Here's Why Kyrie Irving Is Unguardable (Full Breakdown)

Kyrie Irving is one of the most skilled and exciting guards to ever play the game. Whether it's the crazy finishes, the insane handles, or the elite level shotmaking ability, Kyrie is no doubt one of the most fun players to watch and one of the best players to learn from. In this video, we'll break down exactly what makes him so good, and I'll go through some ways you can develop some of the same skills. Let's get into it now. Obviously, one of the most exciting parts of Kyrie Irving's game is his ability to score in isolation situations. And I think when we look at exactly what makes him such a great ISO scorer, we have to start with his ability to exploit momentum. Having an understanding of the importance of momentum and how to take advantage of it is a must have ability if you want to be a great creator for you or your teammates on offense. This is one of the reasons why Kyrie is able to get off his shot in the mid range so easily. And a clip like this is a perfect example of how he does this. What you'll notice is that Dillon Brooks is chasing Kyrie towards the basket to try and cut him off. By getting Dillon Brooks into recovery mode, Kyrie forced him to flip his hips, meaning he's crossing that leg over. Once Kyrie does that, all he needs to do is stop because Dylan Brooks is going to have to take an extra step in order to match him. Therefore, by stopping, he's going to have an open shot. We see the same thing in this clip here. By getting his defender to recover towards the basket, he's going to be able to stop and get that shot off in the mid range. This ability becomes even more apparent when you recognize how elite he is at his start and stop footwork. His stops are definitely what he's most known for. And when I say stops, I just mean his ability to change direction or stop his momentum completely. And he does this in a couple of different ways, probably the most recognizable ways through the snatch or the under drag. This allows him to take advantage of his defender's momentum by not just stopping, but being able to change direction as well. And the majority of defenders who guard him, if they're able to stop the initial drive by him changing directions, it's very unlikely they're going to be able to also stop him again. Another type of stop footwork that he's elite at getting to is the punch footwork. And this type of stop is so effective because defenders are used to you stopping on that inside foot, not the outside foot. So it's a great way to be able to get a little bit of space by catching the defender off guard and either get into a shot or changing direction. And another really simple stop he'll get to is just a quick step back where he's not going for any sort of distance, but just getting a little bit of extra separation and rhythm into his shot in the mid range. So then the other side of this that is less talked about, but is equally as important is how efficient he is with his start footwork. And the first and most basic type of footwork we'll talk about is the drop footwork, which just allows him to get his feet into an accelerated position like this, so that he can either drive in that direction or be able to shift that defender that way and go the other direction. We can see in this clip how he uses that drop footwork to sell that left drive in order to get that defender on their heels, which gives him enough space to get the shot off. And then we see him right here use that drop footwork, selling that drive left to shift that defender, which opens up that lane going to his right. Having this start and stop footwork in your bag, I think is an important part of being a great scorer. And if you want to add this to your game, click the top link in my description below to get my free elite perimeter score program or where we go through all of this stuff and more. Now, Kyrie isn't just great when he has unlimited dribbles. He's also very good at scoring efficiently out of triple threat or closeout situations. Something I think every single player needs is to be able to score using either a rip through or a jab, depending on the situation. Kyrie's great at being able to shift his defender and make that read, determine where he's going to go. This is how you become a truly efficient scorer who's capable of scoring in any offense in a variety of different situations. Now, one thing I want to touch on quickly is Kyrie Irving's ball handling. And I think a quality that gets overlooked a ton is his ability to manipulate the ball. So a lot of times players spend all their time just working on pounding the basketball or changing hands with crossovers or betweens or whatever. And that's what they consider their ball handling training. But Kyrie Irving is great at manipulating the ball and being able to put it in different spots. And when I say manipulate, all I mean is to be able to cuff the basketball team, being able to almost pick it up without picking it up. And moving it to different areas, being able to protect it, bring it to your hip. This is what I'm working on in this drill right here. Again, click that top link in the description below to get my free program that goes through this. And the other area that I think makes him a great ball handler is his ability to not let the ball slow him down, meaning he can go as fast as he wants to and he can keep the ball up with him. And generally, this is the reason why players struggle to handle the basketball in real games is because they can't move as fast with the ball as they can without the ball, and therefore they're limited in games. Something I love using to target this is called crawl starts, where we're forcing ourselves to start in this accelerated position and we're going as fast as possible, doing different moves, but trying to keep the ball up with us. This is huge here in game ball handling ability. One of Kyrie's superpowers is his ability to use these curved angle drives. One of the biggest myths in basketball is that driving to the basket is a straight line game. In reality, at higher levels, because guys are so big and athletic, it's rare that you're going to get a directly straight line to the rim. And this means that the only option a lot of times to take more of a curved angle to the basket if you want to get where you want to get to. This is something that a lot of people don't even consider. But there's very different physical demands for a curved angle drive versus a straight line drive. And because of how different this movement is, I think it's important that we train it if we want to be as good as we possibly can at driving. I'll link a workout above that goes through this because I think this is a super important quality to develop. Something that really ties into everything Kyrie does is his ability to play with elite change of pace. Being able to play slow and relaxed when you want to is a skill. And Kyrie is as good at it as anybody in the history of basketball. What you'll see is that the majority of the time Kyrie is playing very relaxed and he saves that top speed or that explosive burst for when he absolutely needs it. This makes him really unpredictable, which is hard to defend. And if you want to be a great ISO scorer or just a scorer in general, you want to develop this ability to be unpredictable. Now, one of the ways he'll do this is another example of a start like we talked about earlier, and that's by Using a delayed between, defenders get used to a normal between the legs start, which includes you and the ball moving at the same time. But with a delayed start that between the legs happens and then he moves a split second after it. So there's a brief pause which a lot of times freezes that defender and allows him to get an extra step when he hits that 100% speed. Feet. And an area where he really utilizes the change of pace is when he uses ball screens, which as a guard is incredibly important to be able to do because of his ability to shoot. The majority of times they're going to play over on these ball screens, meaning that defender is immediately going to put them into that recovery position that we talked about earlier. So all he has to do is be patient and let them get to that point and then he's just going to read the situation. If that defender can't recover and the screener's defender allows him to land in the basket and he's going to be able to get to the rim. Sometimes that on ball guy does a good job recovering, covering and he's going to get to a pull up to exploit that momentum and then sometimes he'll take two defenders with him. So now that screener is open for a pass. Now, as an average sized guard in the NBA, probably the most difficult thing to do is finish at a high level. But Kyrie is probably the best finisher under 6 foot 5 in the history of the NBA. So there's a lot we can learn from that. The first thing he does that allows him to finish at such a high level is able to hang in the air and and not let that ball go right away when he jumps. What this allows him to do is twofold. First of all, it makes him a very unpredictable finisher because as a defender it's hard to time up when he's going to release the ball. And it also gives him way more options of what he can do. He can decide to go straight up with it. He can extend it out to the same side, he can go up and under. But because he has the ability to not have to let the ball go right away, he has way more solutions when he's finishing around the basket. And in my opinion, this is the number one key to being an athletic finisher is being able to go up, hang in the air, not have to release the ball right away and give yourself options in the air. And if you're a small guard or an average sized guard who's watching, you're not going to be able to finish at the rim every single time you get to the paint. Kyrie is really good at getting to different fadeaways from 10 to 12ft. This allows him options with different sorts of pivots and shot fakes and again makes him a super unpredictable finisher, which makes him very difficult to stop once he gets a paint touch. And he also has that super important in between game with his different floaters and runners that allow him to hit these different touch shots around the rim when he's not quite close enough to get to the basket, but he's not quite far enough away for a jump shot. And when you put it all together, Kyrie is easily one of the most skilled players to ever touch a basketball, and there's so much that guards out there can learn from him. Make sure you click that top link in the description down below to get my affiliate free Elite Perimeter Score program and that'll help you develop a ton of the stuff that we've touched on in this video. Drop a Like subscribe if you're new. I appreciate you for watching. I'll talk to you soon. Peace.