Sportradar shows how excellence at defending the pick-and-roll is resulting in teams' success
Stats review: The correlation between winning and ball-screen defense
Stats
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Four teams have managed to stay above the fray in the EuroLeague, tallying eight or more wins through Round 12. While there’s no shortage of routes to victory on both ends, given how much the little things matter in a league with several one-possession games every week, this season’s top three teams share one particularly key strength on the defensive end: their ball-screen defense.
It is no secret that ball screens and the offense created with passes out of them hold a very prominent role in high-level professional basketball at the moment. The possessions used by ball handlers, roll men, and those created with passes out of pick-and-rolls make up 39% of all possessions in the EuroLeague this season, including 45% of those used in the half-court. Not only are pick-and-rolls the basis for much of what teams do on the offensive end, they have resulted in 1.01 points per possession on the year — just ahead of the league average for all possessions and notably higher than the average for other half-court sets.
It tracks, then, that the teams doing the best job of slowing opposing teams in ball screens would be giving themselves a good chance to win games, and with the top four teams here sitting in the top five in the standings, that has certainly translated this season. A great deal of nuance goes into defending ball screens in the EuroLeague as teams make constant adjustments and tweaks on both sides of the ball. Just because a team uses one coverage successfully one game does not promise much the next, but most of the teams atop the standings have come out on the right side of that chess match more frequently than the rest of the league.
Olympiacos Piraeus has been this season’s top pick-and-roll defense thus far, thanks in large part to the work it has done along the perimeter. While the Reds have not been overwhelmingly effective guarding screeners, they have done a great job of contesting shots by opposing ball handlers and being in spots off the ball.
Hapoel IBI Tel Aviv has taken a different approach, giving opposing ball handlers a bit more latitude, but taking away opportunities off the ball for shooters, cutters, and roll men as consistently as any team in recent history. The team's efforts to stay at home off the ball are a big reason it has faced fewer possessions created out of ball screens than all the other teams above — Hapoel is doing enough to force teams to look elsewhere for scoring opportunities.
Crvena Zvezda Meridianbet Belgrade has done its best work guarding screeners, giving up just 5.1 points per game, next to nothing in pick-and-pop situations, and doing a good job making timely swipes when the ball does go to an opposing roll man inside.
While some teams are decidedly more aggressive guarding ball screens than others — both at the point of attack and away from the action — the results are key and the three teams at the top of the pick-and-roll defensive leaderboards are the same three at the top of the standings as the regular season barrels towards its mid-point.