Detroit Pistons Legend Rip Hamilton Breaks Down Lethal Off-Ball Movement
· Yahoo Sports
During his 14-year NBA career, Rip Hamilton spent nine years in the Motor City and was a crucial element of the Detroit Pistons 2004 NBA Championship squad. In Motown lore, Hamilton safely went down as a legend for his mid-range contributions to the Pistons over the years, but he was part of a starting unit dubbed “The Greatest Five Alive’ where each player had a distinctly different role to execute each night.
For Hamilton, the Pistons required a crafty, energetic shooting guard who was tenacious on defense and never stopped moving offensively— perfect for Rip. As a three-time All-Star, Hamilton worked best in the margins by taking advantage of mismatches that he could create from tireless off-ball movement that hinged on picks and screens.
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From a wider lens, Hamilton’s ability to act as a dynamic, fluid scoring outlet in Detroit was an extension of the way Rip saw in a game. As a youngster, well before ever stepping foot in the Palace of Auburn Hills, Hamilton figured out a way to be effective in any environment, and it’s an approach that served him extraordinarily well throughout his NBA career.
“I knew if I wanted to make it to the league, I wasn’t as athletic as Michael Jordan or Dominique Wilkins,” Hamilton told Ben Taylor on NBA Stories. “I wasn’t as quick as Allen Iverson, so I said I had to dominate or manipulate the game and do something that most people don’t think is sexy. What kids don’t think is sexy is being in condition, running around with your head chopped off sometimes trying to get to open spots.”
Hamilton played for the Washington Wizards for three seasons to start his career before becoming a member of the Pistons, so Rip had an opportunity to develop his style and ramp up his off-ball movement in DC. At that time, Hamilton was paying attention to what worked and what didn’t at the pro level, so his pace is a product of the hard-working players that he went up against each night like Kobe Bryant.
“I started picking up little stuff by guys I played against,” Hamilton said. “One was Reggie Miller because he was very handsy. Referees don’t usually watch what’s happening off the ball. Their eyes are always on the ball, so understanding how to manipulate the game that way.”
Once Hamilton made it to Detroit, the comparisons between himself and Miller were impossible to ignore. On top of their stylistic similarities, the Pacers and Pistons had an intense rivalry that was beginning to blossom, so there were many heated one-on-one battles between Rip and Reggie over the years, and that’s when the comparisons reached a fever pitch.
From an off-ball perspective, nobody in the league sprinted and changed direction in violent patterns by wrapping and bending around hard screens as much as Miller…except for Hamilton.
“If you make every cut look like a scoring cut, it makes life easier from where you’re trying to get the ball,” Hamilton said. “Most kids always say alright, you know what? I’m. not going to make a scoring cut until I know that the play is coming for me, but if you do that all the time, it will set you up, especially in the fourth quarter.”
Although Rip’s movement was part of what separated him from other impactful shooting guards in the mid-2000s, it was the way he thought about the game and processed different defensive looks that allowed for Hamilton to perform so efficiently from the second level.
“All players in the NBA have spots,” Hamilton said. “One of my spots was on the baseline.”
During the interview, Hamilton revealed that he wished he would have been given the green light to shoot more three-pointers late in his career. Even though he was lauded for his mid-range proficiency, Hamilton felt that he was lethal from downtown as well, so his game would have no issue translating to the modern NBA if need be. However, Rip will go down in the history books as one of the toughest defensive assignments of his generation and a Pistons legend by anyone’s scale.