Week after week, one of our favorite teams to watch is the Spanish club, Tenerife. Their entire offense is beautiful. Some have said it inspired the famous Ed Sheeran song, Tenerife Sea. Perhaps we’ll never know for sure.
What we do know, is that Tenerife Coach, Txus Vidorreta, is one of the best at generating open looks for their terrific guard, Sasu Salin, using a staple set of actions. This is no easy feat considering Tenerife competes in both the ACB and Basketball Champions League. With some of the best defensive minds game planning every week to take away Salin’s opportunities, we thought it best to take a closer look at Tenerife’s secret sauce in getting him open.
With varying degrees, the defensive scout with most shooters often consists of giving limited help, crowding their space, and chasing over screens. Armed with this knowledge, Tenerife must do a little more than set simple Down or Stagger screens to properly free Salin for a shot. Thus, Tenerife introduces a number of smart and deceptive screening actions prior to running Salin off a primary screen.
Screen the Screener Actions
One of these actions is the tried and true small-big “Screen the Screener” action. Whether it’s a RIP or cross screen, this STS action presents the defense with a difficult bump/help situation before Salin flies of a perimeter Down Screen. As we discussed in our breakdown of the Argentina Transition, Tenerife smartly deploys these screens in transition, where the defense is in flux and can be caught off guard, unable to execute their base small-big screening coverage…
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On and Off Ball Slips to the Rim
One our favorite things that Tenerife does to create momentary space and confusion defensively, is their use of “guard to guard” screening actions prior to that last screen. Here’s an example of that out of some “Bilbao-type” post automatic action…
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The randomness of these screens makes it difficult for the defense to stay completely attached to Salin.
If the defense does switch these guard-to-guard pre-screen actions, the defender is often left out of position and at a disadvantage as they begin to chase Salin off the final screen. No better is this exemplified than in a few of Tenerife’s actions involving Salin screening on the ball before diving back to the rim for a Turn Out screen. Here’s a look of that out of their Horns Small set…
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Zooming In: In this Horns Set, rather than setting the on ball screen and ghosting out to the 45/wing, this play design sends Salin back to the rim on the slip. This slip/roll to the rim often puts Salin’s defender in a position where he is unattached, giving Salin plenty of space and freedom to use the screens appropriately.
Here is another example of Tenerife getting to the same action with Salin out of the Stagger Away entry…
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We only scratched the surface above on Tenerife’s multiple set designs for their shooters. To view more actions, including:
- Transition Corner Exits
- Horns Actions & Alignment Variations
- Using Decoy Screening
- Stack Veer Screens
Visit SGTV for the full breakdown!
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