Nov 20, 2010, 2:44 pm
Quote:Growing up, Roger Mason Jr. practiced the moves that were created by Americaâs basketball imagination. There was the crossover dribble, with the player moving the ball from one hand to the other, and the fadeaway jump shot, with the player leaping backward while shooting to create distance from the defender. But only after he became a professional did Mason decide to expand globally, adding fakes and feints and other moves that were manufactured elsewhere.
He is not alone. Players in the N.B.A. now often showcase the Euro step, a move in which a player drives past a defender by stepping one way and then quickly taking a big lateral step in the other direction. The move is a crafty way to distribute the two steps allocated to a player after he stops dribbling, and it goes right to the edge of being a traveling violation.
Mason, now with the Knicks, learned the move during his two seasons in San Antonio, where in practice he had to guard Manu Ginobili of Argentina and Tony Parker of France, both of them practitioners of the Euro step, both of them stars. Mason eventually began tinkering with the move himself.
âI think thatâs why people are starting to use it, because itâs still a fresh move,â Mason said. âEveryone in the league thought it was a travel, and they never called it.â
But the Euro step is not the only import that has taken hold in the N.B.A. Argentinaâs Luis Scola, of the Houston Rockets, uses a whole series of pump fakes to throw off a defender before scooping the ball into the basket. Now, other players are doing the same. Germanyâs Dirk Nowitzki, who has long starred for the Dallas Mavericks, has his own shot fake, in which he raises the ball from his chest to his chin. Others have copied that, too. And N.B.A. coaches are borrowing as well, taking plays out of the notebooks of their European counterparts.
Considering the well-established presence of foreign players in the N.B.A. â 84 international players were on N.B.A. rosters when the 2010-11 season began â none of this should be surprising. And in the wake of repeated American setbacks in international play over the past decade and with the awakening sense that the best international players have become more clever and skillful than many American players, the mimicry becomes almost necessary.
âTheir great players have influenced our younger generation of guys to pick up some of their moves,â said Tony Ronzone, USA Basketballâs director of international player personnel and an assistant general manager for the Minnesota Timberwolves. âItâs the same thing with the European guys. When they were growing up, they were watching TV and mimicking our moves.â
The N.B.A.âs quickest and most efficient players, American-born stars like Dwyane Wade and Rajon Rondo, now use the Euro step to get to the rim. Kentucky Coach John Calipari teaches it to his players, and naturally enough, some of those who recently played for him as undergraduates â Derrick Rose, Tyreke Evans and John Wall â are using it in the pros.
âThatâs the beauty of basketball,â the Miami Heatâs Mike Miller said. âIf youâre a basketball player and you want to get better, youâre going to take things from everybody. They take stuff from what we do. We take stuff from what they do.â
The Lithuanian Sarunas Marciulionis is credited with bringing the Euro step to the N.B.A. He played with four teams in the 1990s before it became common for international players to join the N.B.A. Ginobili then perfected and popularized the move.
In the recent preseason, several Nets practiced the Euro step in their layup line. DeMar DeRozan, a second-year guard for the Toronto Raptors, said he started using the move in high school in California after watching Ginobili pull it off.
âItâs different,â DeRozan said. âItâs really different. Youâre showing the illusion that youâre going one way, and youâre really going another. Itâs a creative move.â
To some observers, the Euro step helps underscore the difference between the way players develop in the United States, where the emphasis has traditionally been on athleticism, and the way they develop in Europe, where young players tend to spend hours on skill development.
âAmericans tend to play in straight lines, where Europeans are craftier going around a guy,â noted David Thorpe, a private trainer for several N.B.A. players and an ESPN basketball analyst. Thorpe teaches a variation of the Euro step in which he instructs players to decelerate as they start the move to get a defender more off balance.
He also teaches another European move that calls for a player who has the ball to fake a crossover dribble but instead keep the ball in the same hand and whip it back in the other direction.
âImagine the ball as a clock,â he said. âWhen you cross over for a right-handed player, your hand is at 2.â When the ball is switched to the left hand, the ball is at 7. But, Thorpe said, in this move, the dribbler ârollsâ the ball in his right hand toward 9:30 or 10 on the clock and then âpushes it back to around 4.â
Mitch Lancaster, a private trainer for Hoops City U in Durham, N.C., instructs players who are 5 years old and some who are playing professionally overseas. He began teaching the Euro step about three years ago and, like Thorpe, sees it as emblematic of a style of basketball that is more nuanced and driven by technique.
âThe main problem we have in America, and the reason people are starting to look to Europe, is because theyâre more focused on player development,â Lancaster said. âHere, weâre not. Now, weâre trying to take it a step further. Weâre teaching kids at third grade the Euro step. The younger you can teach them, the more advanced theyâre going to be.â
A variation on this theme comes from Raptors Coach Jay Triano, who served as an assistant for the United States in the recent world basketball championships, a tournament won by the Americans.
In preparation for the event, Triano scouted opponents like Lithuania, Turkey and Russia and took note of plays that he could use for the Raptors. He observed how European players received open shots through quick ball movement instead of the N.B.A.âs normal reliance on the pick-and-roll.
âI stole a bunch of plays,â Triano said. âAs coaches, we do that a bunch of times. My goal is to incorporate the same athleticism of our players into the ability to run continuity and movement sets the way that the European teams do. We are learning from them, and hopefully it helps us.â
Amid those borrowing innovations from outside the United States, there are still players in the N.B.A. who do not necessarily look abroad.
The All-Star point guard Steve Nash is often lauded for his one-handed passes and because of his ability to jump from either foot on a layup. Nash was born in South Africa and raised in Canada, and some have assumed that his game must have roots in European play. Not at all, Nash said, âIâd say Isiah Thomas-inspired.â
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/18/sports....html?_r=1