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The pick and roll is a classic basketball play. Night in and night out, future-Hall-of-Famers John Stockton and Karl Malone of the Utah Jazz use the pick and roll to baffle defenses -- the other team knows it's coming, but is usually helpless if the play is well executed. We stopped by the American Heritage Dictionary on Yahoo! Reference to look up the term and found the following definition: An offensive play in which a player stops to block a defender [the pick] for a teammate handling the ball and then slips behind the defender [the roll] to accept a pass. As the diagrams and explanations on The Basketball Zone
illustrate, the pick and roll must be executed with near perfection or it will fail. A sloppy pick, a rushed pass, or a mistimed cut to the basket can cause the play to quickly break down. Although the play is relatively simply in concept, it's very difficult to defend. But if you want to give it a go, the experts at The Basketball Highway's Coaching Box offer a Shockwave demonstration on how to defend four different pick-and-roll situations.
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