Basketball
/ The Art of GeometryA Small Theory of the Pick-and-Roll
How one screen, set slightly too high, rewrote the grammar of the Western Conference finals.
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Photograph — Nia Fredericks
There is a moment, about forty seconds into the third quarter, when the big man sets the screen six inches higher than he is supposed to. Everything that follows for the next four games — two dynasties wobbling, one coach losing his job in public — follows from those six inches.
“Every offense is an argument about space. A screen is a sentence. A pick-and-roll is a paragraph.”
The pick-and-roll is basketball’s oldest two-person play and its most misunderstood. It is not really about the pick, and it is not really about the roll. It is about where the defense is forced to stand while it argues with itself.
The six inches
On tape you can see the guard’s head lift. He was prepared for the screen to come at the three-point arc; it comes, instead, one step inside. The rotation he has practiced all season is suddenly wrong by the width of his own shoulders.
Ball Arena, third quarter.
Photograph — Nia Fredericks
It is the closest thing basketball has to a perfect sentence. Subject, verb, object. Screen, roll, dunk. In between: an entire disagreement, silent and fast, about where the help is supposed to come from.
The author
Long-form Writer, Basketball
Julien writes about basketball the way others write about jazz — with tempo and digression. His book on point guards as composers is out next spring.
In this issue
Rookie in the Empty Gym
Basketball · 12 min
The Long Quiet of a Goalkeeper
Football · 18 min
The Unfinished Mountain
Long-form · 22 min
Long-form Writer, Basketball
Julien writes about basketball the way others write about jazz — with tempo and digression. His book on point guards as composers is out next spring.
