All-court pressure has long been an emergency strategy in the NBA, reserved for late in a game, particularly when a team is trailing and attempts a holdup.
It must be said that Rick Pitino's failed experience with the Celtics has left its mark in the general imagination. But things may be changing because as Mike Shearer notes, we have arguably never seen as much off-road pressure as this season. This is confirmed by the figures from Synergy Sports.
Exploding use
Between 2008, the start of match analysis by Synergy Sports, and 2023, only one team had started more than 5% of its defensive possessions with full-court pressure and that was the 2020/21 Hornets. Except that last year, the Pacers and the Blazers had exceeded this threshold, Portland going up to 7.2%!
At the start of the season, Chauncey Billups' men have further raised the bar, thanks mainly to the all-terrain pressure that can be exerted by Toumani Camarabut the Pacers of Andrew Nembhard, Bennedict Mathurin and Pascal Siakam have exploded the ratio, approaching 12%, while the Nets are just behind, with 11.5%. Rates therefore more than twice higher than anything we had seen for 15 years in the Great League.
The Pacers were already using a lot, and unusually, all-terrain pressure during the last playoffs, and it is therefore not a surprise that they are at the top of the standings.
“The goal is to make it part of our identity. This is not common in the NBA, however.explained Tyrese Haliburton ahead of the season. “But we are like that in attack too. We are not a group like the others. With our density and our style, I think we can be expected to play like that, to spread the play on both ends of the pitch. Last season, when we pushed teams to play fast, when most didn't want to, and with our fast-paced style, it worked to our advantage. »
Jordi Fernandez’s “FIBA Nets” also surprised a lot of people with their continued pressure.
The influence of European coaches?
“They play like a FIBA team” detailed Kenny Aktinson. “I felt like I was at the Olympics. They slow down the game, they are very physical, they put crazy pressure on the ball carrier. It slows down your pace, passing becomes complicated, they are on every dribble, they turn the match into a fight. We told the guys at halftime, this game was going to be special back-to-back, it was a war. »
Obviously, it is above all a tool used by teams who are weak on the defensive level, who seek to compensate for their limitations on placed play by causing losses of the ball upstream, but also by preventing the implementation of opposing systems, precisely in order to to short-circuit the attack before it is too late.
The Raptors are the 28th defense in efficiency, the Nets are 26th, the Pacers are 23rd and the Blazers are 15th.
However, we can note that the Heat (18th defense) and the Grizzlies (5th) also use all-terrain pressure on more than 5% of their defensive possessions at the start of the season. It remains to be seen whether this will last because it is a demanding strategy, which requires a broad and young rotation, in order to remain effective over time.
We can perhaps also see a European influence since the Raptors are coached by the Serbian Darko Rajakovic while the Nets are now led by the Spaniard Jordi Fernandezwhen the Finn Tuomas Iisalo became Taylor Jenkins' right-hand man with the Grizzlies this summer. A trend to follow…
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