Jamaaliver wrote:I remember a few years ago when 'analytics experts' told us that
post ups were inefficient and no longer considered good basketball. An entire generation of American Big men were cast out and relegated to bench roles/overseas teams because of it.
Now Jokic post ups are the most unstoppable play in the NBA.
In large part because 300 pound post defenders were essentially cast out of the NBA.
Post ups didn't need to die, they just needed to be refined.
They never needed to die. The problem was always that using them as focal volume isolation sets was far less effective and less efficient than other entry into offense. And the whole concept of how big men were deployed has also generally been misunderstood.
And no, an entire generation of American Big Men were not cast out. They just sucked. They didn't have a jumper and weren't able to produce efficient offense when they tried to play "like Shaq" but without his tools, and without his off-ball game. This is why guys like Z-Bo and Big Al weren't generally good offensive players. Jefferson, for example, had very good footwork and awesome touch on his hooks, but basically never made it to the rim and couldn't draw fouls, so he was spamming 45% hooks all game long and just... not worthwhile. Jahlil Okafor could score but was a foul factory who didn't play defense. Lots of bigs like Javale McGee were... too limited, let's say to be nice, to take on a broader role. Roy Hibbert, same same (albeit with good D).
Chris Kaman was there. Brook Lopez was there. Demarcus Cousins wasn't good enough to keep up with rising offensive efficiency because he was mediocre from the line and violently underwhelming at making shots from everywhere. And on and on and on.
Now Jokic post ups are the most unstoppable play in the NBA.
In large part because 300 pound post defenders were essentially cast out of the NBA.
No, he'd be scoring the same on Jerome James or whomever. They couldn't keep up with his footwork, or his ability to score from more than 3 feet from the basket, so their utility on defense would be severely limited against him, particularly with his passing and general touch.
It bears repeating... high-volume back-down post iso was always bad offense, with a very small number of exceptions across league history. In order for it to keep up with modern offense, it requires better passing from the bigs, a reduction in this "ZOMG HE MUST SCORE 30" mentality which see a lot of in American basketball, and it also requires a good deal more offense on "NOT JUST ISOLATING," which is a big problem with how people conceptualize post offense once they've started to think about, say, Shaq. Even in the 90s, and even Shaq, the best centers were doing a lot more than trying to get a seal and turn for a hook or a dunk. And then yeah, the off-ball play to get a seal, or to get a guy on your back and get the hi-lo (the Adrian Dantley special) is quite a bit different from the vision of the back-down iso post set from outside of the key.
Post offense still works. You just need to play it intelligently, not like the mythologized version of it most people think of when it's brought up in conversation. It's same same with MJ: he did a lot more than just blast isos from the top of the circle, but that's how the generation coming up after him thought of him, and it screwed them up and gave us the early 2000s Crap-Ball era.
Also, I absolutely adore that your follow-up article from SBNation on the comeback of the post-up opens with a True Detective quote from Rust Cohle. That's awesome xD
That article has a nice video about Vucevic, and about certain types of post-ups. That little paint screen action where he caught the ball and made a quick move is a good example of when post offense can be quite effective. Or sometimes we see the screener from a high PnR roll down into a post iso. Then it aptly notes how the passing ability of Jokic and Doncic really alters their utility from the post (which, in a way, is reminiscent of how Magic liked to create plays back in the day).
I have been annoyed for years at the whole "post play doesn't work" crowd, because it was always stupid. It was always focused on the sizzle and not the substance. And we've BEEN seeing effective post play from well-coordinated teams the entire time. The Spurs have done it, for example. An unceasing chain of effective post play with different styles and looks, different entries, etc.
And we've also seen a lot more wing and guard post coming back, because the point of it isn't always the bucket, but how it can affect the defense. Teams are finally strategizing again, because they are finally realizing that the PPP of a back-down isolation set isn't the only way to use a post-up. And after years of watching Pops use Duncan as a post decoy to enable other offense, there is all kinds of BS to pull with post players. And of course with Jokic and Embiid and KAT and a pile of other guys showing that you can score efficiently from the block in certain ways, paying attention to things in their simplest form is dull-witted. Like when people just went bananas over eFG% and what that meant for 3s when that was first a thing.
It occurs to me that I just popped off, but it's more about the topic in general than your specific post, I hasten to add. I've been ringing this bell for 20 years because I've been hearing the same tired lines. As you say, it wasn't that post play needed to die, it's just that the details needed to be attended. Even in the 80s and 90s, it was dumb as hell to just lob the ball into Bill Cartwright and pray that it would produce good offense, even though he was a quality finisher. You need more passing and more consciousness of what each set implies and causes. Even Patrick Ewing, who was for a time an objectively good scorer, needed some management in terms of when and how he got his offensive sets.
