The Art of the Pick and Roll, Featuring Sabrina Ionescu

The WNBA's young star has already mastered basketball's signature play

The pick and roll is the oldest trick in the book. From the beginning of basketball, the play has been a mainstay, and it remains one of the primary options for offensive action in the half court.

The composition of a pick and roll is simple: One player sets a screen for another, creating a wall for the ball handler to go around. This allows space for the ballhandler to get away from their own defender, and forces the defense to scramble to defend the ballhandler.

From here, the pick-person simply “rolls” to the basket – sealing off the smaller defender and providing an easy entry pass for the ball handler to make. The ball handler has a few options from there: either make the defense pay by attacking their new defender, or capitalize on the switch in the post by dumping it to the roll-person. Easy peasy.

But then, it isn’t. For every time the offense uses a pick and roll, a defense adjusts to it. There are forty ways to run a pick and roll, and forty ways to defend it too. What was once a foolproof offensive strategy has become an art form that requires years of practice. In 2022 running a perfect pick and roll is like conducting an orchestra; you have to remain in synch, perfectly hitting every movement in the music at the precisely right moment. That's why great point guards are often compared to great conductors: Not just anyone can conduct an orchestra, and not just anyone can run a pick and roll.

But God’s grace has afforded us the opportunity to watch some of these masters at work. You may know some of their names: Chris Paul, James Harden, and Steph Curry have honed in on the craft over the years. However, one player has begun to conduct the orchestra masterfully after only three years. Her name is Sabrina Ionescu.

For those who don’t keep up with the WNBA, you should. Ionescu is must watch television - a 24-year-old guard for the New York Liberty who is already exceeding the enormous hype she had coming into the league from Oregon. I got to see her up close earlier this week during the Liberty’s gutsy win against the Sky, and so I want to break down exactly what I saw her doing that blew my mind.

Here we’re going to go through why Ionescu is such an effective pick and roll conductor by examining the game’s flow in the order that it happened. This way we can see how the Sky attempted to stop Ionescu, and how Ionescu adjusted as time went on.

The first play here shows how much the Sky wanted to key in on Ionescu from the jump:

At the very start of the game, the Sky decided to blitz the pick and roll. This is a common PnR coverage for players like Steph Curry or Trae Young, who are adept at both shooting off of a screen and finding rollers with a pass. Aside from a full on double-team, blitzing the ball handler is about as extreme a coverage as you can perform – the goal is just getting the ball out of their hands to stagnate the offense.

Ionescu’s roller Stefanie Dolson (#31) sniffs out the coverage quickly though. After seeing Candace Parker jump up to stop Ionescu’s progress, Dolson slips the screen – never even making contact with Ionescu’s defender. Sabrina wisely dumps the ball off, creating an easy opportunity at the rim.

The next pick and roll is pretty similar. Dolson sets a screen, and this time she makes contact. Parker blitzes while Ionescu delivers a clean pass. On this play, the help doesn’t even come over:

The next attempt is defended a little differently. Here the Liberty set a high screen very early into the shot clock while Ionescu has downhill momentum:

The Sky decide not to blitz the ballhandler here, which puts Candace Parker in a tough spot. With Ionescu’s defender functionally out of the play because of the screen, Parker tries to “soft-hedge” the screen, trying to hold off the ball handler just long enough to get her teammate back in the play and provide her a chance to get back to the roller.

With Parker’s length and athleticism, this may have worked, except that Han Xu (#21) takes a horizontal angle on the roll, spotting up for a jump shot instead of heading toward the basket like Dolson had. Candice Parker is athletic, but not enough to guard two people at once - Han gets the bucket pretty easily. This one reminded me a little bit of the now-defunct Luka Doncic to Kristaps Porzingis action on the Dallas Mavericks.

After the Han jumper, they go back to blitzing Sabrina Ionescu to get the ball out of her hands. It’s sort of successful here, even though it results in a bucket for the Liberty:

On this play the defender successfully gets Ionescu to pick up her dribble, which is the goal of the blitz in the first place; the ball is at half-court and she is functionally out of the play. However, Ionescu still makes the right read, waiting until the Chicago Sky’s Azurá Stevens (#30) has her back turned to deliver a late pass to her screener. No one wants to go up against Candace Parker, but Michaela Onyenwere finishes nicely. Good defense, better offense.

At this point Sabrina Ionescu has killed the Sky with passing on four consecutive pick and roll attempts. Chicago decides to switch up the coverage here by daring Ionescu to beat them herself:

Instead of having Parker blitz the ballhandler out of the screen, she stays home, cutting off any pass that Ionescu could make to the roller. This poses no problem for Sabrina though, who for the first time all game can actually attack off of the screen. The pick gives Ionescu just enough of a step on her defender to get downhill. After that, it’s a Steph Curry floater and two points.

The Sky seem to decide to go back to their original plan of blitzing Ionescu after this. Here’s another dime out of the blitz:

This no-look pass isn’t just for flash, it’s functional. Watch how Ionescu holds the help defender with her eyes before delivering the assist. Julie Allemand (#20) initially drops down to cover the roller, but Ionescu’s eyes force her to jump back out to her assignment on the perimeter. This leaves Stefanie Dolson wide open in the paint.

It makes sense why the Sky keep blitzing Sabrina Ionescu, even if it may not be the right move at this point. The Liberty’s very next possession, she comes off of a screen and nails a pull up jumper:

Ionescu was blitzed so often in this game that she immediately entered attack mode when given even the slightest opportunity. She only needs an inch of room to get off a jump shot, and that’s exactly what she got here. Her defender could never make up the balance lost from taking the slight nudge from the screen. It’s plays like this that the Steph Curry comparisons seem very apt.

Ionescu didn’t get tons of PnR opportunities through most of the fourth quarter for some reason, but once she did, she made the defense pay yet again. This time she runs the PnR with Natasha Howard:

At this point the Sky were throwing the kitchen sink at the Liberty to defend the pick and roll. Here they decide to switch defenders. Well, with all due respect to Julie Allemand, Natasha Howard (#6) is going to win that battle ten out of ten times. Sabrina knows that too, and drops off the pass perfectly on the roll. The help is late, the ball is in the net, and the Liberty get a go-ahead bucket late in the game.

With less than a minute left the Liberty run an interesting double screen set. The first screener makes contact with the ballhandler’s defender, whereas the second one slips thee screen. Funny enough, I think this is the worst PnR decision that Sabrina made all game – but there’s a reason she plays professional basketball and I don’t:

Even so, you can see the slipped screener (#12) roll hard to the basket while Ionescu takes a wide angle. This forces Chicago’s Emma Meesseman (#33) to decide: Do I want to help on Ionescu, or stay with the roller?

She makes a good decision, hedging softly on Ionescu and putting up her hands to block off any pass she might make to the roller. Ionescu could have stayed patient and delivered the ball to Dolson at the high post, but then again, why not pull a gutsy mid-range jumper in the defense’s eye?

It’s poetic that Sabrina Ionescu’s worst decision was also the best shot of the entire night. Those are the shots that give opposing coaches nightmares, and make you completely unguardable. Sometimes the best shot is the one you know you can make, and that seemed to be the case here.

The Liberty went on to knock off the reigning champs. About thirty seconds after this shot, Sabrina went on to get the go ahead and-1 bucket. I think it’s only appropriate to leave you with that shot. It’s not a pick and roll, but it's certainly orchestral.

Sabrina Ionescu's game against the Sky was a masterclass in how to adjust to the pick and roll. If she can keep up this level of patience consistently, we may be seeing the rise of an all-time great before our very eyes.