To screen or not to screen is not a question in Denver.
To roll and perchance to score, now there’s the appeal.
First-year coach David Adelman doesn’t deal lightly in superlatives, so it was notable when he recently described Denver’s roster as “the best Nuggets screening team we’ve had in a long time.”
But he and one of his most prolific screeners did have an amusing difference of opinion about the nature of setting a good screen — the implication of it.
“Guys (are) giving themselves up. … Making the effort to get a hit for somebody else to allow them to have success,” Adelman raved last week. “Sometimes the assist total, 30, is great. But you look back and you look at the screen-assist numbers and what creates offense behind that, it’s an unselfish thing that guys in the NBA don’t all want to do.”
Adelman listed names, crediting almost half of Denver’s roster for contributing: Bruce Brown, Peyton Watson, Tim Hardaway Jr., Spencer Jones. Centers Nikola Jokic and Jonas Valanciunas. The biggest bodies, obviously, are often the heftiest screeners.
“Our team, for whatever reason this year,” Adelman said, “has been very successful at doing it.”
Valanciunas has a reason.
“You know, setting a good screen is selfish,” he said. “Because you’re gonna be open. I’m a selfish guy. Setting good screens.”
Disclaimer: At least half of what the Lithuanian big man says is tongue-in-cheek to some extent, and he even laughed at his own comment in this case.
But the humor in his voice didn’t take away from the sliver of truth to his words. Adelman agreed on Monday night before the Nuggets hosted the Houston Rockets.
“I think it was (Hall of Famer) Chris Mullin that said, ‘I want to be the best screener on the team because I want to shoot the most shots.’ It makes a lot of sense,” Adelman said. “If you (set a) rip screen correctly and you cause confusion, you get to shoot. If you’re a big that sets screens, you create the pocket. The ball finds you (in the pick-and-roll).
“Same thing with a guy like Jamal (Murray). If you set a flare screen, a lot of times, two (defenders) are gonna go with him. And that means you’re the guy that benefits. Peyton gets dunks every other game that way. So yeah, there is something to that.”
The Nuggets have long been particularly adept at using their guards as screeners. Christian Braun, who didn’t make the list of shoutouts from Adelman in his initial comment, has mastered the art of when and how to release from a screen. He often reads the defense and slips to the basket for easy layups and dunks, courtesy of assists from a distributor like Jokic, Murray or Aaron Gordon.
Hardaway has frequently benefited from being the “weakest” link in three-man actions with Jokic and Murray, stepping out to the 3-point line after setting a screen and launching open shots when the defense fixates on Denver’s stars.
The team’s primary form of offense, the split action, involves two non-centers converging then splitting apart with one screening for the other. Late in close games, Murray and Jokic tend to revert to their reliable two-man game for buckets, with Murray snaking around his center.
Other times, the Nuggets will run pick-and-rolls with two bigs, deploying Jokic as the screener or the ball-handler alongside Gordon. They even tried a pick-and-roll recently with Valanciunas setting the screen for Jokic, a uniquely adept center at initiating facilitating offense.
As Valanciunas walked away after his half-joke to reporters, he shrugged and mimed a pick-and-roll motion, receiving the imaginary ball and scoring a layup.
“Funny that he said that, because everything he says is funny,” Adelman said. “But it’s true. It’s selfish and unselfish at the same time. And great scorers in our league are guys that can really screen off the ball. It’s been like that forever.”
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Bennett Durando
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