The post-up is not dead, it is badly priced

Efficiency numbers charge the post for everything it costs and credit it for almost nothing it creates.

Points per possession killed the post-up, and points per possession is a bad accountant.

The charge sheet is familiar. A back to the basket possession returns somewhere below what a corner three returns, it eats clock, and the shot at the end of it is contested by a defender who has had four seconds to get set. All true, as far as the arithmetic goes. The arithmetic stops in the wrong place.

Consider what the possession actually produces beyond the shot. A team that has to send a second defender at the post has broken its own shape, and the rotations that follow are not the ones the defence practises most. Somebody is closing out late at the wing. Somebody else is choosing between the corner and the roller. Those are the two hardest reads in defensive basketball and the post entry pass manufactured both of them from a standing start, without needing a screen, without needing an advantage created off the dribble.

The credit for that goes to whoever takes the resulting shot. The post player gets an assist if the ball goes straight out, and nothing at all if it goes out, swings twice and then goes in, which is the more common sequence and the more damaging one.

There is also the foul, which the shot chart handles poorly. Interior play draws contact at a much higher rate than a jump shot from anywhere, and free throws are the most efficient shot in basketball. A possession that ends at the line is scored as a decent outcome. It is a better outcome than the number suggests, and it also puts a defender one closer to sitting down, which pays off in the fourth quarter in a way no per possession metric will ever capture.

None of this means an offence should be built around it. I would not run twenty post-ups a game and I do not think anybody should. Ten a game as a change of speed, aimed at a specific matchup, run in the last five seconds of a possession that broke down, is a different proposition.

The version I would defend most strongly is the one against a switch. Small defender, big man, one dribble to the middle. That is a mismatch generated by the defence's own scheme, and refusing to punish it because the league average post-up is inefficient is confusing an average with a decision.