Zoom and Handoffs play
Ghost Screen: Fake the Screen and Pop
- Court
- Half court
- Length
- 11 steps
About this play
The ghost screen, a ball screen that never gets set: the screener jogs toward the handler as if to set a ball screen, turns his shoulders to sell it, and before contact sprints out to the arc instead. The handler drives as if he used a screen that was never there. Why it works: an on-ball defender who sees a screen coming opens his stance to get over it, so when the screen vanishes there is a gap where the screener would have been, and the screener's defender has to decide in a half second whether to switch or stay. The reads: the screener's defender stepping to switch means pass to the pop for the three, both defenders staying home means the drive is one-on-one into a gap. The counter is for the defense that switches the ghost correctly: the ghost screener slips to the block instead of popping and seals the smaller switching defender in the post, NBA Playbook's slip-to-seal, and the pass goes inside over the guard. Common mistakes: the screener getting close enough to touch the defender so it is a moving screen, the pop drifting to the wing where the pass is long, and the handler waiting to see the switch instead of attacking the gap. I got this from Slappin' Glass's ghost flare primer and their open-stance switch film, with the slip-to-seal counter from NBA Playbook; I wrote the ghost screen up on the site too, and the Slappin' Glass pieces will take you deeper.
