BADALONA (Spain) - We need to talk about passing. We really need to talk about Asisa Joventut passing. We really, really need to talk about this pass from Nicolas Laprovittola.
It really is a thing of beauty without any extra explanation, but before we talk about why it does need another level of analysis, and also why Nico may eventually end up cementing himself as a major candidate for the MVP award, we need to add some context.
And when we say context, what we're talking about is the different layers of decision-making and technical excellence that went into making that pass.
In order to add that context, we need to talk about the most dangerous pass in basketball and why Dani Miret's Joventut are one of the best in the business when it comes to making that pass.
"What is the most dangerous pass in basketball?" we hear you ask.
To answer that question, we need to hark back to Giedrius Zibenas' column on this very website last week.
"I was talking with coach Dani about Tuomas Iisalo, who really is the founder of the 'Hedge and Plug' pick-and-roll defense to stop the short roll. He told me to watch Ante Tomic because he is so good in the short roll, that he was the only one in Europe that could really break that scheme.
And now with Simon Birgander, he's clearly been learning from Ante," Zibenas explained.
What you have there is a champion of our League telling you first-hand how teams have evolved to stop the short-roll pass out of the pick-and-roll and how Joventut are still so good at punishing those coverages regardless.
So, what is the short-roll pass and why is it the most dangerous pass in basketball?
The short roll is a tactic that teams employ when their opponent is hedging aggressively and sending two players to the ball to force it out of the playmaker's hands.
If the screener can open themselves close to the action via a short roll (instead of a deep roll), and receive the pass, the offense instantly has a 4vs3 advantage to attack.
But the way teams usually space the floor on offense, the situation usually looks more like a 3vs2 advantage below the free-throw line.
Here's Joventut's Simon Birgander from Gameday 1 showing you exactly what this looks like:
It's not just the 3vs2 advantage that makes this pass so dangerous, it's the location the pass out of the short roll comes from.
A study done by Courel-Ibanez et al (Deep nerd warning!! Sorry, not sorry) looked at NBA offenses, and found that offensive efficiency increased by 32 percent when passes from inside the paint to outside were generated.
The odds of a shot going in directly after an inside-out pass go up by 17 percent, and an offense ended by dive cuts to the basket are almost 5x more efficient.
As you just saw in that short video of Simon Birgander in one game, the short roll generates all of the above.
"So, what's that got to do with Laprovittola's pass at the start of this column?" we hear you ask.
And that's a fair question.
After all, it wasn't explicitly a pass to the short roll and Emir Sulejmanovic didn't pass the ball after receiving it.
Well, we're getting there, I promise, but there are some other layers we need to peel back first.
Let's jump to Joventut's win over Telekom Baskets Bonn. What you will see in the video below is Bonn employing the Hedge and Plug coverage that Zibenas was discussing with Dani Miret during his visit.
We didn't highlight the hedge because you already know what that looks like, but watch the arrows on the screen to see that the first arrow shows you Rubio's defender, #21 Joel Aminu, plugging the space where Rubio could make the pass to the short roll.
You can see his hands raised to stop the pass over the top. The second arrow shows that Bonn also sent a second layer of help for the deep roll, with #7 Grayson Murphy leaving Isaac Nogues open in the corner to help in the paint.
Ricky, being Ricky, knew exactly where his pass was going before he'd picked up his dribble but first used his eyes to sell the pass to the roller, then fired the perfect pass to the corner.
It wasn't the first time in the game that he'd perfectly assessed every layer of the defense to dissect his opponent either:
With that explained, now we can finally get back to the genius of Nico Laprovittola.
Let's watch the clip again, but this time we've highlighted that Bonn are using the same Hedge and Plug coverage, and they have the same player tagging the deep roll.
We've also left the replay in after, just to enjoy the technical wizardry of the pocket pass.
If you watch that clip again with all the extra layers of context, we also want you to take in the game situation: 30 seconds left in the game, Joventut with a two-possession lead.
Laprovittola had the opportunity to kill the game and he knew his opponent was determined to take away the pass to the short roll or the deep roll.
The best players are able to get what they want regardless of what the defense does to take it away.
That's exactly what Laprovittola did. He had the poise to use the first crossover to sell the pass to the short roll, then put the ball in his pocket to create a split second of hesitation in the defender tagging the deep roll.
And then the pass... As you see in the replay, there's a window of space about one meter wide to throw that pass through, and it arrived precisely in the middle of it.
The understanding tactically, the timing and pausa, the technical execution...
All of them from the very elite end of execution in this sport.