Sports Gambling – Want to play in the NBA? Just box out, baby
Boxing out, a chore that ranks on the glamour scale with scrubbing the toilet bowl, will never get you onto a poster.
But it might earn you a roster spot on an NBA team.
Boxing out is simply putting your body between the basket and an opponent attempting to crash the boards for an offensive rebound. It is such a lowly task that some NBA playerstars simply decline to participate.
Juan Toscano-Anderson doesn’t have that luxury. It’s only a slight oversimplification to say that he has a job with the Warriors because he is willing and able to box out.
“One of the reasons Juan Toscano-Anderson is playing so much is he pretty much boxes out every time,” said Steve Kerr, invited to offer his observations on the art and science and dirty work of boxing out.
“Shot goes up and he finds a free man,” Kerr continued. “It’s almost like picking up the blitz in football. If you’re the running back, you’ve gotta find the free guy and go block him. It’s the same concept. And Juan is just really good at finding that free guy. Whether (Toscano-Anderson) gets the rebound or not, he’s just giving us a better chance to do so.”
Failure to box out — a crime I will shorthand to FBO — is a problem with the Warriors. You hear Kerr complain about it a lot. He has good cause. Going into Wednesday’s game, the Warriors averaged 7.8 offensive rebounds per game (28th lowest in the NBA). Their opponents averaged a league-high 11.1.
It’s enough to make a coach tear out his hair, which is probably why Kerr keeps his hair close-cropped and gelled.
Because boxing out is taught in high school, if not much earlier, let’s bring in a high school coach, Don Lippi of St. Joseph Notre Dame-Alameda. He’s Northern California’s all-time winningest boys coach.
“It’s like if somebody is breaking into your house,” Lippi said. “If one guy gets in, you maybe can beat him up. But when you’ve got four people coming in, it’s hard to beat ’em all up.
“You find ’em, you contact ’em, you keep ’em behind you. It’s not a joyful thing. You’re going to get bumps, you’re going to get pushed, but it’s something that has to get done. It’s not the fun one.”
Hey, coaches: Want your players to box out? Here’s a drill, from Don Lippi, who got it from Bobby Knight.
Two players stand in the paint, facing one another, backs to the sidelines. The coach stands near the basket, holds out the ball, and drops it. On first bounce, the two players can move, but not touch the ball.
“You can’t push,” said Lippi. “You can use your butt and feet. It gets pretty aggressive.”
On the second bounce, the ball is live and either player can grab it. Whichever player gets it tries to score. If a basket is made, either player can grab the ball and try to put it back in. On missed shots, either player can rebound and shoot immediately. First player to two baskets wins.
“My kids love it.”
– Scott Ostler
Lippi won’t bench a player for FBO. He figures if his players don’t do it, it’s because he hasn’t taught them properly.
Kerr? Different story. Kerr said it’s not his intent to embarrass a player for FBO, but the point must be made.
“I will occasionally take a player out (for FBO), especially a young player,” Kerr said. “I’m not taking Draymond Green or Steph (Curry) out if they miss a box-out, I’ll be perfectly honest. I’ll tell them at the next timeout, ‘Hey, let’s make sure we box out,’ and they usually know when they miss one.
“But a young guy, a Jordan Poole, Mike Mulder, Nico Mannion, Juan — if Juan were to miss one — sure. It’s a good way to remind them, ‘Hey, if you want to play, you gotta do this every time.’ I wouldn’t hesitate to take one of those guys out.”
Lippi noted that boxing out is more difficult at the NBA level.
“You block out the guy, he might jump over you and dunk on you, anyway,” Lippi said. KellyOubre “is not easy to block out.”
Kerr agreed. In high school, “you sort of find a man and put your back into him, but in the NBA, the athletes are so good and quick, sometimes that can backfire on you, because they’ll run right around you. It’s almost more about finding the guy and either hitting him in the chest with your forearm and hands — not to the point where it’s a foul, but just stopping his momentum — or even face-guarding him, just blocking him out and not even looking at the ball.”
Kerr, while praising Toscano-Anderson, declined my invitation to throw any Warriors under the FBO bus. He chose to accentuate the positive.
AndreIguodala “was a very, very diligent box-out guy for us,” Kerr said. “He understood the whole concept. We always talk about keeping a tight shell (on defense), from the beginning of the possession to the end. … When the shot goes up, you’re still trying to build that shell so the offense can’t get in there and get an easy bucket.
“Andre always had a great vision of the shell.”
So boxing out is a skill, but it’s also a chore.
“Shots go in, shots don’t go in, so you can’t rely on that every night,” Kerr said. “But if you want to be a really good, consistent team, you take care of the details over and over and over again — that’s what it takes.”
I asked Kerr if he had been good at boxing out during his 15-season NBA career.
“I was,” he said, laughing, “but I had to be. I wasn’t good enough to not box out. I boxed out like a maniac because I wanted to play.”
Scott Ostler is a columnist for The San Francisco Chronicle. Email: sostler@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @scottostler
Sports Gambling – Want to play in the NBA? Just box out, baby
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