Matthew Strazel: Off-Ball Offense

17-year-old Frenchman Matthew Strazel was Europe’s rising star of the 2019/20 season. Prior to this season, he wasn’t even ranked on many lists of the best 2002-born international prospects, he didn’t make the French youth national teams and was rejected by INSEP, a French training institute for elite athletes, a few years ago. This season, however, he’s already played 414 professional minutes for ASVEL Lyon-Villeurbanne, including 222 in EuroLeague, despite being undersized for a guard at 6ft.

When playing against his peers, Strazel is a score-first lead initiator, who can score in bunches but also make plays for his teammates. In this short article, however, I want to focus on a different part of his game; his off-ball offense. In my opinion, Strazel has the potential to develop into a dangerous off-ball weapon, because he already shows flashes in various important off-ball skills.

1. Shooting Ability

While a lot of his peers struggle with different parts of their shot, often consistency, Strazel’s is unusually good for his age. According to @abovethebreak3, he has slight, fixable hand placement issues, but there’s not much else to critique. His footwork is generally sound, he stays on balance, the mechanics are good, and more importantly, they’re consistent. The results are good too. Over 105 games in the French LNB, LNB Espoirs, Adidas Next Generation Tournaments, EuroLeague and the French Leaders Cup, he has converted 147 of his 415 threes (35.4%) and 259 of 320 free throws (80.9% total/83.5% this season). He’s already very comfortable in C&S and the next step would be to develop his shooting with sideways momentum. In youth leagues, he has the ball a lot, and in the pros, you don’t often run plays for a 17-year old, so he hasn’t had many opportunities to run of pindowns or flare screens.

2. Off-Ball Activity

While Strazel doesn’t constantly run around trying to get open à la J.J. Redick, he has shown great awareness for where he needs to be offensively as well as the ability to recognize and punish bad defensive positioning. He’s not an elite shooter yet, but he’s already someone defenses shouldn’t take their eyes off, since he will take advantage of it.

In this first play from his EuroLeague debut against Baskonia, his defender expects him to curl to the top of the key and therefore goes under the screen. Strazel recognizes that and relocates to the corner for an open three.

Here, Tyrese Rice, former EuroLeague Final Four MVP, takes a bad angle defensively, which leaves him unable to see the ball and Strazel at the same time. Strazel takes advantage of that and cuts in behind for an open midrange jump shot.

In this clip, he first runs the P&R, and after he gets rid of the ball, his defender stops paying attention to him, and he smartly relocates to the three-point line for another open three.

3. Attacking Closeouts

In addition to his shooting ability, he can also attack closeouts well. He possesses a quick first step, which allows him to get by most defenders. He doesn’t completely leave his matchups in the dust like Dennis Schröder for example, but he’s quick enough to consistently create advantages.

Here, Strazel gets by Rice rather easily with his first step. It helps in this kind of situation that Strazel has really good touch for finishing off-balance shots from awkward angles (that almost deserves its own breakdown).

In this play, he splits his feet. You usually want to split your feet right on the catch, so that you already have forward momentum when starting your attack, but even from a complete standstill, Strazel creates some separation.

This time, he uses a fake to get the defender leaning forward, before blowing by him rather easily. He then looks off Michael Caicedo (#24) and creates the opening at the top of the key. Strazel’s favorite two passes are the look-off and the dump-off (to the dunker spot).

4. Live-Dribble Playmaking

Lastly, his aptitude for attacking closeouts is enhanced by his ability to find his teammates on the move. While his playmaking as a self-creator in the halfcourt is a work in progress (he occasionally misses skip passes to open corner shooters for example), he’s proficient at locating the man the defense is helping off of when attacking off the catch.

Again, Strazel intelligently relocates when he notices that his defender is overplaying the pass. Fall has to come over to help on Strazel’s drive and the young Frenchman hits his open teammates on the free throw line.

After another nifty backdoor cut, Strazel notices that the rim area is crowded and locates the open shooter in the corner. This exact same pass, to the corner as well as the weakside dunker spot, appears quite frequently in Strazel’s highlight tapes from the French youth leagues.

Overall, the young Frenchman has the potential to become a really good shooter, who can’t be left open, the smarts to keep defenses on their toes at all times when he doesn’t have the ball, and the first step as well as passing ability to attack closeouts effectively. Assuming he stays at ASVEL for at least one more year, he will have plenty of time to develop his off-ball game, since he won’t get to handle the ball as much against pros as he does against teenagers in the French Espoirs league.