Throwing a successful lob against NBA rim protectors requires pinning the backline defender behind the roller. In the 76ers play, KCP's drive drags the drop big out to the foul line, opening a 7-foot vertical runway for LeBron's weakside 45-degree angle cut.
An NBA pass travels between 30 and 45 mph, whereas help defenders can slide laterally at roughly 12 to 15 mph. Rapid reversals exploit this 3:1 speed differential, forcing defensive closeouts into recovery angles that trigger paint collapses.
Testing Switch Everything forces the roller into a mismatch on a guard but denies the runway. Blitzing the ball handler leaves the weakside corner helper in a 2-on-1 conflict, often leaving the lob or corner three wide open.
The saved ball-movement lab interpolates players and the ball between authored tactical keyframes. Its nearest defender distance is the Euclidean separation from the designated finisher. The source labels more than five point five feet wide open, more than three contested recovery and anything closer smothered. A three-four-five triangle has separation five feet and therefore falls in contested recovery under this rule. These thresholds are demonstration labels, not a measured defensive contest model. Its displayed effective field-goal estimate starts at ninety-two, subtracts basket distance times two point two and adds twelve when nearest defender distance exceeds four feet, otherwise subtracting fifteen. For a hypothetical ten-foot shot, those branches yield eighty-two and fifty-five percent before the thirty-five to ninety-two cap. These are arithmetic examples of the written score, not measured shot conversion estimates. Moving a defender changes a branch independently from changing shooter distance. Some telemetry is explicitly a function of timeline rather than the drawn trajectory. Ball distance is forty-five plus time times six point two feet. At two seconds it reads fifty-seven point four. Its shot clock is fourteen minus time times one point eight, with a point one-second floor, so at two seconds it reads ten point four. Displayed pass speed uses a sine wave in two fixed time windows. The export is the actual canvas PNG and clipboard breakdown, preserving the authored sequence rather than pretending these labels came from tracked match footage.