What’s up guys! Hope you are all doing well and enjoying the WNBA season thus far and of course the NBA playoffs, which have been awesome. In this newsletter I wanted to take a deep dive into some offensive strategies for playing against “Ice/Down/Blue” ball screen defense. I’m going to refer to it as “ice defense” throughout this newsletter but no matter your terminology, the ultimate goal of “ice coverage is to keep the ball on one side of the floor in order to essentially erase any opportunity to use the ball screen. It’s important to point out that ice defense is typically used on “wing” or “side” ball screens where the screen is clearly not set in the middle of the floor.
This a coverage that my college team at Quinnipiac used for years and as a player I really enjoyed icing ball screens. For someone like myself who didn’t play much defense in my career and was often times considered a liability, that’s saying something! It allowed me as a slower & undersized “post” player to contain the ball in a specific direction knowing where help was coming from rather than being on an island in the middle of the floor with quick guards who could blow by me or dictate the next action.
Before we dive into the offensive strategies to beat the ice - a few of the primary reasons teams may decide to use this coverage are as follows
1) Prevents penetration towards the middle of the floor
2) Allows bigger/slower defenders to stay closer to the basket and give a cushion
3) Eliminates issue of guards getting hit or having to fight over ball screens
4) Can force players to their weak hand by keeping them on certain side of floor
5) Should force contested mid range jumpers if played well
These are just a few of the benefits of icing wing ball screens and I’m sure there are many more that I have not yet discovered or learned about. Here is an example of what an aggressive ice coverage looks like from one of the best defenses in the WNBA, the Seattle Storm.
Seattle’s ball screen defense could be summed it one word last season - aggressive. Here they are icing the ball screen by keeping the ball handler, Kayla McBride on the left side of the floor with the post player aggressively showing. Forcing McBride to give it up is a win in Seattle’s book as it gets the ball out of McBride’s hands and forces someone else to make a play. Watch the weakside now as they shade over to take away A’ja Wilson on the roll and choose to leave a non-shooter open at the top of the key… forcing the type of shot they will live with from the player they want taking it.
Now that you have an idea of what “good” ice coverage looks like, here are some ways to exploit it.
1) Use The Screen - Ice Defense Does NOT Exist
Ryan Pannone says it best in his clinic on attacking PnR coverages “Ice defense does not exist”. I didn’t fully understand what he meant by this the first time I heard it, but he’s essentially saying that most offensive players default into allowing the defense to dictate the action instead of actually testing the strength of the defensive coverage. For example, when the on ball defender hears “ice ice ice” from their teammate and switches their feet and body positioning to be parallel with the sideline, the player with the ball often times chooses to play right into that defensive game plan without first stress testing the defense. Instead of just attacking baseline towards the defender who is waiting to contain the drive, Pannone insists that players should still try and use the original screen because most guards don’t do a good job keeping their man pinned to the sideline.
Kelsey Mitchell beats the ice coverage with a simple front pivot towards the baseline shifting her defender beneath the screen which creates the space she needs to use the screen and attack towards the middle of the floor. That subtle movement away from the screen allows her to get a step on her defender and a quick spin now forces the defense to trail and recover.
In this clip, DeWanna Bonner takes 1 hard dribble down towards the baseline, getting the on ball defender out of that top foot position and is now in a perfect scenario to re-attack middle and use the original screen.
Pannone makes another great point during that clinic when he says something along the lines of…
“How many coaches do you know that practice what to do when the coverage is blown? There aren’t many coaches working on what to do when a guard rejects a screen or in this case uses a screen or attacks in a direction that they weren’t supposed to…The majority of coaches practice what’s supposed to happen and fail to address the “what ifs”.
Basically, what Pannone is saying is to always try and use the screen against ice coverage because often times all it takes is a quick change or shift of direction to get that on ball defender back beneath the screen & out of their ice position.
2) Drive The Ice & Bait
Alright, let’s say the defense does a good job of really pinning you to that side of the floor so now what? Here are a few options vs the ice after you start your drive downhill towards the baseline
A) Screener Pop
A good hard drive at the screener defender can often times put two on the ball for a split second. Rules vary from team to team on when or if players should switch if the ball handler defender is totally beat and out of the play. In the clip below you see both defenders follow the ball leaving the pop wide open for the screener. Ideally, you want to look for the pop with a stretch big who can shoot the 3 but driving the ice hard and drawing two can be a successful strategy for creating open shots vs. the ice.
B) Pop & Backcut
No need to even drive the ice here, and again no screen is set but the on ball defender, Jewell Loyd in this case, is totally committed to ice positioning. As soon as this pass is thrown back to the big, she is susceptible to the backdoor cut because of her starting position. Fortunately, for Seattle they missed the open cutter but now you can start to see that when the on ball defender jumps into ice position too early and the big fails to communicate, not unlike any other defensive coverage, problems will arise!
B) Drive It IMMEDIATELY
Another sneaky tactic that smart players will pick up on when they know the defense is icing is to rip and go as soon as the on ball defender changes their foot positioning opening up that baseline. This is extremely hard to guard when the ball is being reversed through the post from the top of the floor because the post who is responsible for protecting the rim on the ice is in a tough position of having to guard the ball and then sprint to drop into the ice position as her player makes the pass. You can see in this clip the screener defender is late but the on ball defender actually does a really good job contesting the jumper.
Having your stretch big reverse the ball from the top of the floor and then sprint into the wing ball screen will put a lot of pressure on that post defender to essentially be responsible for two things at back to back: Her man with the ball and then stopping the drive.
3) Flip & Snake The Screen
The most commonly seen tactic to defeat the ice in the WNBA is by far what is called “flipping the screen” or sometimes referred to as “reverse angle or step up screens”. As you watch the two clips below notice the screener change her angle as she realizes the defense is trying to ice.
Flipping the screen allows the ball handler to create more separation from her initial defender and creates an automatic 2 on 1 advantage for the offense. The “snake” move comes in on the crossover change of direction and gets the ball back into the middle of the floor, exactly the opposite of where the defense intended for the ball to go. This can be troublesome for defenses because now the big is responsible for stopping a drive that has momentum and is changing sides of the floor, requiring much more lateral quickness that not all post players have. For more on the art of snaking the screen, just go pull up some Chris Paul clips from this years NBA finals. He’s the master of snaking screens and getting his defender on his back at his mercy. Here’s some footage of him snaking screens back in the OKC days.
4) Turn Screen into DHO
Okay, this one may seem counter intuitive but I actually really like it, especially for a player who maybe isn’t great coming off of or making reads on a ball screen but has the ability to attack downhill with 1 or 2 dribbles and get to the rim. The first clip combines the concept of driving the ice and hitting the pop with a DHO (dribble hand off) You’ll see in this first clip the defense getting set in their normal ice coverage. A hard drive draws two for a split second, the ball handler hooks the pass back to the big and now watch that ball handlers defender relax after the pass is made. We all know that players tend to stand up or take a rest their man gives up the ball. Because the on ball defender had to sprint to recover to get back to square on the drive, she is now trailing the play as the post player dribbles back at the guard for a DHO. Essentially we just negated the ice defense (remember, it doesn’t exist) by baiting two on the ball and setting up the hand off.
I’ve seen this DHO method a ton in the last year or two in the WNBA.
But what if the defense is super aggressive and the guard recovers in time to try and break up the handoff?
They try and prevent Kelsey Mitchell from getting the ball back in this clip and a simple backdoor cut does the trick.
5) Hit Roller Early - Pocket Pass/Slip
Pocket Pass
Having a guard who is a threat to score but can also facilitate is always a plus. With that being said, teams who consistently ice wing ball screens game after game start to get comfortable with what can at first feel like an awkward and vulnerable guarding position. Ok Jen, two obvious statements - what’s your point?
Well when players tend to get comfortable with something, they also become more likely to cheat or jump the coverage before it actually happens. Check out the clip below…
Courtney Williams, the ball handler in the clip above exposes this ice coverage with a beautiful pocket pass taking advantage of that huge gap between her teammate and the on ball defender. Remember, take everything with a grain of salt as I don’t actually know what the Mystics coverage was supposed to look like in this play. I’m not in their staff meetings or film sessions - this is pure speculation. To me, there never actually was a screen - the post player was a significant distance away from the ball and never even attempted to set a screen. So why was the on ball defender already in an ice position? If I had to guess, the two defenders involved in the play probably assumed a screen was going to be set and like I mentioned beforehand cheated the play early and Williams took full advantage.
So a nice little tactic to cause early rotation and open up space is to act like you’re going to screen, force the defense to react and then get away quickly. If the post protecting the basket leaves early to recover to her player popping then it should be a layup for the ball handler on a baseline drive.
Slip The Screen
Similar to the first clip, the Seattle defenders get into their ice coverage early leaving the screener open to slip to the bucket before the weak side defense even had a chance to step up and help. When you know the defense is icing, sometimes there is no need to even try to set the screen - slip out early and cause confusion!
Of course there are plenty of other options that teams have used in the past and continue to have success with today. I’ve learned most of this from some incredibly smart coaches who have a knack for picking apart defenses and making teams pay for executing “good”defensive principles. When I discover a few new options for attacking the ice, I will be sure to share!
Which action is the most effective? I don’t know and I think it’s hard to say, like everything in basketball… “It depends” is often a sufficient answer. But that’s the fun part about coaching right, you get to decide.
Backyard Buckets Podcast Episodes
1) Zach Kancher - Towson Women’s Basketball Associate Head Coach
2) Ugo Nwaigwe - Brown Women’s Basketball Assistant Coach
Links of The Week!
What I Watched
Ryan Holiday - How To Read Like a Pro
Counter To Pressure Defense - Blind Pig Action
What I Listened Too
Zak Boisvert - Unmasked Podcast
Ryan Holiday ft. Shaka Smart - The Daily Stoic Podcast
What I Read