Pick and roll: what all five attacking players are doing

A pick and roll involves two attackers and two defenders directly, and it fails or succeeds because of the six players around it. Each of the other three attackers has a specific assignment that changes depending on which way the ball goes.

The ball handler's first job is patience. He takes the screen shoulder to shoulder, close enough that the defender cannot slip through the gap, and he changes speed rather than running in a straight line. The change of pace is what forces the second defender to commit, and until a defender commits there is nothing to exploit. Good handlers reject the screen entirely if the defender cheats early and go the other way.

The screener chooses between rolling and popping. He rolls when the defence has two players at the ball and the paint behind them is empty. He pops out to the arc when the defender guarding him drops back and there is no space to catch at the rim. The decision is made in about a quarter of a second and it is based on what he can see over his shoulder.

The player in the corner on the same side as the screen has the most boring assignment and the most important one. He stands still. His defender is the closest help to the driving lane, and if he moves toward the basket he takes his defender with him and closes the lane he wanted to open.

The two players on the opposite side of the floor work in a pair. One of them lifts, moving up from the corner toward the wing, giving the handler a straight passing line if the defence collapses. The other cuts along the baseline behind the defence, occupying the man who would otherwise slide over to meet the roller. This is the pass most viewers never see coming, because the cutter starts his run before the drive begins.

Defensively, the counter to all of it is the tag. One defender leaves his own man briefly to bump the roller, then sprints back out. Watch the tagging defender rather than the ball and you can predict the next pass a beat before it happens: whoever he left is the man about to be open. When a team gives up an open corner three after a drive, that is almost always a tag that recovered too slowly, not a mistake by the man guarding the shooter.