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The Art of the Pick: The NBA’s Most Popular Play Requires an Unsung Hero
- Updated: December 5, 2016
NEW YORK — In recent years, the pick-and-roll has morphed into the NBA’s most popular play. Offensive attacks, such as the one belonging to the Charlotte Hornets, who run pick-and-rolls more frequently than 25 of the league’s 30 teams, are built around it. Defensive schemes are predicated on being able to stop it. The play has catapulted a number of guards, like Charlotte’s Kemba Walker, into stardom.
Walker could credit his favorite pick-and-roll partner Cody Zeller for a few of his career-high 23.8 points per game, and he does, but that’ll have to wait:
“He sets illegal ones,” Walker told Bleacher Report, with a laugh. “But I love it when guards get hit. It happens to me all the time, getting hit by other bigs. It’s fun to see other guards deal with the same thing.”
Zeller is averaging five screen assists per game, the third best mark in the NBA this season. He’s doing so despite averaging just 24 minutes, 11 less than Washington Wizards center Marcin Gortat, whose 6.4 screen assists per game lead the league.
Screen assists take into account all versions of picks, but it’s Zeller’s potency as the big man in the pick-and-roll that has salvaged his career and transformed him into one the NBA’s most valuable role players.
The statistic, which the NBA made public last postseason for the first time, tracks the number of baskets in a game created by a pick. There are a number tricks to the craft, Zeller said, but the one he most enjoys is standing strong and absorbing the contact.
“Most big guys want to get to the rim really quick and slip out,” Zeller says. “What I’ll do is hold it a little longer and try to get away with as much as I can without being called for it.
“The guards (on other teams) don’t like that.”
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Zeller’s enthusiasm for deploying all the strength packed into his seven-foot, 240-pound frame is where his knack for springing jitterbugs free begins.
But there’s more to Zeller’s skillset than his zest for bruising opponents. Brute strength isn’t enough. Timing is key. Angles must be precise.
When he first entered the NBA, Zeller, by his own admission, didn’t appreciate all the technique that goes into laying an effective pick. In college and high school he viewed screening as a way to thrust himself into the offense. He was always faster than everyone as big as him and bigger than everyone as fast as him. The combination of size, talent and athleticism garnered him the title of Indiana’s Mr. Basketball in 2010. He then went on to Indiana University, where he played two seasons before selected No. 4 overall by Charlotte in 2013.
But the NBA served as wake-up call. Like so many high school …
