One of the best games of EuroLeague’s second week was Unicaja Malaga’s game against Zalgiris Kaunas on Tuesday.  Once the game went into overtime, Unicaja Malaga was able to gain control, eventually clinching the game with a back breaking pick and roll that stretched their lead from five to eight points.  The interesting thing about this pick and roll set was that it was set up by another pick and roll:

We pick up this set with Kristaps Valters in a position where he can go in either direction and get a ball screen as both bigs are in position to set one at the elbow.  Once Valters comes off of the screen, the screener quickly dives to the rim.  This dive to the rim from the initial screener sucks Joel Freeland’s defender into the paint in an effort to defend the pick and roll.

Now this is pretty good defending of the initial pick and roll, however this leaves Zalgiris Kaunas vulnerable to Valters pulling the basketball and coming off of a second ball screen in the opposite direction set by Freeland.  As you can see, Freeland’s defender is in a real poor position to defend this second ball screen.

The result for Zalgiris Kaunas is a lot of confusion on the defensive end.  Freeland’s original defender is rushing to get in position to stop dribble penetration from Valters coming off of the ball screen, but this means there is nobody to get in front of Freeland as he rolls to the rim.

The only chance for Zalgiris Kaunas is Sonny Weems rotating from the weakside and cutting off Freeland, keeping him from getting to the rim.  However, Weems is caught flat footed and doesn’t get there in time.

Freeland makes the catch in the paint, goes right up, and draws the contact finishing with the foul and getting the And-1, stretching the lead to eight points after Freeland hits the free throw.  Here is the play in real time:

This is a pretty fantastic little set from Unicaja Malaga here in that it does a great job of setting up the defense and putting themselves in position to take advantage of the defense’s rotations.  They knew that Freeland’s man would more than likely dive into the paint to try and defend the initial pick and roll and they were able to use that knowledge to set up a 2nd pick and roll.