Purple Rain - a closer look at Hapoel U-NET Holon

MIES (Switzerland) – How do you follow up on your club's best-ever season in Europe? Well, if you are Hapoel U-NET Holon, you follow up by having an even better year in the following season. And you also become the first Israeli club to reach the Final Four of the Basketball Champions League in the process. Holon's first three excursions into the BCL ended up in disappointment as they were close but not close enough and couldn't make it out of the Regular Season. Then, in the 2020/21 season, the dam finally broke and they smashed their way all the way through to the Final Eight in Nizhny Novgorod.

Despite changing coaches halfway through the season and bringing in Guy Goodes, that momentum has stuck with them. Now, thanks to a Quarter-Finals win against SIG Strasbourg - fellow Final Eight competitors in 2021 - Holon now find themselves breathing the rarified air of Bilbao and a chance to make history. 

How They Play

One of the best and most efficient descriptions we have heard all season for the way that Holon play came from JDA Dijon Head Coach, Nenad Markovic before their last game in the Round of 16.

His summary may have been quick and sound like an overly simplistic way to describe a team but in truth, if a team is extremely good at a few things, and those few things fit together extremely well, then that team can be extremely difficult to deal with. Holon's guards really are all excellent 1v1 and pick-and-roll players. All guards are meant to be but Holon's backcourt is good enough that - as you will see in the videos below - often, their offense only needs to get them the ball in areas they can play 1v1 against the right matchup. With guys like Chris Johnson, Michale Kyser, and Hayden Dalton they also really are an athletic team that will put you on a poster if you so much as blink for too long on defense. And pretty much everyone on the perimeter can really shoot it.

The starting five that we can likely expect to see against Tenerife are Joe Ragland, Adam Smith, Chris Johnson, Hayden Dalton, and Michale Kyser but since Tyrus McGee returned to the squad late in the season and Dalton has also returned from injury, Holon's lineups have been hard to predict. We have seen McGee, Guy Pnini, and Rafael Menco all start in recent games. The three players that you can bank on making the first five are Ragland, Johnson, and Kyser. Also, look out for the minutes when Ragland, Smith, and McGee share the floor at the same time, especially with Johnson and Kyser out there. They might not play huge minutes together but Holon can score explosively with all three causing havoc on the offensive end. 

Guard Play

Starting from the end (obviously), the first play to look at is the last play of their season so far: the game-winner that Joe Ragland is describing in the tweet above. If we zoom out to the wide-angle camera in the clip below, what we can see are some very important themes for Holon. First, #3 Adam Smith comes to the ball and sets a "Ghost" screen where he isn't really intending to make contact and set the screen, just cause a moment of indecision in the defense. Then, #20 Dalton comes and sets the screen that Ragland actually wants to attack. It's also important to note that Dalton is the defacto center in this lineup for Holon and his shooting ability means that SIG needed to stay close to him when he popped after the screen. This forced the switch and gave Ragland just enough separation to start with so that he could make a move and keep enough distance to get his shot off.

We see more of the same themes in the three clips below. Guy Goodes likes to use a mix of "Ram" screens and "Stack" or "Spain" pick-and-roll actions - often out of the same starting alignment so they are hard to predict. In the first clip below we see Holon lineup with a ball-handler in the middle of the floor, shooters in either corner and then #12, Kyser, setting a "Ram" screen for #10, Pnini. Pnini then goes to set the ball screen.

Like Smith in the first video, Pnini is ghosting the screen and not there to hang around and make contact. Because of the Ram screen from Kyser, Pnini arrives alone at the screen with his defender chasing and because the defense can't afford to leave Pnini open or give Ragland separation, they are forced to switch.  Pnini being the crafty player he is attacks the closeout and then throws the lob to Kyser. In the second play, we see a flip of the stack with #25, McGee, setting the Ram screen for Kyser, then slipping out to the perimeter himself.  And the last clip we see Ragland setting the back screen for Kyser to make it a "Spain" pick and roll. Simple but devastating offense.

Another set that Holon used really effectively for their guards in the Quarter-Finals - and also another brutally simple action - was their "Zipper" into Ghost screen actions. A Zipper action involves a player making a vertical cut up the lane line to catch the pass, a bit like a zip going from down to up. From there, it's very common for teams to bring a ball screen immediately as soon as the player catches the ball. In the first clip, we see Holon again use Pnini for the ball screen, and again he just ghosts the screen. This gives McGee enough separation to create himself a shot and there aren't many players at the Final Four that are better in 1v1 situations. Notice how McGee waves Dalton off from setting another ball screen in the second clip. He knows that he has enough in his bag to create on his own. 

A "Shuffle" cut is an off-the-ball action at the 45-degree angle, on the weak side of the floor. In the video below we see Holon using one of the options from this type of setup. They put a big in the middle of the floor and make split cuts over the top of them, with one of those cuts being a shuffle cut. What they are almost always looking for is an entry pass to one of their guards so they can make a play 1v1 or from a pick-and-roll.

We said "almost always looking for" because they do have a lot of options out of that set. The twist in the video below with the back screen or "Rip", seemed to catch SIG Strasbourg off guard. Maybe we will see it against Tenerife on the 6th of May.

The set in the video below is a staple of every team that plays some five-out basketball, and pretty much every team does. It's known as "Open Double" and you can watch a more focused breakdown of it if you click here. The essence of the way Holon use this set is to force defenders to chase the likes of McGee and Smith around a series of staggered screens and then have to guard them on the ball. Not much fun if you are the defender, much more fun if you are wearing purple, like McGee in the clip below. 

 

Ball and Player Movement

Just because Holon are excellent at maximizing the impact of their guards, it doesn't mean they can't move the ball with the best of them. There is so much eye candy in the clip below. It starts with a simple, side pick-and-roll and an empty corner on the ball side. The first thing to notice is how McGee uses a "Boomerang" pass to get the ball back and change the action to an "Angle" ball screen with the screener's back facing the ball side corner. Then, watch how much separation McGee creates from the screen to open up the short roll pass to Kyser.  Next, watch the timing of the cut along the baseline by #9 Bourdillon as soon as Kyser catches the ball. Once Kyser catches it, Holon are into their dribble drive offense and it's all about the speed that Ragland drives and kicks straight back to McGee and eventually Bourdillon in the opposite corner.

Finally, we have some more great examples of the way this team  - and more specifically, Chris Johnson - moves off the ball. It's pretty much identical cuts in each of the three clips below but what you really need to look out for in each one is his defender's eyes. If you get distracted or take your head off the swivel for a nanosecond, Johnson is already at the rim for an easy two. 

 

Data Story

Holon are second amongst Final Four teams for assists with 19.8 and also second for Assist Percentage, recording an assist for 71.2 percent of their made field goals. A huge reason for that is Joe Ragland. The American guard is one of only two players to have recorded over 100 assists this season, with 135 (Huertas being the other with  116). Three-point shooting accuracy is another strong suit at 35.8 percent. They also block a shot on 8 percent of their opponent's possessions, which again makes them the second-best team in Bilbao. Michale Kyser is the only player to have recorded more than 25 blocks this season (27) including 6 huge swats against SIG in the deciding game of their Quarter-Finals. Overall, Holon ranks third for Offensive Efficiency at 112.3 points per 100 possessions and also third for Defensive Rating 105.4 points conceded per 100. 

 

The chart above shows you the data story of their season so far. You have four tabs to explore; Efficiency Ratings, Shooting, Possession, and Pace. You can see that each column corresponds to a Gameday from the season and colored lines represent the relative stat they recorded for that game. You can also filter by home or road games and wins or losses. Whilst the axes and labels are left blank to avoid cluttering the visual, you can hover over each point on the chart to see the labels. 

You can adjust the filters and switch tabs to analyze the data for yourselves but we picked out some filter settings that might give us some insights in the charts below.

In the first chart below, we have chosen the "Possession" tab and set the filters for only road games.  We can clearly see that since Gameday 4, when they lost to Darussafaka, Holon have been crashing the offensive glass, less as the games have gone by.  So much so, that Game 2 of the Quarter-Finals, when they knocked out SIG, was their lowest Offensive Rebound Percentage of the season, pulling down just 5 percent of their own misses. Whilst the sample size of 8 games is (of course) too small to determine much, with the drop in rate being so dramatic, it's hard to imagine that this wasn't due to a change in personnel and/or tactics. 

Another potentially important stat for Holon could be Possessions. In the chart below we are in the "Pace" tab and set the filter for wins. This time we have a slightly bigger sample size with 12 wins. All but 4 of those wins saw Holon play games with more than 70 possessions and every single one of the games with 74 possessions involved a Holon win. What is possibly more interesting, is that due to the way that possessions are calculated, an offensive rebound doesn't count as a new possession, so statistically speaking, crashing the glass makes for lower Pace or less possessions. The fact that Holon have been crashing less could have been helping them to get more possessions and win more games.

Season Story

The season started with a 61-88 road win at Brindisi. Joe Ragland wasted no time in letting everyone know what he was bringing to Holon with 18 points and 7 assists. After that followed a double-header against U-BT Cluj Napoca. The first game was an almost routine win at home, with Kyser dropping 15 points and 9 rebounds and Niv Misgav also putting up 14 points. The return game in Romania was one of the best games of the Regular Season. Cluj eventually won the game in double overtime with Misgav again shining and scoring 19 points. Things were starting to look bleak for Holon when they lost on the road at Darussafaka in the next game. Then, Steve Zack’s 12-point and 11-rebound double-double powered Holon past Dacka in the return game at home, as they held the Turkish club to just 57 points. Ragland must have really enjoyed playing against Brindisi as he recorded another 19 points and 8 assists when they completed the season sweep over the Italians with an 84-80 win on the following Gameday. Chris Johnson also put up 16 points and 12 rebounds in that game.

Holon then needed to get through a Play-In series with Besiktas to make it to the Round of 16. And they did so in the way that only Holon could. After Isaiah Whitehead looked to have crushed their hopes by winning Game 1 in Holon with a buzzer-beating layup, Holon went to Turkey and needed a clutch three-pointer from Guy Pnini (of course) with 18 seconds on the clock to level the series. Adam Smith’s 20 points drove them to the Round of 16 in the deciding game and in relative ease, as they secured a 74-68 win at home. 

The Round of 16 didn’t start as well as the Regular Season for Holon, as they lost on the road at JDA Dijon on the first Gameday. But they quickly recovered to complete a sweep over fellow Final Four contenders Ludwigsburg and topped the group. The only other loss in the Roud of 16 was on the road at Galatasaray but by a small enough margin to keep the head-to-head over the Turkish giants. The Quarter-Finals paired Holon with SIG Strasbourg in what looked like a matchup set for all the drama a neutral fan could wish for.

The first leg in Israel provided no such drama. Guy Goodes’ squad were utterly dominant, winning 93-75, shooting 55 percent overall, and 45 percent from deep. Ragland had a 12-point, 12-rebound double-double and Johnson put up 18 points and 9 rebounds on 60/40 shooting splits. The drama did eventually manifest in the decisive game in France, as Holon secured the series with an 80-81 win. Joe Ragland’s clutch jumper with 11 seconds on the clock proved to be the killer blow. 

Up Next

Lenovo Tenerife, Friday, May 6, 18:00 (GMT+2). Of the two Semi-Finals, this is certainly the biggest clash of styles. Tenerife are all about experience and know-how, Holon will want to try and rush the pace and force them into a more up and down game.