The Under-19 World Championships are currently taking place in Latvia (right now, we have advanced past the first group play and are in the 2nd group play that will decide the eight quarterfinalists), so over the course of the couple of days, I am going to dedicate some space to this tournament that features a lot of fantastic young prospects (Joe Jackson, Davis Bertans, Jonas Valanciunas, and Lucas Lucas Nogueira just to name a few).
Watching a lot of Lithuania and Jonas Valanciunas during this tournament, it was pretty obvious that he was a man playing against boys for the most part. There wasn’t really anyone out there who could put a body on him one on one and stop him. Because of this, during the finals of the u19 championships Valanciunas drew a lot of attention (and we have seen how Lithuania is able to use this to their advantage in the past). With Serbia paying attention to him on the offensive end, he was able to open things up for his Lithuanian teammates in a number of different ways:
On The Pick And Roll
Offensively, Valanciunas is at his best when put in situations where he is working off of the basketball, including the pick and roll. In fact, Valanciunas probably had his biggest dunk of the tournament come from a pick and roll situation.
On this play, Valanciunas’ man steps up to contain dribble penetration, leaving Valanciunas open for the pass. A guard rotates from the weakside, but he is too small and too late to do anything and Valanciunas is able to dunk over him.
The threat of Valanciunas rolling to the basket in pick and roll situations means that teams pay attention to him and make sure he doesn’t come open on the roll. This opens up things for the ball handlers coming off of screens.
On this play, as the ball handler comes off of the Valanciunas screen, Valanciunas’ man steps out to hedge. However, because he doesn’t want to commit to the hedge and leave Valanciunas open on the roll, he hesitates a bit, allowing the ball handler to get right around him for the easy finish at the rim.
On Offensive Rebounds
Another area on the offensive end where Valanciunas is a threat is the offensive glass. Valanciunas is a tremendous rebounder who does a great job of keeping the ball high and converting rebounds into second chance points quickly. Because of this, defenses are determined to keep Valanciunas off the glass, but this attention creates rebounding opportunities for his teammates:
Here, Valanciunas’ teammate gets open and he hits him with the pass. Valanciunas’ man has to help to contest the shot as it goes up meaning there is one Serbian defender who has to choose between boxing out Valanciunas and boxing out his teammate. The Serbian defender makes the decision to box Valanciunas out and keep him off the glass. He is successful in doing so, but this allows Valanciunas’ teammate to get to the rim easily and tip the ball in for the easy dunk.
On Post Ups
While Valanciunas doesn’t have the smoothest post game around (in fact, it is one of his weaknesses, in my opinion), the size advantage that he had over other 19 year olds in this tournament allowed him to get work done in the post, making him a constant threat with his back to the basket, and eventually drawing double teams.
Here Valanciunas gets the ball on the block and after a brief pause goes to work backing down his defender. The defender of the ball handler who made the entry pass, waits a few seconds and then brings a double team down. As soon as this happens, Valanciunas’ teammate cuts to the rim. Valanciunas hits him with the pass and he is able to draw the foul at the rim as the help defense is late coming over.
So why is this important to NBA (and more importantly Raptor) fans? While Valanciunas was playing against weaker competition during the u19 World Championships, Valanciunas on the pick and roll and on the offensive glass is something that will give pro teams problems. Meaning that at the NBA-level, Valanciunas will still be able to create opportunities for his teammates out of pick and roll sets and off of offensive rebounding opportunities.
The one thing that won’t carry over (as things stand now) is the post offense. As I mentioned before, Valanciunas doesn’t have the best back to the basket game around, and in the pros, I think teams can stop him with his back to the basket without sending a double team.
