on august 17th, 2020, the philadelphia 76ers and boston celtics played each other in game 1 of their first-round eastern conference playoff series.
with just over a minute left in the fourth quarter in a 6-point game, i watched boston pull out a beautiful double switch to prevent a joel embiid post-up:
they started the play with marcus smart on embiid, jayson tatum on josh richardson, and daniel theis on matisse thybulle. philly began their set with a richardson-embiid pick-and-roll that's designed to usually get a small (richardson's man) on embiid. embiid took tatum down to the low post, but theis scram switched with tatum on the swing pass to the corner to get boston's biggest/best post defender back on joel with nine seconds left on the shot clock.
since this came off of a made free throw and it came with no hesitation, i think it's very possible that this whole sequence was scouted - like boston knew the action from philly was likely coming - and set it up to scram theis onto embiid. if that's truly the case, that's next-level chess right there.
the celtics have been one of the best scram switching teams for a few years now. to do it well, you have to have a team that communicates and has great instincts. scram switching is all about timing; typically, the best time to do it is on a pass while the ball is in the air, either on a ball swing to get in position for a post entry pass...
...or on the post entry pass itself:
the first team to use the scram switch a lot (that i remember, anyway) was the 2016-17 golden state warriors. i'm not even sure that they were coached to do it; sometimes it looked like draymond green was just instructing his teammates to switch while off-the-ball. regardless if it was built into their gameplan or if it was just dray's extraordinary instincts kicking in, it was really cool to watch.
much was made of the houston rockets' "super small ball" after trading clint capela for robert covington in february 2020. "how will they guard bigs?", people asked.
the answer is 1) having special personnel (pj tucker, roco, and james harden are all incredible post defenders for their size) and 2) scram switching. i noted how impressive houston's defense was in the bubble:
when they're all locked in, playing with intensity, and communicating and scram switching on a string, they're really good defensively in the half court:
so much of offensive basketball (honestly, pretty much all of it) is running a set to move a defense until a mismatch is created, then attack the mismatch. but the process of getting a favorable switch takes time: you'll need to at least swing the ball around a few times, set a pick or two, or penetrate to get the defense to collapse and rotate.
teams that can scram switch consistently and effectively can not only negate mismatches, but also force opponents into possessions where they're trying to create something out of nothing with limited time on the shot clock. it's a huge advantage.
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