OKC Thunder Film Festival Episode 6: Enes Kanter – The passing big man
By Gideon Lim
Enes Kanter’s playbook:
As a dominant post player, a majority of Enes Kanter’s touches come from left block isolations. Kanter may not look big, but his blend of bull and brain makes him one of the league’s toughest match-ups.
Kanter’s next staple of shots come being the roll man. Observe how Kanter makes use of a mid-air pump to avoid the endless Kristaps Porzingis.
Kanter is also a respectable pick-and-pop threat. Here, Billy Donovan sets up a Spanish pick-and-roll with Kanter and Steven Adams to get Russell Westbrook deep into the paint. A simple hard roll from Adams towards the rim gets Kanter free at the top of the key.
Even without the ball, Kanter is still an offensive threat, because of his nose for offensive rebounding. Notice how as soon as he sees Westbrook pull up, he instinctively bullies the longer Porzingis out of the way, and is rewarded with a tip-in.
Reading beyond the buckets:
These four plays sum up the modern big men’s offensive repertoire, and Enes Kanter excels in almost all of them.
But, beyond the obvious strokes of how Kanter gets his scoring, there are two areas of insight game footage can offer. First, as much as Kanter is unstoppable on isolation plays, he also operates within a good framework on off-the-ball movement to help him get good position. Film Festival endeavors to uncover that.
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Secondly, and perhaps more exciting, Enes Kanter took a big step last season from being a pure bucket-getter, to one who can occasionally make things work for others. On paper, his assist numbers barely jumped. But, watching the game film revealed Kanter already has a base book of plays that he can expand on.
Beyond the common story lines, Enes Kanter’s game footage shows how sophisticated his offensive game is, and more importantly how it can expand.