Shaquille O'Neal creation ability (with clips)

[70sFan]

I see that people mention Shaq's creation ability, so I want to share a few clips from my collection touching on that subject.

So, the easiest types of assists for Shaq came from hard doubles to the shooter, like this one:

He was capable of more subtle manipulation though, like here where he waits for Pippen to react and when Scottie didn't commit to either coverage, he makes a jump-pass faking a cutter find to create open shot outside.

Of course the main thing regarding Shaq's creation value is his immense inside gravity

The one above is an obvious example, but even the more subtle ones like here shows how much value his inside gravity is, as he often forced his opponents to double him on simple paint flash:

I mean, for 2000 I even found a few examples of Kobe defender (!) doubling Shaq on a catch, that's just insane:

Here we can see a good example of patient post offense from Shaq:

Shaq also had possessions like this one where the opening for a cutter wasn't obvious (which separates him from less talented post passers like Hakeem or Moses):

Shaq also had quite a bit creativity with his passing, though he wasn't top tier at improvising. Watch him making a nice lob here:

A few bad passes from Shaq, just to show that he could be inconsistent with these kind of passes:

Here, he missed an open cutter:

Here, he missed quite obvious inside pass:

That happened to both Shaq and Hakeem, as they were taught to look for shooters in the first place
And this is the type of pass Shaq usually missed, as it requires top tier awareness:

So overall, Shaq was very good at dealing with doubles and he could manipulate the defense at times, though he usually looked for the easiest openings. His immense inside gravity made him extremely good off-ball creator (very few players could compete with him). I haven't done any in-depth volume creation tracking, but I base my notes on watching closely over 50 peak Shaq games (from 2000 and 2001). If you have any questions, please let me know.

[tsherkin]

Awesome post!

[parsnips33]

Awesome post, was watching Ben Taylor video on the 04 Pistons Lakers series and was impressed by Shaq's passing chops, especially against that defense

[70sFan]

Awesome post, was watching Ben Taylor video on the 04 Pistons Lakers series and was impressed by Shaq's passing chops, especially against that defense

Yeah, Shaq wasn't a magician with his passing, but he grew into a very savvy playmaker from the post. It's very hard to surprise him and he rarely rushed anything there.

[tsherkin]

Awesome post, was watching Ben Taylor video on the 04 Pistons Lakers series and was impressed by Shaq's passing chops, especially against that defense

Yeah, Shaq wasn't a magician with his passing, but he grew into a very savvy playmaker from the post. It's very hard to surprise him and he rarely rushed anything there.

That's about where I land with him. He wasn't Jokic or something, but he tended to make the right pass and could sometimes surprise you a little. He worked really well once Phil gave him some spacing and a basic structure to work with, far better I think, than he did in Orlando.

[70sFan]

Awesome post, was watching Ben Taylor video on the 04 Pistons Lakers series and was impressed by Shaq's passing chops, especially against that defense

Yeah, Shaq wasn't a magician with his passing, but he grew into a very savvy playmaker from the post. It's very hard to surprise him and he rarely rushed anything there.

That's about where I land with him. He wasn't Jokic or something, but he tended to make the right pass and could sometimes surprise you a little. He worked really well once Phil gave him some spacing and a basic structure to work with, far better I think, than he did in Orlando.

He didn't have bad spacing in Orlando (it was really good in fact), although it's clear that Phil coached Lakers better than what he had there.

[tsherkin]

He didn't have bad spacing in Orlando (it was really good in fact), although it's clear that Phil coached Lakers better than what he had there.

Oh, he had shooters. They sucked when it mattered the most, but on the RS, they were pretty good.

I meant more that Phil >> Brian Hill. The triangle was a post-centric offense which explicitly gamed to open up spacing and options for the guy on the block, which obviously worked to Shaq's advantage.

[Lebronnygoat]

Watch Miami Shaq too

[Ryoga Hibiki]

All those clip seems to me coming from the illegal defense rule time, I think it's understated how much easier those reads used to be for post players. Look at how top PO defenses swarm a guy like Embiid now, and compare that to how Shaq is being guarded there.