Why the pick-and-roll is the single most important play in the NBA?
The pick-and-roll is the NBA’s most recent trend, but there is very little that is new about it. Like every revolutionary innovation, the pick-and-roll had its early adopters and high-profile influencers: Bob Cousy and Bill Russell; Oscar Robertson and Wayne Embry; Stockton and Karl Malone.
Unbeknownst to the Suns, Nash, Stoudemire, and the other guys in that gym were launching a revolution in which the high pick-and-roll would evolve from novelty to staple to centrepiece. Along the way, it launched new offensive and defensive trends. It reassessed the value of many players. It changed the very look of the game. Like any powerful narcotic, the high-pick-and-roll is now a source of dependence, one the league cannot live without. “The last seven or eight minutes of the game, we would run pick-and-rolls to death,” Lillard says. “I was always in it. I started to feel so comfortable and confident in those situations and making plays and scoring, just manipulating the defence out of the pick-and-roll. That became our bread and butter my last two years at Weber.”
Although the rate of pick-and-rolls has flattened out in the NBA — a product of growing diversity in how teams get their shots — the league’s premier pick-and-roll ball handlers are running the play more often than ever. During 2020-21, Young and Doncic both ran more pick-and-rolls per 100 possessions than any starter in the previous seven seasons with camera tracking, per Second Spectrum.
This season was the fourth in the past five during which the NBA set a record for leaguewide offensive efficiency, and the pace only seems to be accelerating. In 2019-20, the Mavericks posted the highest offensive rating on record at 116 points per 100 possessions. This season, seven teams — nearly a quarter of the league — beat that mark. While there are several contributing factors to the scoring revolution of the past half-decade, the pick-and-roll is undoubtedly producing more prolific offenses.
In other words: good pick-and-roll offense has become good offense, full stop!
