do with intelligence. Rather, according to Ben Taylor and SIS Hoops’ Evan Zaucha, cognitive athleticism is made up of four parts: pattern recognition, spatial awareness, anticipation, and cognitive load. Each of these combine and overlap to help a defender generate a “feel” for defense that allows them to accurately forecast what the offense is going to do and when. These same four parts apply for offensive playmakers as well. 

Pattern recognition is the ability to identify plays or actions and the tendencies of the personnel running them. While there are certainly players who naturally excel in this area, all players can develop their pattern recognition through repetition of actions and diligent film study. Prescient defenders will often know a play call before it is executed, an opposing player’s favorite spots to shoot, or what hand or side they favor on a drive. Players that excel in pattern recognition consistently study different players and actions so they can access that information in real time during a game. Here’s a simple example the internet had way too much fun with: 

And here’s Alex Caruso describing Jayson Tatum’s tendencies to JJ Redick: 

Spatial awareness is often described as court vision. It’s knowing where everyone is on the floor at all times and where they are going to be in the near future. This knowledge can help an offensive player know how fast to throw a pass or when to accept or reject a screen. Defensively, it allows a player to identify optimal positioning or recognize and call out an impending breakdown in a rotating defense. Caruso exemplifies this concept with his impeccable timing and positioning on this sequence:

Anticipation is the ability to expect or predict something that has yet to happen. This cognitive ability allows an offensive player to throw a pass to an empty spot on the floor that will soon be occupied by his teammate. Defensively, players use anticipation to know where they need to be positioned to intercept a pass that hasn’t yet been made to an off-ball cutter, or to avoid getting screened, or to swipe a hand at an opposing ball-handler: 

Finally, cognitive load is akin to mental stamina. It’s a player’s ability to maintain their processing speed throughout an entire game or series without significant dropoff. Just as physical conditioning is required to play sustained NBA minutes, great defensive playmakers require consistent exercise of their cognitive athleticism to maintain their prognostic bandwidth:

The havoc that Caruso creates every possession he’s in the game is a testament to this conditioning. Every second that he spends blowing up a screen, or negating a created advantage, or deflecting a pass, or getting between the ball-handler and their intended target, translates into less time to score and a less efficient offense for the opposing team. Basketball players play best when they are in rhythm; Caruso makes sure his targets never get comfortable by anticipating their every move. Caruso also impacts winning by erasing his teammates’ mistakes and allowing them to play more aggressively within a given scheme because of the additional margin for error that he provides with his elite blend of hard, soft, and cognitive athleticism. His 1st Team All-Defense award was well-deserved this last season.  

Cognitive athleticism can also help defenders who don’t possess more traditional physical athletic traits and are often overlooked or undervalued as a result. Nikola Jokic is a great example of a player whose defensive impact is difficult to pinpoint with available metrics and who does not pop off the screen on that end of the floor. Jokic is lanky, but he’s not especially bouncy or quick. He does, however, use his incredible cognitive athleticism to his advantage, using spatial awareness and anticipation to plod right into the correct positions at the right time, and using his pattern recognition to vocally quarterback the defense for his teammates. His coach, Michael Malone, describes how Jokic’s cognitive athleticism impacts his team’s defense:

Malone is right: a lot of this stuff isn’t readily apparent using the eye test unless you know what you’re looking for, nor does it appear on any stat sheet, so box-score-based defensive analytics cannot reliably predict it. Consider these two sequences where Alex Caruso guards Devin Booker; Caruso becomes an agent of chaos on defense for nearly 30 seconds, anticipating Booker’s every twitch and tendency to cause him to take two low-quality shots, but there’s no recorded defensive stat to reflect that reality:

That doesn’t mean the impact is not felt. Having an elite defensive playmaker on an NBA team roster can keep almost any team afloat defensively. Having two can completely transform it. The best recent example of this is the 2021-22 Chicago Bulls who, despite deploying the defensively milquetoast Zach LaVine, DeMar DeRozan, and Nikola Vucevic, had a league-best defensive rating when Alex Caruso and Lonzo Ball, both of whom are elite defensive playmakers, shared the floor with them or when both of them were on the floor with any other lineup. With them off the floor, the Bulls had the worst defensive rating in the league. Not only did they flip the script on defense, their defensive playmaking and pinpoint passing juiced Chicago’s transition offense to league-best efficiency in points per possession on transition opportunities. 

Identifying Cognitive Athleticism 

But far too often, however, the impact of cognitively athletic defenders is not adequately recognized by large parts of the basketball community. A center with hard and soft athleticism that racks up blocks, for example, may be commonly viewed as defensively impactful because he pops off the screen. But if he’s chasing blocks while being out of position, or if opponents get into the paint at a higher rate because he’s not rotating correctly, the impact metrics can sometimes be overstated or deceiving. A center who is constantly in the right spot or rotating with precision may not get the opportunity to block as many shots because opposing players are deterred from ever getting to the paint in the first place, which is far more conducive to winning but harder to pin down on paper. Having an awareness of these factors can help us understand why both people and defensive metrics are so split on the defensive impact of players like Nikola Jokic, or why the little things Alex Caruso does often go unnoticed or underappreciated for so long. 

Next time you watch a player on defense this season, try and focus on identifying traits of cognitive athleticism. Or when you scan for the aforementioned defensive events, identify how the player generated the statistic. For example, when a defensive player gets screened, look for their footwork and positioning before, during, and after a screen is set. When a player gets a rebound, watch that player’s timing, positioning, anticipation, and box-outs that lead to the rebound. Were they just lucky, or did they create the defensive event through their proactivity? As always, metrics and statistics can be incredibly useful in evaluation, but they should primarily be used as tools to generate good questions rather than provide definitive answers. If a player generally thought to be a poor defender rates highly in one or across multiple defensive metrics, that should pique your interest, and vice versa. Don’t just take numbers at face value, investigate them. 

As we learn to recognize how cognitive athleticism manifests on defense, we’ll be able to better identify good defenders at all levels of the sport. Perhaps someday soon we’ll have metrics that can accurately measure how well a defender anticipates a pass or avoids a screen, but until then, as Tom Thibodeau loves to say, the magic is in the work. 

The post The Mind of a Defensive Menace: Cognitive Athleticism’s Impact on Defense appeared first on Swish Theory.

So, here we are. The season hasn’t even begun and the Dubs are scrambling to make up for injuries.

Couldn’t we at least have waited until January?

Regardless, this is the reality for the time being. Draymond Green is out for the entire preseason and highly questionable for the beginning of the regular season. The Warriors are rolling out a smaller version of the new-look squad for their first preseason game on Saturday against the Lakers. Chris Paul will be starting in the backcourt, and Klay Thompson will transition to guarding power forwards (4s) in this new-look unit.

So, how is this going to work for Klay? Let’s look at his new responsibilities, how he has fared in the past, and how he can translate in the near future to this defensive role

Post-Ups

First and foremost, post-ups are a trump card against the bigger wings of the league. If Klay is going to be guarding taller, bigger players, the more skilled ones of the bunch will look to get him in the post to isolate. But over the last two seasons, Klay has held up very well in the post.

On 95 post-ups over the past 2 seasons, Klay surrendered 0.979 points per possession, putting him squarely in the league average zone by PPP. But when you dive further into the tape, you can see why he’s a strong post defender for a wing.

He’s exceptional at leveraging his strength against larger guys, digging in to concede very little ground. You hardly ever see a post mismatch end with feet near the restricted area. He may allow a good amount of post fades or hook shots, but you’ll take those all day in a 1v1 size mismatch.

You’ll notice all three of these possessions come without Draymond on the floor, where Klay is ostensibly playing the 4. He gets a low base, fights with strength, and does his best to hold up as long as he can to let his help defenders read the play. This is his more conservative form of post defense, but he has some Iguodala-like strips when the opportunity presents itself.

Though he is capable of winning 1v1 in the post, his main job is to stay sturdy while help is sent. Golden State usually offers early help when he’s being posted up by some of the league’s premier post-up talents, like these clips you see against LeBron James below:

A lot of this is a result of strong team defense. Take the below clip for example, and notice how the help affects where the 264-pound Naz Reid chooses to go:

The idea here isn’t to leave Klay on an island all of the time and expect good results. There are plenty of wings and bigs he could handle in these 1v1 situations, but the wings and bigs showing help against the more prolific post-up threats helps him to be more effective on the whole, and ultimately become a solid-to-good post defender.

Screen Action Defense

This is where things get fuzzy. And by that, I mean very little changes, but some things will change and it’s hard to predict how.

There are very few possessions where Klay truly guards a roll man, due to A) the nature of Golden State’s switching scheme and B) the kind of assignments he draws along with the help he gets. If he’s guarding the man setting the screen, he will usually just defer to the switch and let the other defender make a decision on whether to send the double or defer to the other 3 helpers. Here’s a handful of examples of the quick switching:

That last clip against new teammate Dario Saric is the closest approximation to a real roll-man possession, with early help sent by his teammates. It still ends with a layup by The Homie, but you can see the general idea.

Smart teams will bring Klay into the screen action hoping he will switch, assuming the other defender is smaller and has to cover the bigger player. This version of Klay post-injuries is less adept at shading the ballhandler and allowing the screened defender to recover back to the ball, forcing more switches and more mismatches for his teammates. Whether he is guarding 4s, wings, or guards, this would be the case.

Most commonly, the bigs he is guarding that can shoot will try to pop or fade across the arc in order to take advantage of the switching and his lack of burst. This “55” double drag set by the Utah Jazz with Klay guarding Lauri Markkanen is designed to do just that, even if the result is subpar:

Klay tallied a total of 32 PNR defending possessions across the last two years, with many coming in the playoffs. Ultimately, teams will not employ this enough to take a big chunk out of his defensive impact in the regular season, and hopefully Draymond will have returned before Klay gets torched too often.

Rotations/Weak Side Protection

This is another potential problem area, where Klay put forth a very mixed bag on the tape. There were some solid possessions where Klay rotated on the back line from the weak side, using timeliness and verticality to affect opponent shots. He was even capable of getting some authoritative blocks when everything panned out:

Again, Klay can only go as far as a rotator as his teammates allow him to go. Notice the timing of Gary Payton II sinking inside to pressure Derrick Favors while Klay rotates onto the spinning Kenrich Williams. Everyone has to move on a string to help Jordan Poole with the mismatch, similar to what we saw above when Klay was tasked with guarding LeBron post-ups.

Unfortunately, his athletic limitations and tendency to overhelp/help late showed up all too often. Take the below possession, and see if you notice where Klay goes wrong, even though the play works out:

Klay makes the correct read to rotate from the corner as Keon Johnson rejects the screen, catching both Jonathan Kuminga and Otto Porter Jr. off-balance to create an easy path to the strong side of the rim. However, he rotates quite early, abandoning the corner shooter with a window where a pass can be made. Johnson, a relatively raw rookie, does not see the read but that doesn’t excuse the timing by Klay. I am tapping the “process over results” sign here.

Then we have possessions like these. Granted, the defense is scrambling a bit as Klay tries to navigate Steph rotating back to Moe Harkless in the corner, so it’s not exactly a normal gameflow. Yet he’s early on the jump and off-balance with his verticality, doing little to impede Damian Jones while giving him the foul to boot. Typically, Klay is really good at preemptively wrapping up bigs that he cannot contest and forcing them to earn it at the line, but this was not the case here.

I think overall the back line rotations are my biggest area of concern with Klay’s defensive potential if he will guard more 4s. This means more corner-based possessions and more responsibilities rotating from the weak side or acting as the low man. He needs to be paying attention, crisp with his timing, and making plays within the construct of the defense to turn good shots into worse ones.

Corner Digs and Tags

I came away pretty impressed with how Klay digs and tags out of the corners, which I would qualify as different than a full rotation. A dig is when a wing defender rotates over to impede a player driving on their side of the floor, and a tag impedes a roll man in a similar fashion, often before they get the ball to discourage a layoff pass and narrow the window. Thompson was largely successful in both of these areas over the last couple of seasons.

Primarily, Klay is going to be asked to tag the middle rolls off the weak side. But what happens when the ballhandler is clever enough to see this and make the skip pass across the defense?

Notice the timing of when Klay plants his foot inside, and how that gives him the spring to get back out to the perimeter and contest Bobby Portis’ shot. He struggles more if this player were to collect and drive off the closeout attack, but his responsibility with most spacing bigs is just to get out there in time. His ability to break down and contest without overtly conceding the drive improved in 22/23, and will be much needed in 23/24 if he gets tough assignments who can both shoot and put it on the deck.

The tagging aspect was solid, but a bit of a mixed bag like his rotations. Those quick and strong hands can make for some strong possessions, like you see below:

This one is especially relevant with Klay guarding a 4 in Aaron Gordon and using his dig to prevent a higher-value shot (whatever Jokic does driving off the short roll) over the Aaron Gordon corner 3. Ultimately, the Warriors will try to force non-stars to beat them from beyond the paint at every turn instead of letting the offensive focal points get the shots they want.

Rebounding

This is the opposite of ending on a high note. We know Klay hasn’t been the greatest rebounder in his career, and it’s not going to get better when guarding larger guys. I could only find a few clips of him trying to fight for rebounds with bigs, and they were not great:

I labeled the first clip “boxed out, didn’t matter” because the process is as solid as it can be from Klay, there’s just nothing he can do about Isaiah Stewart being a gigantic beef castle.

The technique in the second clip is where the criticism comes from; he easily concedes the inside position, doesn’t make an effort to force Julius Randle under the rim where he is less effective, and predictably loses the battle.

This is where his teammates will be counting on him. Nobody expects Klay to win 1v1 board battles against these bigs, but they expect him to do the little things necessarily so that Kevon Looney, Andrew Wiggins, Kuminga, and Saric have chances to come clean up the mess. More of the former clip, and less of the latter one, please.

Conclusions

Ultimately this comes down to what, if anything, changes in the system. If Klay is still switching everything, as the Warriors do, it has little bearing on screen actions. It also has put him in a position in the past to be the back line guy, the corner dig/tag guy, and the post-up mismatch guy. These are not unfamiliar concepts to Klay Thompson, and it’s hard to imagine he will be scrambling to keep up with any of these responsibilities.

The main question is how far the adjustments go without Draymond in the lineup. With CP3 in the backcourt instead of a taller guard like Moses Moody or a vertically explosive one like GP2, will he be asked to get more aggressive with his help? Should he be expecting less help in the post considering the personnel of the starting lineup? And how will the switching go on guard-big PNRs with Chris Paul at the point of attack?

We will start to get answers to these questions tomorrow. Yet I am still counting on Klay Thompson to be the defender he has always been, just with a different alignment of priorities.

The post Can Klay Guard 4s? appeared first on Swish Theory.

Yet there is no such thing as too much good defense, provided those players can maintain offensive cohesion. Outside of GP2, they’re not possessed with many strong backcourt defenders and need an increased quality on the wings and in the paint to make up for this deficiency. To get playing time at those spots, you need to show serious defensive gumption.

Moses Moody has been on the fringes of the rotation for the first two years of his career with Golden State and has yet another opportunity to solidify his spot in Steve Kerr‘s lineups. I will go in-depth on the defensive side of his game to answer one question: Is the defense good enough to demand minutes?

Methodology

We’ll break down tape and stats from his rookie and sophomore years to compare and contrast. I’ll separate everything into on/off-ball categories, doing my best to track his strengths and weaknesses in these individual areas and explaining why. Hopefully, by the end, you will have a better idea of what Moses can do, what he cannot, and what he might do.

Rookie Year

Let’s kick it off with his on-ball defense from his rookie season.

Hip/Foot Movement

Lower-body movement and coordination were the major defensive selling points for Moody coming out of Arkansas. He was a true artist with foot placement, hip-flipping, and using his lower body excellently to make up for a lack of traditional athleticism.

Making the jump from NCAA to NBA athleticism and dribble craft is something else entirely. You don’t have the same mistakes to pounce on or the same hesitations in which you can make up ground. These guys are decisive, explosive, and very shrewd with the ball. Even the average players can make you look silly if you aren’t prepared:

No disrespect (maybe a little) to Austin Rivers, but you don’t want him beating off the dribble if you want to stick. You can see how slow he is re-setting his hips and getting back into the play. This was a definite theme of his rookie season.

It would be SO easy to say “Hey, that’s Jalen Green, things happen” and excuse the athletic deficit. But this is the NBA, where a select few hundred of the 7 billion people on Earth come to play. You have to go up against the best athletes in the world on a nightly basis, and you have to learn to deal with them. The foot/hip skills that Moody consistently displayed in college did not translate during his rookie season.

Of the hundreds of perimeter possessions I watched from 2021/22, I found one wire-to-wire defensive stop. Just think about the nickname of the player he’s stopping in the clip below and you’ll see why it’s concerning.

And yes, that was called a foul. So the whole “on-ball” athleticism thing was not panning out.

One shiny silver lining: he was pretty amazing as a rookie for keeping his feet moving and getting superb positioning to draw charges. There were more than a few impressive instances, and the one below was perhaps my favorite. Keeping in front of Keldon Johnson with the proper separation is impressive by itself, and he sells the call like a real vet to boot:

It was a consistent theme of his game and showed up on the stat sheet. He tied for the team lead in charges drawn per 48 minutes with Draymond Green in his rookie season. If you can be in the same stratosphere as Draymond with any defensive stat, you must be doing something VERY right.

Hand Placement

One thing I did love to see was how he uses his hands. Armed with his +7 wingspan, Moody has serious length to bother guys in all kinds of situations. But with albatross-like power comes serious responsibility.

Most young players with that kind of length are constantly getting caught with their hands in the cookie jar. It’s so tempting to reach or swipe, and while Moody was caught his fair share, more often than not he showed an excellent sense of verticality.

With those hands splayed outwards and the lower body keeping him in pace with Jose Alvarado, there’s almost nowhere for the diminutive Pelicans guard to go. He gives no opportunity to draw contact while deterring the strong side of the rim and still manages to affect the reverse layup attempt. That’s the good stuff right there.

It also came into play when switched on to bigs. He has a great sense of when to grab and when to disengage in the post, and keeps his arms steady without swiping down to provide the maximum deterrence possible in a disadvantageous situation:

What impressed me most was his sense of when to gamble, and how often it paid off. The arm length and strength combination give him a lethal pair of clubs to dislodge drives. He recorded a ton of strip blocks on drives, perhaps most impressively on this possession against a mammoth Xavier Tillman:

If you’re going to have agility/straight-line speed issues, superior wingspan and hand placement is going to be a prerequisite to make a defensive impact. Moody checked both of those boxes relative to rookie wings and gives him a strong base to build on.

Trail Defense

Trail can be a difficult thing to evaluate because of how context-dependent it is. With the simple truth that an offensive player knows what he wants to do before you can figure it out, finding yourself in trail is common. The main questions are: can you do things to avoid getting in trail, and will you stay under control once there?

The above play is a good example of the margins a defender working in trail has to deal with. Moody is a step late reacting to Deni Avdija‘s movement towards the dribble handoff with Porzingis, setting off a chain of events. The screen further dislodges him, forcing Looney to play higher than he would like to prevent the drive. Moses is too far behind the play to switch on to Porzingis and prevent the roll in what is now effectively empty-side PNR, and Loon has to gamble as the sole strong side protector. Deni makes the read, and Kristaps gets an uncontested dunk. All this cascades from one missed step.

This fell under the more preventable type of play. In this league, you can’t give extra advantages to anybody. It’s not just a question of timing either; look at the angle Moody takes trying to intercept Lonnie Walker‘s curl and how it costs the team another uncontested dunk.

This circles back to the straight-line athletic deficiencies that Moses has. If you’re going to be a step slower than your man, angle, and timing mistakes cannot happen if you hope to stay in the play. Fortunately, Moody is possessed of inherent and learned traits that help him contain well in trail if he gets himself in the right position.

Two things allow Moses to make this play: the wingspan of a large coastal gull and excellent hand placement. Jaylen Brown is going to beat you clean off the dribble sometimes, but he’s never truly out of the play. He breaks down his left arm to keep some measure of pressure on Jaylen from behind as he goes directly into the help, but gives him just enough space as not to risk a lean-in foul draw. He knows Jaylen will have to bring the ball back in order to try and finish over Kevon, so all he has to do is time up his extension. The jump is timed perfectly to get his right arm at the apex and devours the shot attempt from behind the play in a Kawhi-like fashion. This is what ideal trail defense looks like for an athlete of Moses’ caliber.

Of all kinds of on-ball plays, I was most confident I would see improvement in trail going into Season 2. He has the footwork skill, arm length, and hand placement skill to be an elite recovery defender after getting behind the play. It was just about repetition, adjustment, and eventual growth. We’ll get into whether or not that improvement happened later on.

Closeouts

This was another tough thing to navigate and involves a lot of subjectivity. A big factor here is how much the Warriors ask of their wings in terms of paint protection and how it affects their ability to recover to contest outside shots. Here are a couple of plays that show what I’m referring to:

In the top clip, Moody has to shade towards the paint off the corner with Kuminga playing high to deny the Brunson drive. It may seem like he’s abandoning his man, but the team will trade open corner threes for open layups if the initial POA defenders cannot contain the action. So he is making the right play, but it makes him look bad. Though he is a tad late with his help in the second clip trying to dig the ballhandler, he still helps to contain the drive and force a deep three from Rajon Rondo. A preferable outcome to what a Russ/Dwight Howard PNR could generate.

This isn’t to say that all late Moody closeouts were a product of their defensive alignment. He had moments of losing his edge and forgetting to move with purpose, and they led to open shots more often than not:

Yes, it’s much easier to slack off when up 36 in the 4th quarter, but this was no isolated incident; just the most egregious.

Mostly I came away impressed with how Moody navigated offering help without sacrificing his ability to provide a closeout. He showed the wherewithal needed to process who he is guarding vs. what he is trying to prevent. Take a look at the tag and recover below against Memphis:

With Jordan Poole directly in the action, Moody knows he will more likely than not have to provide help, assuming (correctly) that Andre Iguodala will have to play up to the level of the screen. Jaren has empty space to roll into unless Moses can provide some kind of deterrence with his tag, which he goes. Tyus Jones, one of the better playmakers in the league, anticipates and hits the skip to the far corner. But Moses is more than ready.

Watch how he chops his feet as he tags Jaren, staying physically ready for a quick change of direction. He’s off to the corner in two quick strides to close down Ziaire Williams. Again, the chopping of his feet allows him to prepare for a drive and ultimately stops Williams from attacking a very strong closeout. There is give-and-take still; the pull-up three is still available, which Ziaire takes and makes, but he was a 28% three-point shooter at the time. Golden State will trade that shot for a rolling Jaren slam all day, and the quality closeout prevented any kind of baseline drive from developing.

Here’s another example of providing great help off of a non-shooting threat and following up with a beautifully controlled closeout:

Again chopping the feet while tagging the roller gives him a platform to close back out quickly. Instead of a foot chop going into the closeout, he plants hard with his right foot in an attempt to deny Josh Christopher the middle. A rapid flip of the hips counters JayGup continuing to go down the middle, and he provides excellent defense on the drive. Even though Gup gets 2 feet in the paint and ends up scoring, denying both the three and the rim look with a healthy closeout is what is asked of him.

One thing I really enjoyed about watching Moses close out on the perimeter is how crafty he is at recognizing situations and giving himself little advantages. I am enamored with his “slingshot” trick, a clever way to toe the line of committing an off-ball foul to create a momentum advantage that makes up for his lack of burst.

Notice how he uses the non-contesting hand to wrap himself around the screener, helping to balance himself and ever-so-slightly shift more of his momentum into the closeout while remaining under control. If he grabs too hard it could be a costly foul. He’s too wily for that, applying just the right amount of force to create a positive result without drawing the attention of the zebras.

A last thing on his smarts when closing out: transition offense. Recognizing when to leak out after closing down the ball takes a long time to master, and the fact that Moody did it often was quite impressive. It’s a simple and effective way to generate transition offense by opening up outlets without sacrificing team rebounding if done right, as he does below:

On the whole, I’d say Moody was pretty superb at closing down the ball for a rookie wing. Three-pointers aren’t going anywhere, and even if it’s not the sexiest form of defense you have to be proficient and smart about it to stick on the perimeter. Moody showed an excellent baseline of skill in this regard in his debut season, a very promising sign for his defensive future.

On-Ball Wrap Up

There was a lot of good and a lot of bad. Moody really cleaned up in the technical areas, especially with foot movement and hand placement, in addition to some flash plays with his hips and swipe timing on the ball. But the lack of true stopping is hard to get past, and it led to him being a negative overall on-ball defender in his rookie season. Fortunately, you can see a skill base being developed, and it wasn’t all for nothing.

The main concern: athletic limitations are much, MUCH harder to improve on than technical limitations. You can teach footwork, hand placement, and much more over time but you cannot teach the athleticism that Jonathan Kuminga or Gary Payton II have. This is something to monitor.

Off-Ball:

To me, off-ball defense in Moody’s role is much more simplified. Some of the on-ball components are baked into this, and since I chose to put closeouts under the on-ball category (truly, you could go either way on this) it leaves us with only a few crucial parts to cover.

Tracking Man

For a rookie wing, this guy knew how to keep his head on a swivel.

According to Synergy Sports, Moses Moody did not allow a single shot attempt off a cut in his rookie season. I will, unfortunately, have to dispute this – I found one (1) shot attempt he conceded off a cut:

Considering it was the last 2 minutes of a 40-point blowout, I’ll let that one slide.

If you paid close attention to a lot of his on-ball clips, you’ll notice how Moody is great at keeping his head moving between man and ball and ensuring he moves his feet to stay between his man and the rim when playing off the ball. That is about 99% of the battle in preventing easy off-ball buckets: attention, attention, footwork, and more attention.

Watch this possession below and how frequently his head moves:

This part of his game was absolutely dialed. No notes.

Rotating/Helping

The answer to the question “What is Moody’s defense like in rotation?” is “yes”, to quote Mr. AVO Nekias Duncan.

He seemed to get just about everything right. This is where the technical proficiency and great sense of timing can really be shown off, and boy did he show off at times.

Getting thrown into PNR roll-man defense situations with Jordan Poole defending the ballhandler? Not a problem:

Rotating out of the corners to prevent drives? Sure thing.

What about last-second switches onto cutting bigs? Covered, and then some.

Just look at how he high-points the ball to obliterate the layup, then immediately gets vertical to prevent the putback attempt. Explosive stocks potential AND a technically sound follow-up play? You have my heart, Moses.

The below possession was easily my favorite:

He shades off Kleber in the corner (feet chopping, of course) to discourage the initial Brunson drive, and the kickout puts the whole defense in rotation. This gets Luka going downhill against Steph, and Kleber has only to execute a strong “Gortat” screen to prevent Moses from interfering with a clean layup. But Moody can feel it coming and shakes the dubiously legal screen at the last minute to punch the ball out of Dončić’s hands. It’s perfection.

This kind of rotational impact from a true wing is SO impressive, mixing the physical tools and smarts necessary to put himself in the right spots and create event plays. I think it was by far the most outstanding part of his defensive game in his rookie season, and it left me wanting to see much more.

Rebounding

This was the main part of Moody’s off-ball game that I found lacking. Despite his constant responsibilities as a low man sluffing in from the corners, he recorded a paltry 8.4% defensive rebounding rate, in the 22nd percentile amongst wings. That was a disappointment to me considering his length, but the problems showed up on the tape. It wasn’t for a lack of trying, he was just physically outmatched at times:

He’s just not physically strong enough to hold up against big forwards like Grant Williams, and considering his defensive role as a corner helper, that was primarily the type of guy he was tasked with boxing out.

At times, he was still able to show off the technical skill and vertical athleticism/wingspan to make up for his lack of size. He has a knack for high-pointing the ball (reaching the ball at the apex of his jump) which you can see in this battle for the zenith with Josh Hart:

He also does the small things that I really appreciate in a wing rebounder. As always, Moses is using active feet and court awareness to his advantage:

As the shot goes up, he’s moving his feet from a lateral position to get closer to the rebound area while staying ready in case an offensive rebound and quick kickout happens. It puts him in a spot to help the Warriors with a rebounding numbers advantage while doing his best to prepare for open second-chance threes.

It’s a major theme in his game across the board, in case you haven’t noticed: smarts and technical skill make up for athleticism in many ways.

We have now finished the half marathon known as his rookie season tape. But this is a full 26.2. Strap in.

Sophomore Year

On-Ball

Boy, did we have some drastic changes in this category. Let’s jump right into what made him such a different player on the ball vs. his rookie season.

Hip/Foot Movement

Before we dig into his defensive stopping from last season, I encourage you to go back to the beginning for his struggles, and who his most impressive stop came against.

After digesting that Slo-Mo possession, prepare yourself for what comes next.

Three of these guys would have blown past him like Mark Few through a DUI checkpoint. Look how he seems to be the aggressor on these possessions, not falling behind but utterly containing these drives with his hands and feet. Though LaMelo is not the most explosive athlete in the league, he has excellent handle and change-of-direction skills, but that didn’t seem to be a problem for Moses.

These weren’t the only outstanding point-of-attack possessions he put on tape. Especially in the playoffs, real clamps were present all year. Kevin Huerter tried to take him off the dribble a few times in the first-round series against Sacramento, and it went rather poorly for Red Velvet:

Notice how quickly he’s flipping his hips to counter these crossovers. The difference in his flexibility and hip speed is night and day compared to his rookie season. As I said before, athletic development is one of the most difficult things to achieve, yet he clearly took a step in this regard. How did this happen?

Like a Silicon Valley divorcee, Moses found self-improvement through yoga. I’d also like to take a moment to acknowledge Kevon Looney being credited for athletic improvement. That’s my king right there.

That newfound athleticism led to some improved screen navigation as well. I found myself wowed at how quickly he went from dying on a high proportion of screens to flying around them as if they weren’t there. Watch the subtle shift of the hips below and how little time the screen costs him. It’s hard to not be impressed.

It’s a good re-screen by Mo Bamba that should create separation. Moses simply slides over it like a trout over a riverbed, hardly noticing the impediment. That is quite different from a rookie season where he simply did not have the short-area agility necessary to make these plays. Maybe I should try yoga.

Of course, there was the typically great foot movement and body control that made him a great on-ball charge taker from the get-go:

The hip movement only enhanced footwork and solid foot speed, turning him into a different beast with his lower body and unlocking a new level of on-ball prowess. And that’s before we even get to his hand/arm usage.

Hand Placement

Much like his rookie season, this was an area where Moses excelled on the tape.

There were definitely sore spots with getting a bit too in-your-face with his hands, resulting in unnecessary fouls. But on the whole, I came away dazzled with how good he is at verticality and knowing when to gamble.

The clips under hip/foot movement contained lots of impressive hand usage, which you are free to go back and look for. I loved seeing possessions where he could quickly change his hand positioning to adjust to the situation, as he does on this Terry Rozier corner drive:

He flashes quickly in case he has to contest the pull-up, drawing his hands back quickly to prevent a lean-in foul. He smoothly checks with the left hand before going vertical as Rozier begins to drive, never swiping down and focusing on containment instead of outright stopping. Rozier does get two feet in the paint and hit the turnaround, but that’s excellent process by Moses not conceding the easier shot by keeping his hands where they need to be.

That impressive hand placement and activity frequently paid off with event plays on the ball. I love seeing a guy go full wacky inflatable tube man to deter passing on the ball and getting rewarded for it.

Happy feet, timing, activity. All things that will endear you to a defensive-first coaching staff.

Though the risks did not pay off sometimes, there were echoes of Death Lineup-era Iguodala when he committed. He yoinked the ball with a high frequency on the ball with clean strips and hand strength:

Look how precise that timing is. With Fox, he waits for the hang dribble before pouncing; on Hayes, he perfectly anticipates the pull-up.

I’d be remiss if I omitted the instances where the gambles didn’t pay off. You need to see the bad to appreciate the good, and there was bad:

But that’s not to say his hand skills were a detractor to his game. Far more often than not he was making impact plays with his gambles, and did an excellent job keeping verticality on the ball and denying passing lanes. This, combined with his newfound athleticism, made him quite dangerous on the ball.

Trail Defense

The athletic improvements led to far less avoidable trail defense for Moody in his sophomore season. This unlocked a new level of his proficiency in trail, both in preventing it and executing it when thrust into the situation.

Getting around screens in trail was certainly a problem. A lot of anticipation, foot speed, and agility goes into perfectly locking into trail. He wasn’t able to put it together on possessions against some great off-ball movers, and the tape showed it:

Working out the angles takes time and repetition. As the season went on, he put together stronger and stronger showings in trail.

Notice how quickly he anticipates the action, scans the floor, and then locks his eyes on Pat Connaughton. He takes a great angle and keeps his feet in motion (in sync with his hands per usual) to close down the drive and block the shot.

It’s pretty ridiculous how often he ended up blocking shots in trail. That wingspan and anticipation made for some serious event creation in a disadvantageous situation, which most wing defenders cannot physically do.

Bonus points for ripping the ball away from Landale to deny the second chance. The below possession against Devin Booker felt so casual that it made my jaw drop:

There are going to be instances where he gets knocked off the ball by screens. Guys end up behind the play all the time. If Moody can continue this athletic development and continues to his hands and feet to get back in the play at a high level, he could really thrive in trail going forwards.

Closeouts

The major issues with Moody’s closeouts in his rookie year were A) heavy paint responsibility and B) not being able to stay under control while aggressive. Despite being in many of the same situations, he showed marked improvement closing down the ball for the entire season.

The short-area agility allowed him to get much closer to the ball without sacrificing drives. Not only did he contain drives, but he also managed some outstanding recoveries.

In both of these clips, he does an incredible job breaking his feet down in order to contain dribble relocations. The first one impressed me most because of the quick tag on Adebayo before closing down, again emphasizing his responsibilities in rotation. The second is just flat-out silly, completely flipping his momentum around and finding an ever-so-small block window to deny the Malik Beasley three.

We’ll go back to his rookie year closeouts out of low man rotations to emphasize how different he is with his athleticism and decisive movement. See if you can guess which comes in which season:

The loading of his inside foot makes all the difference. Instead of being high in the air and unprepared to swing his momentum around, Moody breaks himself down in the second clip expecting to close out into the corner. With the momentum on his side, he’s able to quickly spring at Keegan Murray for a quality shot contest late in the clock.

Here’s another instance of him rotating to cover the big man and closing out. Only this time, he completely runs his man off the line and *still* recovers to contest the middy.

Not only was Moses able to maintain his level of activity in the paint, denying drives as the low man and tagging rollers from the wings, but he turned those possessions into strong closeouts. Yet another part of his on-ball game is falling into place, all because of…yoga??

On-Ball Wrap Up

This was about as night and day it gets compared to his rookie season.

Impressive stops. Much fewer athletic limitations. Better foot speed to accentuate his footwork skill and elite hand placement. It was all there. I don’t have words for the changes he underwent; it was just astounding.

Off-Ball:

Home stretch, people. Stay locked in.

Tracking Man

Yet again, Synergy did chart Moody with zero shot attempts or free throws conceded out of cuts. For those keeping score at home, that means he allowed one (1) basket off cuts through the first 1,500 minutes of his NBA career. Pretty good if you ask me!

He’s constantly keeping his head in motion and keeping active, preparing for all scenarios to deny his man. What stood out the most was the level of activity he was able to manage while also keeping track of his own man.

While still in a position to cover a skip pass to Lonnie Walker, Moody recognizes the brief opening for Anthony Davis at the nail and moves at lightning speed to blow the play up. Awareness, anticipation, and great hand strength to boot. This is awesome stuff.

Positioning is a major part of the equation. On this below possession, he offers nail help to deny Fred VanVleet the drive while staying between the ball and his man (Siakam). At the last second, he commits on the drive to force the kick and closes down with the idea of preventing the drive. Leaving the 32% shooter open to deny the paint touch is great stuff, and he keeps his feet sliding to avoid allowing the open three unnecessarily before FVV is fully in drive mode.

Moody’s superb attention to detail made him a great off-ball tracker the entire season. This is one part of his game I have no concern over going forward.

Rotating/Helping

Once again, Moses looked first-rate in rotation for a wing.

I’m absolutely enamored by the way he gets vertical when contesting shots in rotation. He jumps into the opponent in a Goldilocks fashion (not too hard, not too soft) and does everything he can to affect the shot without fouling.

When he got his timing and jump apex right, it produced some explosive blocked shots off the ball. He can close gaps in a hurry and use his condor arms to erase layups from the weak side.

You can also consider me a huge fan of how he navigates being the roll man defender in pick-and-roll/screen actions. Those arms can make up ground quickly, and he can position himself very well to make an impact:

The footwork and positioning skill brought the usual amount of charges drawn, including ones in rotation as you see below against Jimmy Butler:

In this switch-heavy scheme, it’s very important to have players that can make an impact either navigating the screen or switching on to a big. Not only is Moody capable of doing so, but his processing speed to recognize when to switch is outstanding for his age/experience level. Count the switches he makes in the below clip, all coming one after the other:

There’s not much more to say about his rotational skill compared to his rookie season, which was already well above average. Moses is just chock-full of smarts and court awareness with the physical tools to make an impact, and you could see it whenever he got on the floor.

Rebounding

Save the worst for last, I guess?

It wasn’t for a lack of trying. I love how Moody checked his immediate area to find a body, and often looked like a strong rebounder in isolated situations. You can see that impact below.

He gets really low going for his boxouts, applying the football mentality of “low man wins.” The vertical spring gets him there for high-pointed boards, allowing him to beat guys like Bam Adebayo to the zenith of the ball.

Unfortunately, this did not translate into an overall improvement in his defensive rebounding impact. I wouldn’t call going from the 22nd percentile to the 27th a leap as much as simple statistical variance. But if rebounding is going to be his defensive weak spot, I will absolutely take it.

Conclusions

I went into this article with very little expectation of improvement, and frankly thought there would be much less to uncover than this. What I found was a player completely reversing his defensive forecast while building on existing strengths.

His off-ball defense (outside of the rebounding) is damn good for a wing, and this only got better going into his second year. That’s not going to keep you in the lineup, but it’s a great thing to have. The problem from his rookie season was that no amount of rotational impact off the ball can make up for being a poor on-ball defender. Wings have to make their money at the point of attack, not on the low block.

The improved athleticism unlocked everything going into his second season. He was aggressive and fully shutting down drives instead of merely containing. The foot movement and agility complemented his game excellently, and the hand placement/strength combined with his overall discipline looked fantastic. Now he can pair a strong on-ball game with his quality off-ball game. That may just be enough to keep Moody in the lineup on a nightly basis while he fleshes out his offensive role.

It’s worth pointing out that growth is never truly linear. This isn’t 2K; sometimes you regress, other times you stay stagnant before making a jump, and sometimes you don’t grow at all. The point of this article isn’t to create a forecast of a future All-Defensive player. Exploring outcomes, both positive and negative, is always the name of the game. Keep your mind open to all player development possibilities and you will never be surprised.

By the end of this piece, I had completely changed my mind about Moses’ defensive potential. The leap in athleticism is opening new doors to new outcomes, and I cannot wait to see what he puts on the tape next year.

Thank you for finishing this marathon with me.

The post The Defensive Growth of Moses Moody appeared first on Swish Theory.

Yes, AD’s defense was the takeaway from Game One, to film-watchers, to casuals, even to nationally televised talking heads. (Even while, by the way, scoring 30 points.) Accumulating four highlight-level blocks will do that. But all that well-deserved praise for Davis’ defense may still not be enough –  the degree to which he warped the floor vs. the Dubs cannot be overstated. Lakers’ defenders were practically escorting various Warriors to the paint, knowing they had AD behind them. And I don’t just mean, say, icing ball screens and funneling ball-handlers away from the middle of the court. Look at D’Angelo Russell allowing Steph Curry a whole side of the floor on Davis’ final, game-saving block:

This is what the Warriors are contending with, likely the main thrust for the remainder of this series. How the hell can they pull AD away from the paint, or work for shots that aren’t under the threat of being sent into the third row?

They’re going to have to get creative, particularly because they can’t truly run a five-out offense, or at least one with five spacers on the floor. It’s not just that Davis can disregard Draymond Green and/or Kevon Looney in help, although he certainly can to great effect – just look at the above block. Of perhaps greater import is Davis sagging off those two when they have the ball at the top of the key, looking to initiate offense. Of course, many have done the same, but AD’s special blend of length and mobility turn things up a notch:

As seen above, Lakers defenders aggressively top-locked various Warriors in Game One without fear of getting back-cut to the rim. Even while “guarding” the ball, Davis is waiting for cutters in the lane. Dribble-handoffs, then, simply aren’t an option, and it’s not like challenging AD in the mid-range or at the rim is a preferable alternative. But, even when the Dubs did get into handoffs or pick-and-rolls, Davis wasn’t sagging back in the paint, but rather playing much closer to the level:

To that end, the Lakers, Dennis Schroder and Jarred Vanderbilt in particular, did an excellent job of getting over screens in Game One, as seen above. It also helps that Davis doesn’t have to worry about the screener rolling to the rim and catching a lob because, well, is there a Warrior that can do that?

This all made it an absolute treat to watch Steve Kerr figure out how to produce quality shots in the midst of Davis’ singularity. Sound on:

So, while AD did stroll into the Chase Center and threw a haymaker, the Warriors did figure out how to land some counterpunches. Kerr went away from Green-Looney lineups as the game progressed, which will likely continue as the series wears on, stretching out the court and allowing Golden State to play faster. That came to fruition in the 14-0 run they went on toward the end of the fourth quarter, nearly snatching a win from the jaws of defeat. The Dubs, as they always are, are coming.

This brings me to the LeBron James question. As the Warriors gradually space the floor and make Davis just a little uncomfortable on defense, stretching him out as much as they can, LBJ’s secondary rim protection becomes even more vital. The last time L.A. made it this far in the postseason, it was The Bubble, and LeBron played at an All-Defense level alongside AD’s generational level. It propelled the 2020 Lakers to all-time-great-playoff-defense status. How much of that juice can The King conjure up this time around?

In Game One, there were fantastic signs, plays that flashed back to The Bubble, where Davis would construct the fort and Bron would detail it:

There were also plays where LeBron would revert to regular season mode, getting back-cut or, more importantly, failing to make a backline rotation when the Warriors successfully pulled Davis out of the paint:

Anthony Davis is going to shoulder an enormous defensive load in this series, there’s no two ways about it. And, if Game One was any indication, he’ll do it phenomenally. Steve Kerr and Golden State will adjust, however; they’ll scheme up ways to mess with Davis, whether avoiding him entirely or sneaking behind him to get to the rim. This is where the defense of LeBron James comes into the equation. It feels silly to question him, but it also feels silly to dismiss the notion that, particularly on one good foot, he won’t be able to be the secondary rim protector that the Lakers need, the force that has made their defense so dominant in the past.

Yes, a Game One is often a feel-out, and Tuesday night’s Lakers-Warriors contest was no different. But it taught us a lot about how the rest of this hugely anticipated series is going to go, what and who to look out for. Thursday night should be a blast.

The post Anthony Davis Is Undeniable, but the Lakers Will Need More appeared first on Swish Theory.