The most valuable skill in basketball is sprinting back

Transition defence gets a nod in every post-game interview and almost no attention from anyone building a roster.

Nobody has ever been signed for their ability to run backwards fast. Which is odd, because over a season it is worth more than most of the things players do get signed for.

Look at what happens in the four seconds after a miss. If two defenders get below the level of the ball, the break is dead and a set defence forms. If one does, you get a three-on-two, which is roughly a coin flip that ends at the rim. If nobody does, it is a layup, and it is a layup that also demoralises everybody wearing your colours. The difference between those outcomes is not tactics. It is whether three or four players decided to turn and run at the moment the shot went up rather than watching it.

That decision is unglamorous and completely visible on tape. Watch any team on a losing run and you will see the same thing in the third quarter. A shot goes up, two players stand and admire, a third argues with an official, and the opponent has walked the ball into the paint before anybody is set.

The specific skills involved are teachable. Building the wall, where the first two men back stop the ball rather than picking up their own man, and let the trailing defenders sort assignments out afterwards. Matching up on the way back rather than chasing your original opponent across the floor. The big man peeling off to protect the rim first and worry about the roll man second. None of this is complicated and all of it requires everyone to do it every time, which is why it is mostly a culture question rather than a scheme question.

Where it gets interesting is the interaction with everything else a team wants to do. Crash the offensive glass and you weaken it. Shoot early in the clock and you increase the number of transition situations for both sides. Play a small lineup and your first man back may be giving up eight inches at the rim.

I would spend more time on this than on the twelfth set play in the book. A team that concedes four fewer transition baskets a night has found points from nowhere, without a trade, without a signing, and without anybody having to shoot better.