Portland Trail Blazers Backscreen Baseline out of Bounds Play
A breakdown of the Portland Trailblazers Backscreen play with an option from baseline out bounds.
The Portland Trail Blazers under new coach Chauncey Billups are running some good offensive action out of baseline out of bounds - with the few examples we have to work with so far. Billups has tweaked a common Baseline out of Bounds set that the Trailblazers ran for Damian Lillard the last few years early this season for another dimension and option.
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Portland Trail Blazers BOB ISO for Damian Lillard
For the last few seasons, Terry Stotts ran this basic Isolation play for Damian Lillard to receive the ball on the strong side of the floor with the other players spaced on the opposite side mostly stagnant. The inbounder would get him the ball and then clear out one side of the floor for him to attack.
Portland Trailblazers Rip
This season the Trailblazers are running this same Isolation look with Damian Lillard but adding an option for a backscreen.
The play starts off with Dame receiving the same pass for the Isolation look but now they are going to add off-ball action with a big screening. Nurkic sets a screen for Powell to cut to the ball-side wing - an option for a shot could be here but this is setting up the real look.
After setting the screen then the inbounder is going to step in and set a backscreen for Nurkic to cut to the hoop looking for a quick-hitting layup.
A key to this play working is the initial screen timing up into the backscreen. Typically when a big is defending a down screen they will either show or play higher up to prevent a curl and allow the defender to get back into position. This allows the backscreen to work because the big is caught up higher than normal.
Here is the action but it results in a Dame ISO, notice here how Zeller is looking to initially run off the backscreen but there is nobody there to set it. Still working out some early season kinks!
Seeing this baseline out-of-bounds action run by the Trail Blazers reminded me of my favorite baseline out-of-bounds play from when Kevin Stallings was at Vanderbilt.
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Enjoy!
Coach Pyper