Feign boredom to keep the defense unprepared
Once again, we are learning from the masters
In my last post, I turned a one-sentence comment from Ultimate Rob's article about mastering cutting into its own post, using an example from Thinking Basketball's "Moving without the ball" video to highlight the point.
Weirdly enough, this article will do the same thing.
One of my little tricks as a cutter is to Literally Look Bored. Here's what Ultimate Rob said eleven years ago:
For the most part the physical attributes of cutters and defenders will be similarly matched, so the offensive player needs to use their wits to get free. In general terms the offensive player tries to con the defensive player into believing that they are going to do something that they are not. This deception can be:
...Mental, e.g. feigning disinterest, allowing the defender to relax and then exploiting that laxness...
The way it works is this: I see my defender is spending too much mental energy watching me and not enough mental energy watching everything else happening around them. Most defenders will watch me and (at least partly) take their cues from me.
If I look visibly bored, the defender will instinctively react by relaxing as well. Instead of being on high alert, ready for my next movement, they'll think there's no danger and won't be quite as ready to move. However, even though visibly I look bored, I'm using my eyes to carefully keep watch over what's happening and I'm mentally ready to break into a sprint at the right moment.
Watch Steph do it
Watch this short clip, originally from the Thinking Basketball video, of Steph Curry feigning boredom in order to get open:
The second example, starting about six seconds into the clip, shows it best. Here's what I see:
He starts cutting, but his defender is right beside him
As he reaches the area under the basket, he slows down a lot, and looks down at the ground as if hanging his head in failure
Finally, he again breaks into a sprint to the 3-point line
I haven't yet found any examples of ultimate players using this trick, but if I do I'll update this post with a video of that as well. Here's a few more thoughts on how exactly to do this and why it works:
How to look bored & why it works
At the risk of being too detailed, let me be specific about what I mean about "looking bored" on the field. Here are a few tips:
Instead of being ready in an athletic position, or bouncing back and forth on my toes, or doing any of the other things with my body that indicate to my defender "I'm ready to go!", I stand up straight in a posture of boredom. I look the way I look when I'm standing on the sideline chatting with a teammate during a point I'm not playing.
In my experience, it's a worthwhile trade-off: the advantage I give up by not being in the best possible body position to start my cut, I make up for by causing the defender to be even less ready.
The way I use my eyes changes as well: when I'm paying "active attention", I'll be looking around the field, noticing things, and not just moving my eyes but often moving my head to take in the surroundings around me. But to catch the defense off-guard I'll become a lot less active with my head and eyes, sort of staring off into space, and trying to use my peripheral vision to notice the key things I need to know to make a cut at the right moment (e.g., where the disc is, where the open spaces are).
Alternately, I might pretend to be a bit more tired than I am, and put my hands on my knees in a bent-over posture, and have my line of eyesight pointing at the ground, maybe 15 feet in front of me, like I'm trying to catch my breath and not really thinking about the game. Again, I'll use my peripheral vision (and/or move my eyes without moving my head) to notice things around me.
Moving your eyes without moving your head will make it harder for your defender to figure out what you're looking at — they can notice your whole head moving much more easily than they can notice a small shift in where your eyes are pointing.Finally, there's the version shown in the Steph Curry video: start a cut, slow down drastically and visibly show signs of giving up on your cut, and then break into a sprint again just as your defender starts to relax.
In short, there's two main components: your body and your head/eyes.
This technique will work best on a defender who is "faceguarding" you—that is, watching you but not really watching anything around you. In this situation, you have a big informational advantage over your defender: you can watch the game develop and know where everyone is, while all they know is that you are looking and acting bored.
Even when a defender isn't faceguarding, this technique can still work. I think this is because it’s human nature that our eyes and attention are drawn to interesting things. Me, bored as heck and standing still looking bored as heck, is nowhere near as interesting as the motion of the disc and all the people around me. The defender will be drawn towards paying more attention to things that are not me, and I'll take off while they're distracted and get lots of separation. Note the defender in the clip of Steph Curry: at the beginning of the cut, he's focused on Curry, but as he sees Curry give up, he can't help but turn his head to look at the basketball.
Meditators practice for years just to get a little bit better at not getting distracted by stray thoughts. It's very hard to patiently pay attention to something that's extremely boring. You may think, this trick wouldn't work against an elite defender, but remember, that guy guarding Steph Curry is being paid millions of dollars to be good at basketball, and Curry is still able to trick him!
I think there's another human nature aspect, too—that it's hard not to be influenced by the demeanor of people around us. It's human nature for a defender to see a bored person and become a little more bored themselves.
(Side note: this article is written from the perspective of the cutter, but any technique for a cutter will also teach us an anti-technique about how to be a good defender. And here, the lesson is:
You have to train your mind to be ready at any moment, even if, perhaps especially if, it doesn't seem like you need to be ready.)
Bonus boredom
There's one other situation where I've used boredom to great effect: when someone throws me a pass while the defense is faceguarding me.
Although I can't find the source, I actually learned this trick from Randy Moss, in an article I read maybe twenty years ago. According to the article, when he was cutting for a deep pass, instead of looking back to the quarterback, he'd keep his eyes straight ahead, where he could see the quarterback on the Jumbotron above the end of the field. Only after he saw the quarterback throw the ball on the Jumbotron's screen would he look back and find the ball.
Since the defender was keyed only on him, his (apparently) late reaction to the ball gave the defender less time to realize that a pass was in the air and react to it, giving him an even bigger advantage.
There's been a couple times in my ultimate career where I've been able to use this trick. Twice there's been situations where I'm in a relatively deep position, with a defender faceguarding me under, and I signal to the person with the disc to put up a throw for me, and they do so.
Instead of immediately breaking for the disc, I feign boredom for another split second, so the defender guarding me doesn't realize that the disc is already in the air. Then I break into a sprint and, running full speed, catch the disc as soon as it's in range. This is a powerful technique for floaty throws—throws that your defender would have had a chance to defend if they had reacted as soon as the disc was in the air. But because your boredom keep them rooted in place for an extra second, they were too far away to get to it by the time they started running.
I've also used this little trick while being faceguarded in the dump space. It works similarly: the handler dumps the disc over your defender's head to you, and instead of immediately using your eyes and body, you keep those reactions hidden for a moment in order to keep the defender in the dark about where the disc is.