Different teams achieve success in different parts of the game. When you think of the Raptors, you think of a team that achieves at forcing turnovers and grabbing offensive rebounds. What you might not think about? How they’re one of the best teams in the league when it comes to baseline out of bounds (BLOB) plays.
How does a team that was 26th in the league in PPP (points per play) in the halfcourt, manage to succeed in a very static set action? Enter, Fred VanVleet. You get to inbound close to the basket, which makes your bigs more dangerous for a duck-in. That means teams will err on the side of overloading under the bucket and an in-bounder such as VanVleet can now leak out behind the screens and cash a triple.
This provides the defense with the same dilemma any sort of staggered action does. Do you trail? Do you try and cheat over the top? You definitely don’t want to switch, otherwise one of the bigs will seal the guard you leave behind. VanVleet finds heaps of success putting the defense in this mixer. If you trail, he’ll turn the corner, maybe get a step-up screen and operate offense from there. If you cheat, he’ll backtrack into the open space and cash a triple. The Raptors shrink the floor near the bucket, and let VanVleet worm his way to victory on these possessions. It’s simple, but it’s great.
The major motivator of the Raptors success here is obviously VanVleet’s shooting and high-level awareness of how to navigate the space. But, it is nice to see that their atypical size in the middle of their lineups does make teams second guess about switching some of these actions in lieu of giving up a mismatch. A fun reminder that lineup configurations and skillsets reach into the deepest parts of how the game works and fundamentally change how everything gets defended.
I consulted with my dear friend, and basketball encyclopedia, Evin Gualberto on a name for this action. We don’t know what the Raptors call this one in house, but for our purposes Evin recommended we call this one: Lift double stagger. Apparently, it’s tough to find consensus on names for BLOB’s. The names help us identify what other people are talking about quickly, but if you don’t care for the names and just want to pay attention to where advantage is created? That’s just as well.
Get a good look at this action, because you’re going to see the Raptors run a lot of it this season. When you see it, let me know on twitter, the comments under the reaction podcast, or under one of my pieces.
Have a blessed day.
