In my last post where I talked about the Thunder’s ineffective pick and roll, commenter Rex asked an interesting question.  He asked:

A related question: are there any teams who are good on the PNR but whose PG isn’t a good shooter?

This was an interesting question that I decided to examine further.  So I used the great statistical site, Hoopdata.com to gather a team’s starting PG shooting percentage from 10-23 feet:

I chose that range because I think that is where a PG gets most of his shots when he comes off the screen while handling the basketball.

Poor Shooting PGs with Good “PNR – Ball Handler” Numbers

After finding the shooting percentage of the starting point guards for the 30 NBA teams (For teams with multiple starters, I used the PG who started the most games), I went through each player’s Synergy page to determine their individual “PNR – Ball Handler” points per possession:

The one player that sticks out when looking at this chart is Chauncey Billups.  Billups ranks 15th among all starting point guards in shooting percentage from 10-23 feet, shooting 39%.  However, when it comes to individual points per possession coming out of the “Pick and Roll – Ball Handler” set, he ranks second with 0.95 points per possession.  So how is Billups able to be successful coming off screens while not shooting the ball terribly well?  He gets to the rim:

Going through Billups makes coming off a screen, you notice a good amount of them are layups.  Billups is always looking to get to the rim rather than settling for jumpers.  He’s also crafty enough to get to the rim on a consistent basis.  In the play above Billups uses a brilliant hesitation move that forces the defender to come at him like he is taking a shot, however he doesn’t even give up his dribble and he is able to finish at the rim.

Poor Shooting PGs with Good Team “PNR – Roll Man” Numbers

In addition to looking at individual “PNR – Ball Handler” to determine the success of a pick and roll, I also like to look at the team’s roll man numbers.  This is because hitting the roll man is the second option for PGs when running the pick and roll.  Here are the numbers:

I am going to be completely honest here, I was surprised to see the Knicks top this list, especially since Chris Duhon is the worst shooting starting point guard in the league.  Before doing this, I thought that most teams who are successful hitting roll man would have a good shooter running the point.  This is because teams would hedge and double hard, preventing the open jumper and leaving the roll man open.  However, this shows me if you have a good player rolling off the screen, that seems to be more important than who is running the point.  The Knicks are a perfect example of that:

David Lee plays center for the Knicks, and while that move has its disadvantages, an advantage is that Lee gets matched up against most teams centers when he is on the offensive end.  This means that he is quicker than most people defending him, and he plays the PNR like he knows that advantage.  You will never see Lee set a solid screen, because most of the time he is rolling before his point guard even gets around it.  This leads to Lee getting to the rim and getting the basketball in scoring areas before the help can come.  Which is exactly what happens in the play above.

So Can You Have A Poor Shooting PG & An Effective Pick And Roll

The answer seems to be yes, but only with the right personnel.  Either you need to have a PG crafty enough to get himself to the rim when coming off of screens, or you need a good/mobile screener who can roll quick enough to give his team and advantage.