Help defence has quietly conceded the corner

Defences decided years ago that a corner three was worth giving up in exchange for stopping the rim, and shooters have made them regret it.

The corner three is the shortest three-point shot on the floor, by about half a metre, and it is nearly always taken by a player standing still with his feet set. Everyone has known this for a long time. Defences kept giving it up anyway.

The logic made sense at the time. If a guard turns the corner off a ball screen and gets downhill, the low man has to rotate over to protect the rim, and somebody has to be left. Leaving the corner shooter was the cheapest option, because for years the players parked there were the ones you were happy to see shoot. A defensive scheme is a set of decisions about which shot you can live with, and living with a corner three from a non-shooting forward was fine.

The problem is that the corner shooter is now a specialist. Teams stopped hiding their weakest offensive player there and started hiding him at the top of the key instead, or off the floor entirely. The player in the corner has been recruited, drafted and paid to make that specific shot, has taken thousands of them from that exact spot, and does not need more than a moment to get it away.

So the rotation has to be different, and the best defences have adjusted in a way that is unfashionable. They stunt rather than fully rotate, sending the low man two steps to make the driver hesitate before recovering. They funnel the drive middle instead of baseline, so the corner is on the wrong side of the play. Some have simply decided to guard the corner honestly and accept a layup, which sounds like heresy until you compare a contested attempt at the rim with an open catch-and-shoot from twenty-two feet, and the second is worth more.

The wrinkle offences have found in response is the forty-five cut, the shooter drifting up from the corner to the wing while the drive is happening, which drags the low man further and makes the rotation longer.

What I would like to see, and see occasionally, is a defence that treats the corner as an out of bounds line. Deny the pass entirely, take away the pass rather than contesting the shot afterwards, and make the offence swing the ball an extra time. The rotation you win is the one that never has to happen.