The post-up came back as a passing job, not a scoring one

Feeding a big on the block used to be a shot hunt; now it is the cheapest way to make a defence declare itself.

The post-up did not survive because anyone rediscovered a love for the hook shot. It survived because a player standing fifteen feet from the rim with the ball and his back to a defender forces a defence to answer a question it would rather avoid.

The question is whether to double. Send help and you have committed two defenders to a stationary player, which means three defenders are covering four shooters, and the pass out of a double is short, simple and made by someone who can see the whole floor. Refuse to help and you have accepted a one-on-one at close range, which for a competent post player is a coin flip at worst and a foul at best. There is no free answer, and forcing an opponent to choose between two bad options is most of what offence is.

Which is why the efficiency numbers on post-ups always looked worse than the play deserved. Points per possession on a post-up counts the possessions where the post player shoots. It does not count the possession where he catches, the defence tilts, and the ball ends up in the corner three passes later, because by then the play has been recorded as a spot-up. The statistic amputates the good half of the action and then reports the remainder as inefficient. We spent a decade taking that seriously.

The modern version reflects the correction. Teams post up their best passing big, or increasingly their biggest guard, and the read is the point of the possession rather than a consolation for a covered shot. Duck in, catch, hold the ball for one beat, see whether the low man moves. If he moves, the ball goes weak side and the defence is chasing. If he does not, take the shot you have earned.

I would like coaches to be less apologetic about this. There is a fashion for treating any halfcourt possession that ends inside the arc as a failure of process, and it is producing offences that pass up genuinely good looks in search of a marginally better one.

A slow possession that makes five defenders commit is not a waste. It is the only reliable way to make a good defence move before the shot clock does it for you.