The Passing Prowess of Australian Teenage Sensation Joshua Giddey

In February 2020, Joshua Giddey (born October 2002) became the youngest player to debut for the Australian national team since Ben Simmons in 2013. Similarly to Simmons, Giddey is a tall initiator, standing at 6'7" without shoes (+0.5 wingspan) according to measurements at the NBA Academy Games 2019. He’s currently the most talented Australian prospect, placing 3rd on Ignacio Rissotto’s ranking of 2021-Draft-eligible international prospects. His main appeal as a prospect is his passing ability, which is outstanding for a 17-year old. He possesses great vision and timing as well as the touch to make live-dribble passes with either hand to shooters, cutters and roll-men. For this piece, I went back to his film from the Torneo Junior L’Hospitalet 2020 to find out what makes him so special as an initiator and how he might be able to improve his skills even further. First, we’ll have a brief look at his ball-handling, since it enables him to get into different spots on the court, and then we’ll dive into a lot of his passing clips to break down his strengths and weaknesses.

While his basketball skills are outstanding, Giddey is a rather ordinary athlete. Neither does he possess the explosiveness to beat athletic defenders off the dribble, nor does he have Jean Montero’s ability to create seperation with combinations of advanced dribble moves. Nevertheless, he successfully gets into the paint quite a lot by using changes of speed, alterations of the height of his dribble, decoy steps and hesitations effectively. One common sight is him dribbling past half-court, upright, with a relatively loose handle, deceiving his defender into thinking that there’s no imminent threat (notice in the play below how awful the defender’s defensive positioning is. He feels safe). Then, he crosses over quickly and attacks with a tighter dribble and lowered shoulders. In the case of the first play below, he swings a left-handed live-dribble pass to the cutter as soon as he enters the paint.

In the following clip, he probes Gustav Knudsen with a hanging hesitation dribble, which is often used to facilitate speed and height changes — Kevin Durant, for example, uses it to get into his crossover. Giddey then gets low as if he were going to drive and uses an in-and-out to get Knudsen off balance. Once the Dane tries to recover, Giddey takes advantage of his forward-shifting momentum and blows by him with a crossover, forcing the help to come over. The help’s own man wisely relocates to the corner and Giddey delivers a picture-perfect right-handed live-dribble pass right into his shooting pocket.

Neither of these two plays is an exception either. He can complete difficult live-dribble passes with either hand, although right-handed passes seem to be a tad more frequent for now. One thing to note with these passes is that he always looks at his target before the pass. That’s not to say he lacks the ability to find his teammates without fully turning his head — quite the opposite, he’s really good at locating teammates that are not in his immediate sightline — but he always look at his target in the moment he’s passing the ball. This didn’t hurt him against the competition at the Torneo Junior L’Hospitalet, but professional players are better at anticipating plays and would steal some of these passes or at least close out quicker. At the next level, he will (need to) learn to utilize more ball and head fakes to bait the defense. Luka Doncic also had some passes stolen early in his rookie season that he was used to making in Europe. Here are some of Giddey’s one-handed live-dribble passes at the Torneo Junior L’Hospitalet 2020:

Bounce Passes

One type of pass that deserves special attention is the bounce pass. Giddey utilizes it quite frequently to hit the roll-man or dunker spot in the P&R as well as to find cutters from the perimeter or in transition. Of the six bounce passes I’ve saved, four are with his right hand, two are with both. The one time a left-handed bounce pass could’ve been sensible, he passed with both hands (that play is in the P&R section). Of course, this doesn’t mean that he can’t play that pass with his left, but it is something that I still need to see from him. In addition to that, the right-handed passes occasionally are a little slow, which could either be the result of lacking strength somewhere between the wrist and the fingertips or the ball hitting the court at suboptimal angles. The first explanation seems more plausible:

Attacking the Disorganized Defense

One reoccuring theme of Giddey’s offense is that he looks to attack immediately after the opponent scores. He doesn’t possess exceptional explosiveness, so this is an alternative way of creating advantage situations. If defenses don’t set quickly after scoring, Giddey takes advantage. While he gets a bit lucky in this first play that the two Badalona defenders run into each other, he clearly intended to use the opposing big as a distraction for his own defender by attacking him directly. Neither of the defenders is in an appropriate defensive position and Giddey converts an easy layup.

In another play from the same game, the young Australian notices that his defenders momentum is moving sidewards and that he’s not in an appropriate defensive stance, making it hard to turn his hips quickly. Giddey quickly crosses over and his defender can’t recover. Being a great passer, Giddey keeps his head up when entering the paint and effortlessly hits the open teammate in the dunker spot.

Everything stated above, of course, also applies to “normal” transition. The next play bears some similarities to the play above, but starts with a defensive rebound instead of a score by the opposition.

It was also in transition where Giddey played two suboptimal passes, a rare sight with the gifted Aussie. In the first play, Giddey plays the long outlet pass to his teammate in the opposing half. In this case, he gets slightly lucky that no opponent is close to the target because the pass lacks velocity. In the second play, he puts too much power on a lob pass and his teammate cannot finish the play. While it wasn’t a huge issue throughout the tournament — some of his other outlet passes very on point — it is worth keeping in mind that Giddey‘s passes to moving targets weren’t perfect just quite yet.

Pick & Roll

As the P&R Ballhandler, Giddey displays great patience and the poise of a veteran. He rarely attacks the basket at full speed, instead making defenders play at his pace. He’s capable of hitting the roll-man with pocket passes and passes over the top of the defense, and shooters with precise skip passes with either hand. In the first clip below, he probes Badji with a hard dribble, looking for the opening of a passing window to the roll-man Aly Khalifa, while turning his body away to shield the ball from the recovering #11. When no passing window opens up, he retreats and finds the shooter on the perimeter. He has enough passing options to not get punished for picking up his dribble, but again looks at his target. An NBA defender with better reaction time could’ve probably picked that pass off.

The next play is another display of great patience and smarts. Giddey, again, looks for the pocket pass to the roll-man, which prevents the big from stepping up to contain him. When #7 recovers, Giddey gets low and “puts him in jail”, keeping him out of the play. Since the big has to worry about his own man, Giddey has the space to float the ball up and in. The floater worked quite well during the tournament. The sample size isn’t yet big enough to draw conclusions about its effectiveness, but it’s a shot worth monitoring since it can be a great counter if the defense gives him space.

The defenders of the pick-setter can’t step up to him in these situations because he’s fantastic at pocket passes if the passing window is available. Here, NBA Global Academy does a great job setting up the P&R. Giddey receives the screen on the move, creating a significant advantage situation. In the end, he has two passing options, the roll-man as well as the strongside cutter, and nonchalantly dumps it off to the roller, who draws a shooting foul. It is noticeable that defenses go over all of these screens, which is somewhat curious because Giddey is not yet a comfortable pull-up three-point shooter. He’ll definitely need to improve that aspect of his game to consistently create these kind of advantage situations against NBA-level competition.

While he’s good at hitting the roll-man, he’s even better finding his teammate in Pick & Pop situations. NBA Global Academy executed the play below at least half a dozen times during the five games at the Torneo Junior L’Hospitalet 2020. Giddey receives the screen at a low pace, but immediately accelerates when he turns the corner. As a result, the big feels obliged to stay in front of the young Australian, which opens up Khalifa for a three-pointer.

Giddey also showed his Basketball-IQ when Baskonia tried to hedge the P&R . He quickly adjusted to the different coverage, splitting the defenders with a through the legs-dribble, leaving #7 in the dust. Savkov manages to get in front of Giddey, but the Australian takes advantage of the 2v1 and hits Khalifa for an easy layup.

Other Notes

Giddey is also a willing and quick extra passer. If a teammate has a better shot, he finds said teammate in almost no time. This quality should allow him to fit seemlessly with teams that move the ball a lot.

Obviously, the teenager’s passing isn’t perfect, he also turned the ball over occasionally, but there was no overarching issue that caused a large number of turnovers. He had his pocket picked here and there, sometimes lost his dribble and once passed the ball to someone in the fourth row, but displayed no huge weaknesses. Still, like every 17-year old, he has skills to improve on:

• Add more pass and ball fakes to make it harder for defenses to sniff out his passes
• Work on getting more explosive, so he can keep getting into the paint as often as he does now
• Become a more consistent shooter (especially in terms of mechanics), so defenses can’t sag off of him.
• Become fully ambidexterous. He’s capable with both hands, but seems more comfortable with his right for now (bounce passes with left hand!)

Nevertheless, Giddey is an awesome playmaker and really fun to watch. It will be exciting to see what he can do in the NBL next season, where he signed with the Adelaide 36ers as part of the league’s “Next Stars” program.