Isaiah Thomas hit 9 of 13 shots at the rim against DeAndre Jordan and the LA Clippers. Jordan is a 7-foot tall Defensive Player of the Year candidate. Thomas is 5’9″.
How’d he do that?
Just asked Andre Drummond how Isaiah Thomas can score over 7-footers. He shook his head and said, “I still don’t understand it to this day.”
— Marc D’Amico (@Marc_DAmico) February 12, 2016
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Isaiah Thomas said that in the middle of Wed’s game vs LA, DeAndre Jordan told Thomas he couldn’t believe some of the shots he was making.
— Boston Celtics (@celtics) February 12, 2016
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
When you’re a small guy like Isaiah, you have to find a lot of ways to score among the trees. Thomas has a variety of step back, side-step, fades, and whatever else to clear some space for that lofting layup to get up on the rim. I talked about this on the new Rainin’ J’s podcast, but I’ll explain it here too with a visual aid. This is a nice, sneaky way to get some separation from a big guy while at the same time preventing him from getting up to block his shot.
This was against the Nets, and I know Bojan Bogdanovic isn’t DeAndre Jordan, but this is the best angle I could find to illustrate the point. This move is sneaky good, and an IT go-to.
Step 1: On the gather, initiate contact with the opponent’s core. That prevents him from gathering. Thinking about trying to jump… what’s the first thing you do? Bend down a little to get the leg and core strength to propel yourself upwards. This little move saps a lot of that energy away while also…
Step 2: Use that momentum to bounce off the defender and create some space.
It’s really that simple. Defender bounces back a little, Thomas bounces left a little, and suddenly there’s no power to jump and too much space to make up.
He always does this going to his left (strong) hand, and it almost always works against bigger players. Thomas is so low to the ground, he doesn’t often lose his center of balance. Against guys like Jordan, he sometimes needs to get a bigger bounce, which is when he’ll fall and slide halfway up the baseline.
But this is how he does it. He is basically taking advantage of his size to shoulder opponents in the gut, bump them back and sap their jumping power, and clear the space he needs while maintaining good balance.
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
