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When you talk about point guards in high-volume ball screen and DHO offenses, you’re looking for versatility. Versatility in the name of the game in general these days, and it shows heavily in what Kevin Keatts wants to do on offense. Defense in basketball is designed to make the offense score with its weakest skill set, hence why being multiple is so important.
As a lead guard, you need to limit obvious answers for the defense. Being an effective scorer against drop coverage, moving the ball well against more aggressive ball screen defenses, providing a mismatch issue that prevents easy switching, and rendering the decision to go under a screen an idiotic one will come together to prevent a defense from having an easy time forcing you into something specific that you don’t do well.
The perfect pick-and-roll point guard needs to check four boxes. There are sub skill-sets to all of these, but we’ll keep it high level for now
Ability to read out a pick and roll and distribute the ball accurately and on time
Effective ball movement beats rotations necessary to execute a hedge or a hard show.
Ability to make threes off the dribble
A viable perimeter jumper prevents defenses from going under screens and playing off the point guard.
Ability to make “giant killer” shots in the mid-range (floaters, pull-up jumpers)
A good mid-range game stresses drop coverage and pulls bigs toward the ball, creating rotation and opportunities for ball movement.
Ability to put pressure on the rim and finish over larger rim-protection players
Explosiveness and the scoring acumen to pay it off also puts pressure on drop coverage, switching defenses, and creates opportunities to turn a corner against a hedging big.
It’s pretty rare to find all of these in a college kid. Markell Johnson was the closest State has come. Dereon Seabron was the definition of box number four, but he lacked in the other areas. Jarkel Joiner was strong in box two and four and excellent in box three. He was a very score-first player who wasn’t inept as a passer, but was far from excellent. State, not surprisingly, was low in assist rate that season. Michael O’Connell is probably in the top 1% of box number one. He’s shown some ability to make pull-up jumpers also, but box two and four haven’t been a big part of his game.
You can absolutely be a great basketball team without a guard checking all of these boxes. Very few truly do. However, there is a man on this iteration of NC State Basketball who is showing inklings of a versatile nature that State has not seen in the recent past. His name is Trey Parker.
I cannot stress enough that these are inklings. Parker has played in four games, all against inferior teams. No conclusions are being drawn here, and he hasn’t put up gaudy numbers, but the versatility of his game has been hard for me to ignore. Let’s go through the list.
Ability to read a pick and roll and distribute the ball accurately and on time.
If you don’t have this in your point guard, you better be running these actions with a high-level scorer. State has created great movement with ball screen actions originating with the distribution god himself, Michael O’Connell. Parker has popped a bit too. Let’s start the film machine.
This is from the exhibition.
It’s a spread pick-and-roll action that State runs fifteen times a game. Two corner shooters, a shooter in the opposite slot, and the action originating from the slot area. Lees-McRae is going to hedge the screen, which means the big is going to climb aggressively and try and force a retreat dribble from Parker.
They screw it up a bit, with the guard going under Middlebrooks. Parker’s burst shows a bit here, as he’s able to turn the corner around the hedge. You’ll notice his eyes are up the whole time. The guard for Lees-McRae tries to recover to the ball with the corner defender coming down to tag Middlebrooks on the roll. Parker reads out that he’s got the tagger, elevates, and delivers a skip pass accurately over the wing. It results in a wide open shot.
It's subtle, but you can actually see Parker get his eyes to Middlebrooks and elevate looking that way. I think he actually baited the roller tag with his eyes to create an even longer closeout on the jump shot.
Parker has juice as a passer. He’s flashed with a couple good skip passes this year, he can throw a nice entry pass, the lobs against Upstate were fun, and his ability to pass up the court on the break has flashed as well.
Ability to make threes off the dribble
The importance of this is obvious for a ball-dominant guard. It makes it harder to give cushion as the defender. It also makes it impossible and very stupid to go under ball screens. This is something defenses can get away with against total non-shooters, and you saw some of it during the Seabron days. The ability to pull up and punish that space matters.
Parker has not shot a three in a screening action yet if I'm remembering correctly, but he did do this against South Carolina Upstate.
There isn’t much to this from a film perspective. He felt comfortable with the cushion he was getting and he pulled up and buried it. You can see Huntley-Hatfield coming to him. I think State was trying to get into another spread ball screen here. I love Parker’s willingness to take this shot if he feels comfortable with it. You want guys that make that decision confidently, and the fact that he did not attempt another in the next two games is a good sign that this isn’t a kid that will just chuck up garbage.
Ability to make “giant killer” shots in the mid-range (floaters, pull-up jumpers)
Drop coverage is among the most popular ball screen defenses out there, especially in college with less athletic bigs. Drop coverage protects the rim and the three-point line at the exchange point, while conceding mid-range shots and pick-and-pop. Every defensive scheme has a tradeoff and that’s the bet drop coverage places.
There are a lot of ways to beat it, and we discussed some more specifics here. If you can be effective in the mid-range with a pull up or a floater, you can dice this stuff up. Trae Young of the Atlanta Hawks said in response to a question about pick-and-roll reads that “I’ll just shoot floaters all day” when he sees drop coverage and no roller tag.
Trey Parker ate Coastal Carolina’s drop coverage here.
Coastal is allowing him to turn the corner. This is a zoom action, which is a DHO and not a true ball screen, but it’s executed and read in a similar fashion. The Chanticleers want him to challenge that seven-footer or shoot a mid-range shot. He pulls up, takes the wide open shot he’s being given, and puts it in the can. Parker did this three times in this game. He was 60% from the mid-range. That will do. When you can consistently make the shots the defense wants you to take, you’re in good shape. Just ask DJ Horne.
Ability to put pressure on the rim and finish over larger rim-protection players
Against drop coverage, you can also just score at the rim if you have the aptitude to do so against a bigger shot blocker. Devon Daniels could do this. Dereon Seabron obviously could. This is better than taking a mid-range shot if you are capable of making it, as jump shots have a higher natural variance. It is not easy to do, however.
Parker easily could have pulled up again here, but he challenges a seven-footer, albeit not a super athletic one, at the rim instead.
This is another zoom action, and he puts the high arc off the glass, offering shades of Markell Johnson in the process. I love this shot. Parker is such an athlete, and his change of speed and ability to elevate opens a lot of opportunities to create better shots when he’s putting pressure on the rim.
As written in the above section, when you can consistently make the shots the defense wants you to take, you’re in good shape. If you can make the shots the defense is selling out to prevent, well then you’re in phenomenal shape. Parker can get to the rim, and if he can put these types of shots through the cup consistently, hoo boy.
The freshman hasn’t done anything at a high volume yet, but everything he’s done with the ball, he’s done quite well. That versatility is the exciting part. I am going to be paying very close attention to how this translates to stiffer competition, how he develops through the early stages of his career, and how he handles a higher usage rate. I'm excited though, because, he’s seen some different looks in his first four games as a college basketball player and looked completely unphased in each situation. We’ll have to wait for more, a lot more, but this guy might just be special.
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