Oklahoma City Thunder: Film Festival Steven Adams in the post

Handling the rock

Let’s start with Steven Adams’ post-up game.

Adams loves the left block, where he can shoot over the shoulder with his right hand. In contrast to more sophisticated post players like Enes Kanter, who make use of complex plays to get deep position, Adams’ game is simple – his agility and size are his main off-ball weapons.

As seen here, Steven Adams has done a commendable job learning to shoot jump hooks. Nothing fancy, but he is tall enough for these shots to be effective. Having said that, notice how his hook shot is more of a push shot than the classic gold standard, the skyhook. Instead of releasing the ball at its highest point by flicking his wrist, Steven Adams basically flips the ball over his defender. When shooting the ball stationary, there is not much difference. But, this technical shortcoming haunts Adams in other areas, which will be explained later.

Another big improvement for Steven Adams is developing a counter move. Watch how Adams takes Dirk Novitzki down on the block again, but this time, as Novitzki moves towards covering Adams’ original leftward turnaround, Adams spins rightwards instead.

Technically-speaking, everything is mostly sound, so far.

Adams’ post up problem

The game film reveals an interesting reality. What Steven Adams did against the aging Novitzki was more anomaly than trend. Against most other centers in the league, Adams did not enjoy as much success with his post-game. A closer look at the footage helps to uncover the reason why.

Going back to his imperfect jump hook technique, Adams’ season footage showed he was respectable in stationary post-ups, but when defenders could force him into a running jump hook, his effectiveness plunged.

Here, Adams makes the basket. But, a quick investigation reveals Adams having to manhandle Novitzki to get his shot off.

The physicality is legal – there’s no qualms about that. But, see how because Adams’ hook shot is fundamentally more arm than wrist action, his running hook shot almost resembles a scoop shot. Against the league’s hoard of unicorn centers like Karl-Anthony Towns, there is no way the shot ends up anywhere other than the third row.

Reviewing game film reveals a simple fact about Steven Adams’ post game – it is effective, but only in small dosages. Adams is relatively new to pounding the ball on the block, and it shows. Fortunately, Adams does not have to rely solely on post-ups to rack up points.