The Warriors’ unconventional pick-and-roll usage against the Raptors

Pick and roll — but not the vanilla kind.

It’s very easy to come out and say that the Golden State Warriors should just spam pick-and-roll after pick-and-roll and let that be the base of their offense. It’s often not as simple as just having someone set a ballscreen and letting everything else fall into place.

As with most offensive systems and philosophies, the personnel for a spread ballscreen attack needs to make sense — multiple spacers to widen the floor, with a ballscreener who can not only pop vertically; he must be able to make split-second decisions off the catch, depending on how the defense reacts to his downhill roll.

As for the spacers themselves, they must know how to position themselves, where to position themselves, and — if the situation calls for it — how to move around to place an even bigger strain on their defenders and discourage them from helping on the 2v2 action on the ball. One concept of such is a spacer lifting from the corner to the wing, the technical term for it being “shake” action, or “shaking” from the corner toward the wing.

These are just some of the things teams have to keep in mind when trying to run ballscreen action — and it was what the Warriors had in mind during the very first offensive possession of their game against the Toronto Raptors.

An “out” screen for Moses Moody to receive the ball on the left wing, followed by a handoff, a reversal back to Jonathan Kuminga, and an inverted ballscreen by Klay Thompson at the elbow. At the same time the screen is happening, Moody is on his way to relocating to the corner vacated by Steph Curry, the “shake” man who is lifting from the corner to the wing.

Kuminga’s drive attracts Moody’s man, which means Moody is one pass away on the strong-side corner. Kuminga finds him and gets Moody an open three.

This wasn’t your conventional pick-and-roll. It was masked with initiating actions to get players into the positions they needed to be in, coupled with the fact that the defense had to constantly shift around and try to keep up with the action — which increased the chances of them making a mistake.

Pick-and-rolls don’t have to be *this* complex all the time, but they do need to be well thought out. The Warriors under Steve Kerr don’t go about their business mindlessly in terms of tactics and overall strategy — there has always been a method to their often-chaotic madness.

That includes ballscreens and the many forms they take when the Warriors use them. Inverted ballscreens like the one above have always been a central part of their playbook, something that is made possible because of Curry’s willingness to set screens. Knowing that most defenders aren’t keen on detaching themselves from Curry to switch onto someone else, having him set the screen is an almost guaranteed bucket for whoever the ballhandler is.

As of late, that ballhandler has been Jonathan Kuminga:

Involving Kuminga as the ballhandler in Curry inverted ballscreen setups has been a pretty smart decision. Kuminga’s ability to get downhill, put pressure on the rim, and finish with force and explosion makes him a no-brainer as Curry’s partner; no one else on the roster is gifted with both his natural talent and bravado as a rim attacker.

Flip the roles around to something more conventional — Curry handling the ball and Kuminga setting the screen — and the results have been similar. The Warriors went to Kuminga screening for Curry because of the Raptors’ decision to match Jakob Poeltl up with 6-foot-8 wing. Seeing this, Kuminga ballscreens for Curry were immediately dialed up to take advantage of Kuminga’s mobility advantage over the bigger center:

(The playtype numbers also actually support Kuminga as a roll man: 1.303 points per possession, albeit on an extremely low number of possessions (33) as the roll man.)

To go back to Moody as someone who benefits off of main on-ball actions, I’ve previously written about his ability as a shooter on the wing/slot area in order to punish the concept of “nail” help, or defenders stunting, digging, or pre-rotating off of their assignments to help against middle penetration at the area approximating the middle of the free-throw line.

Now that Moody’s back in the rotation for the foreseeable future, nail-help punishment off of ballscreens is also back in the menu:

Note that it was Trayce Jackson-Davis who was the roll man above — certainly the only big man on the roster capable of attracting an extra body on his rolls (“roll gravity”) like the one above, where Moody’s man is pre-rotated at the nail and leaving Moody open for a wing three.

Compared to his frontcourt veterans in Kevon Looney and Dario Šarić, Jackson-Davis presents as a more dynamic roll threat off of ballscreens. Coupled with a ballhandler in Chris Paul, the Warriors have been going back to more “Stack”/”Spain” pick-and-roll sets — one that involves the addition of a backscreener to the conventional ballscreen setup.

The role of the backscreener (either Curry or Thompson) is important in order to place additional pressure on the roll man’s defender. When it’s Curry being tasked to set the backscreen, he almost always seeks to set a solid screen in order to free his rolling teammate toward the rim:

Note how Curry chips Kelly Olynyk with his backscreen, which allows Jackson-Davis a lane to the rim, with Paul finding him perfectly as he is wont to do. This forces the remaining backline defenders to converge and foul Jackson-Davis.

When it’s Thompson tasked to set the backscreen, things happen a bit differently. Thompson doesn’t really set a backscreen — he “leaks” out toward the opposite wing to take his defender with him:

The leak-out by Thompson serves as a sort of “counter” to a typical Spain pick-and-roll counter by defenses: guard-guard switching between the on-ball defender and the backscreener’s defender. Leaking out ensures that no switching occurs and that Thompson’s defender is forced to follow him toward the opposite wing.

Combined with the on-ball coverage (Olynyk stepping up to the level of the screen against Paul), Jackson-Davis once again finds himself with a free lane to the rim and gets a dunk, courtesy of another well-placed dime by Paul.

These are just some of the unconventional pick-and-roll setups the Warriors used to put the Raptors’ defense in all sorts of pickles. Even if they’re not among the highest volume pick-and-roll users in the league (dead last in the league in frequency), they still make use of the ballscreen — and have put their own little twists to it to make it their own.