As people, we lie a lot. Multiple times per day. Slip lies into conversation for small social gains, sometimes for no reason. The difference between a truth and a lie is thin. Often fictitious. Think George Costanza: “It’s not a lie if you believe it.” Or the fact that human beings are extremely poor at telling when another is lying, even professionals whose job it is to recognize a lie. We come up with strategies to tell when someone is lying. Eyes darting, furtive. Sweating. Looking through their phone. Or if you’re Shakira, reading the truth in someone’s hips.
Well, if you’re in the NBA, Shakira isn’t far off. There’s a lot you can read in someone’s hips. They can’t change direction as quickly as feet, eyes, shoulders. Hips are the hardest body-part to manipulate into a lie. They can also be attacked. Offenders try to brush a shoulder past defenders’ hips. They can be a tool used to bump opponents, hold them off, fight for space without extending an arm.
There’s much more to hips. They’re vital, life-giving. A fall, a broken hip, often also means the opposite. We don’t think about them, in life or in basketball, as much as we should. Let’s fix that. This week in Minute Basketball: hips.
Looking back - Folk
Hey, I was right!
It’s not particularly hard to highlight what makes Damian Lillard good at basketball, because he does so much. But, I highlighted his gorgeous pick n’ roll play in last weeks “look ahead” and suggested that we haven’t yet reached the fever pitch of his game. I posited that he could potentially unleash hell on the Lakers bigs. This culminated in a drag screen + logo triple for Lillard as he put the Blazers up 92-89 over the Lakers on their way to stealing game 1 from the Western Conference’s top seed.
LeVert Don’t Lie
When we play basketball, there are certain tells our body gives up to defenders. A sign of what we want to do and where we want to go. It’s why so many players who dominate the ball with a mix of speed and balance have so much success getting to the free throw line. There’s a constant exchange of fakes and tells that are transferred back and forth between the offensive and defensive players, and the best players are always a step, head fake, or crossover ahead. Want to disrupt an offensive player? Keep one hand up and stay in front of their chest. Want to creep by a defender with regularity? Attack the feet, and attack the hips.
Some players are remarkably good at reading an opponent's body language. Like a hunter notices the slightest shift in the wind, players like Caris LeVert see the slightest shift in body language and immediately punch the gap. His particularly shifty brand of play sends players off tilt with regularity. This can even extend to the second level of defense - either as a playmaker or a rim-runner - he can diagnose the moving rotations with pace, and that’s in large part why he was able to dish out 15 assists against one of the NBA’s best defenses in Game 1.
Credit to the Nets for organizing these possessions with Joe Harris on the weak side so Kyle Lowry couldn’t tag the roll man. However (comma) the special stuff comes from LeVert who does a fantastic job of making Gasol commit into no man’s land, and pops two easy lobs up to Allen. As soon as Gasol swivels those hips sideways, he’s dead in the water. The margin for error goes way up for LeVert because Gasol goes sideways, decreasing the amount of air space he can cover as Allen streaks to the rim behind him. If those passes go up a little faster, Gasol just has to drop his right foot back and he’s on Allen’s tail. This way, the two points are all but assured. High level reads for LeVert, who’s getting his first taste as a go-to guy in the playoffs.
Here’s a read from both LeVert and Luwawu-Cabarrot (who was excellent in Game 1). To this point, Siakam has watched LeVert abuse Gasol on the hedge a couple times and steps in for a moment to stall LeVert out. Only, Luwawu Cabarrot recognizes this and makes a swift basket cut. A pass fake to where Siakam thought his check was, and the passing lane opens right up. LeVert, who is elastic, rotates his hips and violently swings his arms from the right side of his body to the left before whipping a pass into the bucket-bound Luwawu-Cabarrot. Awesome stuff.
LeVert was so dangerous with space to create that the Raptors started blitzing every screen action he was involved in, in Game 2. To LeVert’s credit, he still made great plays as a playmaker, but to the Raptors credit, sticking Siakam on him really limited his scoring ability. A nice game of chess. Punch and counterpunch, as it were.
It is that control, though. The attention to detail, while remaining the human version of a Danny Brown song. A rapid, herky-jerky, syncopated joy ride, that fuels everything special that LeVert brings to the basketball court. Funky two hand floaters through contact, a head that drops as low as hips, and an out of control dribble that’s never truly out of control. And in the middle of it all sits those god damn hips.
Looking forward - Zatzman
Luka Doncic
The Dallas Mavericks - Los Angeles Clippers series, currently 1-1, will swivel on Doncic’s hips. The Clippers opened the first game with Pat Beverly guarding Doncic. The Clippers could have used Kawhi Leonard, one of the greatest defensive players of all time, but Doc Rivers has thus far saved Leonard as a counter. The Clippers do switch aplenty, so Leonard still saw plenty of time on Doncic in both games, but Beverly was the main defender, at least to start.
Beverly is small, but the appeal of Beverley was that his lateral movement on defense is fantastic. Sure, Doncic can shoot over Beverley, but Doncic shot only 31.6 percent on pull-up 3s in the regular season, meaning the Clips are happy to concede the shot. Doncic shot one-of-five on pull-ups in game one.
As another plus, Beverley attacks offenders, taking away space to dribble close to the body. And it worked initially. Doncic committed five turnovers in the first two minutes. He was unable to fool Beverly with his hips.
Watch the slow motion again; Doncic’s hips offer no subtlety. He is always clearly attacking forward, with no threat of a side-to-side move or stepback. The Clippers key in on his drive and strip him, beating Doncic to his spot.
Later, Doncic discovered his advantage over Beverley. The smaller defender was overly aggressive, trying to beat Doncic to his spots, and Doncic took advantage of that. In this clip, Doncic uses his entire body -- body, not his hips! -- to effectively lie to Beverly, convincing him that he’s going right-to-left. Watch the slow motion: Doncic has his whole body facing in the direction of the screen, other than his hips. Beverly jumps out to ice the screen, denying Doncic access, but the ball-handler shifts direction immediately forward; he never stopped facing the rim with his hips. Look at the arrows; his feet face the screen, but his hips never stop facing the rim. His momentum shift from side-to-side to forward is fluid and leaves Beverley in the dust.
In the second half of the first game, as well as the second game, the Clippers used Paul George and especially Marcus Morris to guard Doncic. They are both the same size as Doncic, or close enough, so the appeal was obvious. And in the first game, Doncic struggled to trick Morris. His bevy of moves, hip tricks, and crosses couldn’t create easy looks. Yes, he scored 42 points. Not all of them were easy.
That possession, by the way, ended in a Doncic triple. So he can still score even when his hips ain’t foolin’ anyone. But he’s at his best freezing opponents who are unable to differentiate the truth from the lie because of Doncic’s refusal to commit his hips.
In game two, Doncic eliminated any and all competitors by remaining a threat at all times. His hips drew three fouls on his primary defender, Paul George, in the first quarter. (Samson wrote that joke, unless you find it funny, in which case I wrote that joke.) The Clippers used a ton of zone following to limit the screening actions that freed Doncic in the lane. The Mavs responded by hitting 13 triples on only 29 attempts, as Kristaps Porzingis and Tim Hardaway Jr. were phenomenal. Dallas’ bench was solid and efficient. Supporting them all, though, was Doncic, who finished with 28 points, 7 assists, and only 1 turnover and 17 shot attempts. The Clippers could stop neither him nor his hips.
The Clips probably won’t use Beverly or, as happened here and there in the second game, Reggie Jackson, on Doncic again. Doncic, by the way, vaporized Lou Williams in a switch late in the fourth of game two. He’s figured out all of LA’s guards, and it did not take him long. More likely is that Morris, George, and Leonard will see the majority of possessions going forward. For the Clippers to have some chance at stopping Doncic, Rivers should employ his Leonard counter immediately. Only Leonard has the strength to hold off Doncic’s hips in the lane and the length and speed to bother his dribble and his shot. However, the Mavericks use an endless carousel of ball screens to free Doncic from any specific defender. That’s smart, and they can continue to magnify the complexity, adding Spain screens behind the initial actions, or even moving pick-and-rolls to the side or wing to attack softer spots in a zone. Dallas has counters to keep Doncic’s hips firmly attacking. If the Clippers play any guard in crunch time of future games, he will be a target.
Doncic is particularly good at keeping himself a threat in multiple ways during complex actions. That ability is limited in straight isolations; there’s no second threat to manifest. But during ball screens, Doncic can sell using and rejecting the screen at the same time. His hips are that good, and they’re strong enough to hold off anyone to get off his short-range and deadly accurate floater. He can snake, step-back, or pull back and isolate against a new defender. There are plenty of options. Only his hips will whisper the truth of his intent. The Clippers need to start listening to those bad boys. But Doncic will keep defenders guessing, hips swiveling in all directions yet always facing the rim, preparing to fillet the defense. Doncic’s hips tell the truth to his defenders, but so too will they hint honesty to you, the viewer, going forward. Make sure you pay attention.
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