How the New York Liberty used "Pistol" to beat down the Las Vegas Aces

The Liberty blew out the Aces by 38 points in their second meeting of the year and used "Pistol" set to expose Vegas's weaknesses

Welcome to Ball and Order, where we talk about basketball strategy and tactics like normal humans. I’m Gabe and I coach high school basketball in Virginia as well as cover basketball as a journalist. I’ve started collecting my playbooks and clips of sets on my Google Drive for you to use. Here’s the playbook and clips for today’s article!

---

Both literally and figuratively, the Las Vegas Aces got hit in the mouth on Sunday against the New York Liberty. Jonquel Jones literally threw a 2002 Shaquille O’Neal-esque elbow into A’ja Wilson’s jaw in the first half. Then, the Liberty figuratively knocked the Aces out by outscoring them 50-17 in the second half. It’s hard to imagine New York hammering Vegas by almost 40 points again. But the game revealed where the Aces are weak and how the Liberty can exploit those areas to beat them. New York’s use of “Pistol” sets laid bare many of those areas of weakness and powered the blowout.

Author’s note: I know most people use a lot of clips when writing articles like these, but I find them to be distracting and hard to use on Substack. My plan is to put my clips into one YouTube video, have you watch it, and then discuss it.

What is Pistol

Since Mike D’Antoni popularized the play with the 7-second-or-less Suns, Pistol, or “21” as it’s known in NBA circles, has become a staple of the 5-out offense. The three-player action takes place in early offense and maximizes transition spacing. When the offense can’t create a fast break, teams typically default to a guard dribbling the ball up, wings sprinting to the corners, and one big diving to the rim or setting up on the wing while the other trails the play.

This diagram shows one of the most common Pistol options. Here, the wing (2) sets a step-up screen for the ball handler (1) and then immediately gets a screen from the big (5) to fade to the top of the key. The action creates a lot of space for baseline drives and can lead to open looks for the 2 or the 5.

The guards can also start the play with DHO, a pass from 1 to 2, or an entry pass to 5. Some teams call for the play when they’re looking for a specific action, such as the Miami Heat and Sacramento Kings. But more often, Pistol is just an early offense formation and the players make reads to determine what exact option they will take. When run by elite decision-makers like Steve Nash or Courtney Vandersloot, Pistol becomes extremely difficult to guard and adjust to because of the endless ways it can be run. Even when the defense shuts down a Pistol look, the offense can flow into half-court sets with the defense scrambling to get back into form.

How the Liberty used it

The Liberty scored at least seven times off Pistol Dribble a.k.a. “21 Dribble” against the Aces. New York’s personnel made it a great option. Vandersloot’s decision-making combined with Sabrina Ionescu’s and Breanna Stewart’s ability to score from all three levels force teams into tough decisions. On the weakside, Betnijah Laney and Jonquel Jones can find cutting lanes and get into position to rebound, which maximizes their early offense utility. Pistol also allowed the Liberty to get a step on the Aces’ quick defenders and take away the speed advantage on defense.

You may have noticed that all of the plays I pulled start on the left side of the floor and I don’t think that is an accident from Sandy Brondello. Ionescu is shooting 43.7% on above-the-break threes and, like many of the game’s great players, feels most comfortable stepping into deep threes on the left wing.¹ The Aces knew this and picked up Sabrina as high up the court as they could, which opened up even more space behind the action.

I’ll go deeper into the Aces defense below. But their point of the attack defense was so extended with picking up Sabrina high and A’ja Wilson staying attached to Stewart that they couldn’t prevent baseline drives off the initial step-up screen. Vandersloot got a wide-open layup, Sabrina pulled up for a baseline jumper, and then she drove for an easy dish to Jones under the basket.

The Liberty didn’t get to many secondary reads out of Pistol because they found success taking the drives that the Aces left open. But New York threw in one cool wrinkle to take advantage of a mismatch. Kelsey Plum was the Liberty’s target early on and she matched up with Betnijah Laney after getting burned on the first Pistol action. Instead of using all the space on the baseline to drive, Laney cut backdoor and sealed the smaller Plum in the low post for an easy pass from Vandersloot. Beyond getting two easy points, the play sent the message that Plum had to guard Vandersloot or the Liberty would immediately isolate her in a mismatch.

Why the Aces couldn’t defend it

Overall and specifically with the Pistol actions, the Aces just didn’t seem ready for the Liberty. On New York’s first bucket of the game, Plum and Jackie Young simply didn’t know whether or not to switch on the initial step-up screen. Young turned her hips to trail Ionescu before seeing Plum sticking with her. Vandersloot turned on the jets for an easy layup.

The pattern would repeat itself throughout the game. The Aces coaching staff probably yelled at the team for a lack of focus, communication, and awareness. But two structural problems for Vegas greatly contributed to their defensive issues: Plum’s defensive deficiencies and a lack of dynamic helpers.

Plum is one of the best offensive weapons in the league, but she’s undersized and the worst perimeter defender in Vegas’s rotation. Naturally, teams will target her. The Aces fought very hard to avoid putting her in mismatch situations, but New York continuously punished those efforts. It felt like the Liberty got more from breakdowns due to the Aces trying to hide Plum rather than just attacking her.

Plum’s defense isn’t *so* bad that good rotations couldn’t cover up for her, though. The problem for Vegas is that they lack helpers at the moment. In the first matchup between these teams, New York had to contend with Candace Parker on the weakside and the former DPOY made some of her trademark out-of-nowhere rotations to shut down good NY possessions. With Parker out for perhaps the rest of the year, teams have a much easier path to the rim.

A’ja Wilson has done an amazing job picking up the slack from Parker’s injury. She’s currently my front-runner for DPOY, which would make it two in a row. But Wilson is just one player and had to cover Breanna Stewart for most of the game. With Wilson attached to Stewart and unable to help at the rim, Las Vegas had to mostly rely on Kiah Stokes, Chelsea Gray, and Alysha Clark as weakside helpers. Gray and Clark are too, uhh, vertically challenged to provide much help down low despite being good (or great in Clark’s case) defenders overall. Stokes just isn’t dynamic enough off-ball to make up the difference.

This all came to a head in the third quarter with two Pistol actions breaking the game open for the Liberty. The first one (which you can see at the 1:14 mark of the video) took advantage of more confusion between Young and Plum. Both players went to ice/trap Vandersloot as she started driving baseline. As Young realized her mistake and tried to recover, Ionescu used Stewart’s flare screen to get a wide-open three from the top of the key. Perhaps a better on-ball defender than Plum mitigates the need to worry about the drive and a better helper than Kiah Stokes could switch onto Ionescu as the rest of the defense rotated.

New York ran the play again on the next time down. Young stuck on Ionescu as if her life depended on it, so the Liberty went to another option with Stewart setting a ball screen for Vandersloot. Sloot put Plum in a blender by running her through a twist action as Stewart flipped her angle to set a second screen. Wilson was forced to switch onto the guard and Stewart had an easy catch and finish over smaller defenders. Again, maybe a better defender than Plum doesn’t give up such an advantage on the screen and a better helper than Stokes can make the long run from the wing to the rim.

I want to be clear: none of this is to say that the Aces cannot beat the Liberty or that Stokes and Plum were the only problems. Their offense struggled, which created bad feedback loops. You can pretty much guarantee that the aforementioned lack of focus and planning will not be present in the teams’ next matchup. But Vegas certainly has to wrestle with the limitations that New York exposed in this game or they may be watching the Liberty raise a trophy in front of them come October.

1. Think Luka Doncic’s side step threes going to his left. I once asked Mike Thibault why great players tend to score more efficiently on the left side (in this context, I was talking about Elena Delle Donne posting up). He said it has something to do with how their bodies lined up and that he didn’t know. If you have answer, let me know!