In part two of examining France's EuroBasket playbook, let's start off by looking at a post-up action and its counters France makes use of.
To start the action off, rather than the point guard motioning to the weak side, France has one of their guards cut to up to the opposite wing. What follows though is the same cross-screen, down-screen combination that is at the core of the Spurs' and France's Motion Weak action, which I highlighted yesterday in part one.
This isn't something especially uncommon, as Lithuania, Germany and Latvia all made use of this very same action at this year's
EuroBasket also. The Washington Wizards, too, used a very
similar action to post up some of their bigs last year.
Unlike the above mentioned teams however, France also uses this very same setup to set up either some high-low action with the center sealing his man after setting a down-screen for the 4-man, or, to keep the defense honest, use the down-screen as a curl to get to the basket.
(The last clip is against wing deny, if that isn't clear due to the camera perspective.)
Pretty sure France has a play call/signal to run the high-low/nail curl counter as an independent set, as you may be able to see that the wing who'd normally set the cross screen, at times won't even pretend doing so.
France also runs some simple cross-screen post-ups with no screen-the-screener action in the middle, which I, for one, am not a huge fan of.
I understand that some teams have the personnel to simply switch the downscreen, however I've always felt that -- due the lack of (body) movement -- the spacing just isn't ever all that great that way. Defenders tend to be in better position to help or dig and you can't quite flow into secondary options
Simplicity certainly has its room in basketball and I like simply feeding the post early as much as the next guy, but simple cross-screen post-up sets feel a bit outdated to me.
Anyway... France quite often has 6' 7" (2,01m) Gelabale and 6' 8" (2,03m) Batum playing together on the wing, so naturally some post-up oppurtunities against smaller guards/wings will present themselves and every now and then France tries to take advantage of such opportunities.
Note that whenever defenses are about to load up, France will look to set staggered screens for the weak-side wing.
That's nothing we haven't ever seen before, of course, though it still feels like using off-ball screens to create open perimeter looks out of the post is something a little underutilized. The Pacers, for example, had great success doing so last year.
Similarly, France will run some decoy post-ups to free the weak-side wing with staggered screens off the post curl.
Some teams have tried to take France out of their rhythm by going zone and a few teams have succeeded doing so, however France's zone execution seems to have gotten much more crisp with each game they've played, to the point where they actually might welcome zone looks now.
France utilizes the action below against both man and zone defenses, however, to illustrate France's zone execution, all clips are only against the zone looks they've face so far during this EuroBasket.
France has another zone action, where they'll simple set a ball-screen up top, while overloading the side towards which the ball-handler is going.
France also has a baseline-out-of-bounds ("BOB" or "BLOB") play they'll go when expecting zone, where they pretend to look for a post catch on one side, while the inbounder goes on to screen for the wing in the opposite corner for the alley-oop. Good stuff.
Another BOB set in the French playbook is this screen-the-screner set designed to either free up their 4-man going to the basket or the guard -- who initially screens the 4-man to basket -- for a corner three.
This isn't France's only BOB screen-the-screener set, as you can see below.
Timing is very much key here and some of France's end-of-rotation
players have screwed up this set multiple times (Johan Petro being the prime offender), which is why there's only one clip of France executing this
play properly.
France uses the same BOB set-up to free up Diaw for a jumper or -- if the jumper isn't there or Diaw has a favorable match-up -- deep post position.
If neither is there Diaw can check out of the play and initiate what the STS set from above or set up either Gelabale or Batum on the block.
Finally, one more BOB play out of the French playbook:
That's all for now. I'll try to upload a few sets/actions of other EuroBasket teams later today or some time before tomorrow's games, though I can't promise that I'll be able to find the time.
So... until next time, whenever that will be :).
PS: Since I was asked this yesterday, as well as a few times in the past, no, I do not have a problem if you use my videos to illustrate whatever you'd like to illustrate on your own site/blog, especially if you do so in another language. I don't get anything out of this. Not the videos and not this blog. No ad money, nothing, so it's all good. Do as you wish.
