Jaden Ivey And What Spacing Truly Means
November 9th 2023 | By Roshan Potluri
Imagine it’s the year 2022, tears well up in your eyes, and each breath you take becomes tougher and tougher as excitement swirls into an inferno that makes every word difficult to get out. Your eyes become red as they can no longer stop the tears that stream down your cheek, a flurry of tears keeps flowing and there seemingly feels like there's no stop as you hear your name being called to be an NBA player. Fastrack a couple of months ahead and your heart is beating just as fast but this is a different rush. You wear that Pistons insignia on your chest and attack the basketball hoop with the same flurry those tears streamed down your cheek, but all you can think about is how amazing it feels to hoop for your hometown team.
This was the case for the 2022 draftee, Jaden Ivey, who was drafted at 5 in the 2022 NBA draft and took the league by storm in his rookie season with the added opportunity that Cade Cunningham’s injury provided, and in tandem with his fellow rookie, Jalen Duren, it looked the Pistons had caught lightning in a bottle in what seemed like a ‘lost’ season.
Pistons fans must have been excited to come into the 2023-24 season, to finally see their young core take shape and play together. Fans were ecstatic to see how this core would gel together as the 3-man lineup of Cunningham-Ivey-Duren played a staggering 28 total minutes together over 6 games (via NBA.com) in the previous season. The fit made sense on paper, a smooth pick-and-roll wizard paired up with one of the best rollers in the league with a secondary creator who could play on and off the ball and provide value as a creation outlet for a high-usage primary. Fans could see how this worked, but they needed to see how it worked, a proof of concept if you will.
Since then, the Pistons have brought in a new coaching staff headlined by Coach Monty Williams and drafted two new rookies in Ausar Thompson and Marcus Sasser, and with those substantial changes, the expectations for Ivey within the team construct have also slowed down.
Nine games into the 2023-24 season and most Pistons fans can explain why Ivey has not started yet or has had his minutes limited, and it is because the coaching staff has approached this season from a defensive perspective, forming a meritocracy to instill good habits and a sense of discipline that starts with the defensive end. Ivey struggled with the defensive side of the ball his rookie year and it looks like he’s a primary example of why the team has taken this approach. This is transparent in the lineup the Pistons have played the most this season. Cunningham-Hayes-Thompson-Stewart-Duren has played 93 minutes through 7 games (NBA.com) so far and each player in the lineup is a positive defender.
The Calculus of Spacing
Before I make my case on whether Ivey should start or not, I want to take a detour to a conversation that is not only prominent within Pistons Twitter, but an overarching theme throughout most of NBA Twitter: what does spacing truly mean?
Webster’s Diction- … I’ll stop myself here because there’s no true definition that has been laid out for what spacing means within a basketball context. The most common idea, and a misconception, is the level of shooting around your primary creators or actions, but this idea is a bit antiquated because it treats all basketball like a heliocentric solar system, and the game is far more nuanced than that.
The most common misconception is how the value of spacing is created and how that level of spacing is achieved because of the percentages that the shooters in the rotation shoot at. Spacing can be created in a plethora of different ways, but even horizontal spacing - spacing that is brought from the gravity of players from the perimeter - does not work solely on the basis of the percentages a player is shooting. Don’t get me wrong, a 44% shooter from 3 will definitely have his defender stick to him more often than a shooter shooting 32%, but NBA defenses are a lot more advanced than this and it takes a lot more than the efficiency a player is finishing those plays at. Prior to delving into this, I want to take a second on how spacing can be created outside of shooting on the NBA court.
Spacing is the idea that you are pulling the defense in a different direction to create an opportunity to score or create a passing advantage, and there are numerous ways to draw the defense in different directions, including vertical spacing.
Vertical
Vertical spacing usually comes from players that can be lob threats, where they can score over the top of the defense and therefore create gravity on the court vertically. The Pistons are flush with this type of gravity between Duren, Bagley, Wiseman, and even the 6’ 7” Ausar Thompson. Vertical gravity helps collapse the defensive shell around the rim and it therefore allows space to either be created at the perimeter or for the primary ball-handler.
The Cunningham-Duren pick and rolls can be one of the most deadly two-man duos because of the tremendous roll gravity that Duren provides and Cade’s ability to act on that spacing as a playmaker. For example in this clip, after Duren sets the screen and rolls, it creates space for Cade to operate in the midrange and causes Vucevic to drop closer to the rim to cover the Duren lob/rim finish.
Another example is this clip of Ausar here in transition, Ausar zips across full-court as Cade runs the break which causes Jalen Williams to commit closer to Ausar and initially gives Cade some space to operate, and as Chet is backtracking he commits to the ball-handler and it opens up the lob for Ausar as Jalen Williams is caught in no man's land. All of this happens in a split second because of Ausar’s downhill athleticism, hustle, and ability to finish over the defense.
Decision-Making and Scheme
The other way to pull the defense in different directions is through scheme and how a team plays. One way the Pistons have manufactured spacing when there is none outside of vertical gravity, is they have been able to use quick decision-making to do this. When decision-making happens in a split second and there are multiple players on the court that can get downhill and simultaneously connect the possession through passing, it can break down even the best defenses and break into the defensive shell. That’s how this possession leads to an open dunk for Ausar at the rim.
Creative schemes can also help manufacture spacing when players don’t naturally create it or are not respected by defenses yet. A lot of this is through effective screening and involving less-than-effective perimeter spacers within the primary action through DHOs (Direct Hand-Offs.)
Monty runs a ‘Wide-Pin’ action here where Cade sets a screen near the right wing that creates space for Ausar to get downhill and an open lane to the rim. Derrick Jones Jr. has to commit to Cade as he leaks to the corner, and the ball screen set by James Wiseman at the top of the key pulls Dereck Lively away from the rim, giving Ausar two easy points in the half-court as he turns the corner.
Additionally, schemes can be used to empower a player’s gravity as well, here Mark Daigneault puts Isaiah Joe in the dunker spot. I’ll let @bowser2bowser (highly recommend following his account) explain how this ‘roll and replace’ opens up an open shot for Cason Wallace.
Horizontal
Lastly, let’s come back to the idea of horizontal spacing. Why is it not enough to shoot a high percentage from 3?
NBA defenses are composed of some of the best athletes in the world who can cover ground effectively and cause a shooter to have the need to create counters as defenders can usually recover and closeout. Guys who have their defenders stuck to them from the perimeter are shooters who shoot with high versatility: from catch and shoot, movement, pullups, etc. This is why players like Steph Curry, Isaiah Joe, and Buddy Hield can create gravity without the ball in their hands because they are a threat to the defense any time they are in open space. Shooting a high percentage is great because it creates the confirmation bias for a defense to stay with that player, but functionally it is versatility and volume that causes this gravity. As long as a player is shooting above-average percentages, with versatility and volume, and able to put the ball on the floor to create counters, that is when a player truly creates horizontal spacing to a high degree.
Coming back to the Pistons, remember that 5-man lineup of Cunningham-Hayes-Thompson-Stewart-Duren? There is an emphasis on defense with this lineup but it is not operating at a high enough level with how ineffective the offense has been. As you’ve seen in a couple of clips above, Monty Williams has been creative with scheme and playstyle to manufacture spacing when it is not there, but that is not enough in the NBA. For context, that 5-man lineup has an offensive rating of 102 and a defensive rating of 114.5 (NBA.com) over 93 minutes. It is a smaller sample but this would rank as the league’s worst offense while being the 24th-best defense.
While I understand Monty's perspective, which involves considering the broader development of players through a tougher approach to defense, I believe that this approach is adversely affecting the entire team in the short term and especially hurting all the players in that starting lineup. Not only is this leading to losses but the main issue is that it is not giving players space to operate and improve their games. That lack of spacing is leading to a less-than-ideal developmental context.
A zone defense hurts this lineup so much because defenders are able to help at the nail on drives while being able to give soft closeouts to less effective 3-point shooters, and if Ausar Thompson or Killian Hayes hits that shot the defense lives with it because it is below average shot quality for the Pistons offense at the moment.
Even when the team has shooters in the lineup it becomes difficult because there are players that have detrimental scoring gravity that teams can sag off of and the bigs are not creating good screening angles, look at how the Suns' defense leverages this into making Cade's only option to create in this possession a heavily contested long mid-range shot that leads to free throws.
Enter Jaden Ivey
So how do the Pistons fix this in the short term? For now, if the Pistons want to stick with this meritocracy for defense, the Pistons can start using Marcus Sasser in the starting lineup instead, or even Burks if they want to get a more veteran presence to help with the turnovers issue. While Burks gets consistently attacked in mismatches as a defender, his floor spacing should drastically improve the offense both in transition and the half-court even if the defense takes a hit.
However, my main issue with using Burks and Sasser to a lesser degree is while they do give you high-volume shooting, most of their value as shooters comes from being on the ball as pull-up shooters and off the catch. Sasser to a lesser degree because he’s able to counter hard closeouts with his shifty handle and touch within the arc and also has a lot more burst than Burks to collapse the defense. In these situations, Burks is relegated to use craft like a jail dribble or foul grifting to create scoring opportunities.
Here’s an example of what I mean when these types of shooters are not given the same type of gravity even though Burks shot 40.6% on catch-and-shoot attempts (via Synergy Sports), there’s a miscommunication on the Raptors' end here but there are plenty of clips from last year where teams would help off of Burks to help at the nail on drives
It’s because teams would rather give Burks the space to shoot and have the chance to recover than test Jaden Ivey’s speed in an open driving lane. This is where a player’s gravity as a scorer and the tools they have is extremely important.
The long-term and most obvious answer here is Jaden Ivey starting with the rest of this group because not only did he hit 47.5% of his unguarded catch-and-shoot shots last year (which means he can effectively play finish on these opportunities when teams help off of him) he has also has the scoring and physical skillset that I’ve outlined above to become a truly high-level spacer.
When helped off the line, he can put the ball on the floor and attack the rim with ferocity, when he’s given extra attention his growth as a playmaker from last year kicks in where he can make more advanced reads to find the open man and he’s effectively added a midrange counter. He’s even improved his core strength and balance over the off-season allowing him to stabilize his core better and shoot extremely difficult movement 3’s, becoming more scheme and shot versatile. Teams just can not help off of Ivey and when they do, he makes them pay for it and even when they don’t he slithers through the gaps of a defense with his 99th percentile speed.
The problem is, and I get no joy out of saying this, Ivey was genuinely a terrible defender last year. Monty sees how valuable he is to an offense but also realizes that unless the defense improves it is going to make it difficult to work with long-term. So perhaps this is the right way to go about it because I am already noticing Ivey’s screen navigation improve and him taking advantage of his recovery tools as a lock and trail defender more often. Just watch what he does here:
What we need to see from Ivey is consistency as he slowly grows over the season on the defensive end. While I haven’t agreed with some of the situations Monty has set Ivey up in on the defensive end with that bench unit and how he has barely any margins to make mistakes on that end, my hope is, like Monty’s, is that a diamond is built out of this extreme pressure. Sasser can start for now, but eventually, the end goal needs to be having Ivey at the forefront of this franchise because he’s the x-factor for this core.