Should offenses post up their guards more?

A look at post-up data from the 2023-24 season.

With the popularity of five-out offenses, basketball is being played in an increasingly positionless manner.

Centers are being used as playmakers out beyond the three-point. And — in some cases — post-ups are being inverted with guards playing with their backs to the basket.

This season, Illinois and Brad Underwood were at the top of the theoretical “positionless basketball” leaderboard. The Illini’s style of play was termed “Booty Ball” — with 6-foot-6 Marcus Domask using his dribble to slowly back down opponents.

An example of Domask’s Booty Ball is shown below from Illinois’ Elite Eight game against UConn.

The Illini essentially run nothing in the play above. It starts out looking like Domask is going to get into a middle ball screen, but the play quickly turns into Booty Ball — with Domask dribbling over 10 times while he backs his man down towards the hoop.

The term Booty Ball was first coined by Underwood after a game against Penn State’s Jalen Pickett in 2022-23. A year later, Underwood borrowed that style of play for his own team.

Using guards to post-up has been a popular idea since Villanova won two national titles with Ryan Arcidiacono and Jalen Brunson. With those two point guards, Jay Wright would allow them to play with their backs to the basket in the post.

However, I’ve never seen a study on the data behind posting up guards. In today’s newsletter, I attempted to create that study by collecting data to explore three main topics:

• The pros and cons of posting up guards instead of bigs

• How often do guards post-up?

• Are guards more efficient in the post than bigs?