Minute Basketball: Pockets

Pockets! More elusive in womens clothing than in mens. Citation - a woman showing off her dress and excitedly saying: “And look! It has pockets!”. A thing to hold something in. Is it conveyance? Is it protection? Is it the little pocket inside the pocket that’s supposed to house change??? The back left pocket that I’ve never used? The Herculean work of George Costanza’s back pocket - yes, the one that held onto his gargantuan wallet. 

In Louis’ case with Luka: it’s protection. Maybe Luka is the pocket itself? And his shooting stroke is the smaller pocket within, the one that holds change, and the ball is the change! Because he’s dropping dimes all the time! Okay, sorry. He’ll talk about Luka and pockets and it’ll be much better than what I said. 

For me, and I hope this isn’t too revealing about who I am, well… pockets are something to steal from. Read on, and enjoy! This week in Minute Basketball: POCKETS!

Zatzman - Shooting Pockets

It’s been almost a year since I last wrote about Luka Doncic deciding a playoff series between the Dallas Mavericks and Los Angeles Clippers. Their bubble series was tied 1-1, and Doncic’s ability to roast his primary defender determined both games. Defenders couldn’t get a handle on his intent, and his hips were the key reason why.

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.

This season, Doncic remains the determinant of the series. His hips remain dominant. Last series, he averaged 31 points a game on great efficiency in a loss. This year he’s up to 35 points a game on even better efficiency. The difference lies in his shooting pocket. 

Doncic hit 16 of 44 triples against the Clippers in 2020. That’s extremely good -- 36.4 percent good, to be exact -- but it meant a jumper was less deadly for Doncic than a drive. It was a win for the defense when Doncic didn’t cross the arc. That was because if his gather was a few inches high or to the left, his shot could be far off the mark.

That’s not true so far in this series. The Mavericks lead 2-0, and as much as the world wants to use that fact to ridicule the Clippers, this series is about Doncic. He’s shot 10 of 24 so far from deep, which is 41.7 percent. Why? The biggest reason is that he’s changed how he enters his shooting pocket. 

Last year, Doncic’s pocket was remarkably tight. Some players (hi Steph!) don’t have shooting pockets and can swing into their shooting motion no matter the relative positions of the ball and their bodies. Others have a shooting motion as specific as pregame warmups. Paul Pierce, for example, was a knockdown shooter once he got the ball in his pocket. But he only shot 36.8 percent from deep for his career in part because he was not as elite a shooter when his gather came from an unusual spot. 

For the early stage of his career, Doncic looked more Pierce than Curry. That’s less true at the moment. First and foremost, Doncic has widened his gather a few inches to the left. That may not sound like a big deal, but it means the rare situation that virtually guaranteed a miss from deep is now almost surely the opposite. 

In a single playoff series, the difference between 41 percent and 36 percent shooting from deep is just a small handful of shots. Yet it’s also the difference between how defenses organize to stop you. And Doncic has the Clippers chasing their tails because of his ability to hit shots from within a slightly larger pocket. 

Most of all though, Doncic has sharpened his ability to gather the ball directly into the heart of his pocket. Doncic may not be Curry, and his pocket remains tight, but that isn’t such a big deal when he’s a mastermind at getting the ball into his pocket. The number of players who can gather into the pocket with this level of poise and speed can be counted on one hand.

Doncic has such incredible touch and mechanics that when the ball starts in the pocket, it doesn’t really matter what else is going on. He can be, say, tightly contested, drifting to his left, shooting a runner from behind the arc off one foot. Oh, wait, that happened!

Right now, the Clippers have no chance against Doncic. I wrote last year that Pat Beverley and then Marcus Morris had chances guarding Doncic, at least for a time. That couldn’t feel further from the truth today. The Clippers have tried playing drop, soft switches, blitzing -- they’ve almost emptied the chamber at Doncic. But like Neo in the Matrix, Doncic has twisted his way around each and every defensive bullet. Much of that is, as it was then, because of his hips. But his improvement to yet another level is because of his expanded pocket and niftier abilities to reach that expanded pocket. As long as Doncic’s relationship with his pocket remains true, the would-be championship contender Clippers don’t seem to have a chance against him. 

Folk - Protecting pockets, and picking them

Sports can sometimes be a canvas for what’s happening in society at any given time. The easiest reference to make would be the intrinsic link between the NBA and Black Lives Matter. That canvas takes on the paint of more than politics, or human rights - it takes on the essence of humanity, our language, struggle, triumph etc. Everything. All this to say, pockets were invented before basketball. And pockets shouldn’t really have anything to do with basketball, but since our everyday language extends to the games we play, the “pocket” pass exists in basketball. As does picking someone's pocket, and a pocket can be a pocket of air, or a reference to spacing. Spacing being a big thing in basketball, we have, yes, pockets on the court.

Kyle Anderson, perhaps better known as “SLO MO” is an accomplished thief, and protector. A thief in that he picks pockets proficiently, and a protector in the sense that when the Grizzlies defense opens up a pocket that’s vulnerable to attack, he’s very good at filling in. Despite the reputation and reality of his glacial existence, he is both tortoise and hare defensively. I already used the prescience thing for Draymond last week, so I have to save some of this for when Louis and I inevitably write about Dune. So, we’ll stick with baseball jargon. Anderson’s route efficiency in court coverage, his read off of the bat, is very good. He’s constantly ‘left-braining’ on defense, noticing patterns and problem solving. He’s swiping 5 steals a game off of the Jazz (10 through 2) and that potency both on-ball and off of it should give the Jazz a little more pause with many of their longer passes. Keep the court smaller, and see what Taylor Jenkins can scheme up to defend the 2-man actions (that involve Gobert, in particular) in game 3. 

So, what’s happening? Well, let’s watch. 

If it isn’t abundantly clear to you, the man has long arms. Nearly 7’3” is sprouting out of his sides, and his ability to place them in spots that not only bother ball handlers, but strip them entirely makes for very potent defense. His excellent reads in 1-on-1 defense keep him square to the offensive player, and even conservative placement of his hands can put him in positions to pick the opposition clean. 

Effective pressure on big men is always good, and ‘Slo’ can do that. The real meat of these clips though, is the incredible “oh you’re here too?” closeout, right before swiping away a steal from behind. Wonderful body control from his feet to the very tip of his hands.

Okay, protecting space. 

You can watch him direct JJJ into help-side, deny the dunker spot pass, and then pop into the passing lane (let’s say passing pocket, even though it makes no sense but it’s thematically consistent) for the steal. Then on the next play he rotates over in help-side, denies the rolling Favors (meaning Melton can pop back out) and swipes the ball on the baseline once again. The last clip, he just does a masterful job of keeping tabs on the relocating shooter, while also tagging the rolling Gobert. He never loses track of his shooter, or Ingles’ desire to find him. And it’s pretty easy to notice through all these clips that he’s creating a lot of transition opportunities for his team. Transition is gold in the NBA. Especially for a team that was aggressively average (15th) offensively in the regular season. Although, they’ve found success against the Jazz pretty consistently - and Ja Morant’s ascension has been a very big motivator for that. 

So, there you have it. Kyle Anderson: Protector and Thief. 

Pockets everybody!