daniel theis' paint seal
a crafty move straight out of the tim duncan playbook
tim duncan is widely regarded as the greatest power forward ever. yet he still doesn't get quite enough credit for
his value as a defender - he never won a defensive player of the year award despite anchoring top-5 defenses for over 15 years
perfecting the subtle paint seal
timmy got his teammates several wide open layups every game by sealing off the opposing big in the paint so they couldn't rotate to defend the rim. (side note, if the passing assist stat counts for something in the box score, things like screen assists should too.)
and now the new king of this move is the boston celtics' daniel theis.
the philadelphia sixers bigs (joel embiid and al horford) must hate him. behold:
here's theis sealing off jaxson hayes:
and kevin knox:
celtics rookie grant williams is a pretty quick learner:
one nba draft prospect i'm really intrigued by is usc's talented big, onyeka okongwu. for one thing, he's already got the seal down:
nick rakocevic misses this layup here, but this play again shows great awareness by okongwu:
one last relevant observation...
i've mentioned that bam adebayo might be next in line to make the shortlist of the best and most versatile team defenders ever, and it's because of stuff like this - it took bam just three games to not only anticipate theis' seals but get through them. i saw this play early in the first quarter of game 4 today:
he's special.
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