Our 7 favorite NBA passers and why we love them so much

It’s the holiday season, so let’s take some time to appreciate the NBA’s best gift-givers.

Since it’s the season of giving and we are celebrating people in the world who find joy in helping out those around them, a few of us at SB Nation NBA decided to appreciate the players we most enjoy watching create opportunities for their teammates.

Just as the finish of a play is varied, so is the pass (or passes) that leads up to it. The creativity depends on the aptitude, vision, and ambition of the creator.

The better the giver, the more opportunities available. A dunk can be created by a drive-and-kick or an immediate outlet pass after a rebound. A three-pointer can be carved out of a one-handed cross-court heave or a behind-the-back delivery out of a double-team.

The finishes tend to lead highlight clips, but it is always worth applauding the players who make those two or three points possible to begin with.

These are our favorite NBA passers.

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David Richard-USA TODAY Sports

LeBron James

By Zito Madu

As I embarked on this project, I set out to find a specific LeBron James pass: the one-handed cross-court rifle. James has an array of ways to get the ball to the opposite side of the court, from standard two-handed means to touch-and-bounce passes with either arm. Together, these passing methods form a nice gallery of strength, vision and ambition.

Like all things with LeBron, he has performed these different passes so often that it’s easy to forget just how difficult they are to pull off.

But in the search for that one-handed cross-court pass, I stumbled onto this thing of beauty:

This pass is utterly ridiculous. I’m confident in saying that most players in the league would have needed to use both hands to even have a chance to complete that pass from that position, considering there are two defenders between the passer and his teammate.

But that’s getting way ahead of ourselves. Before we can consider the probability of a lefty one-handed touch pass reaching its target in the opposite corner, we have to acknowledge that few people would even see the opening to begin with, let alone have the audacity and ability to complete it.

The magic of LeBron James is in that he realizes the only way to get that pass to Richard Jefferson in that moment is to instantly use his weaker hand to rainbow it into the corner. That’s it.

Think about what a player must have to pull the pass off:

• Ambidexterity, i.e. the ability to do it with either hand.
• Vision to see the angle in the first place.
• Powerful hand and arm strength to get the ball across without much bending of the knees.
• The ability to gauge exactly the right balance of power and accuracy needed.
• The working memory that a Richard Jefferson corner three is a more efficient shot than a Mo Williams top-of-the-key jumper.
• Finally, the confidence to actually try this without fear of a turnover.

In other words: To make that pass, one needs to be LeBron James. And he is, which means that he does the ridiculous while making it look absolutely casual.

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Thomas B. Shea-USA TODAY Sports

James Harden

By Matt Ellentuck

James Harden wasn’t a point guard in name for the first seven seasons of his career. Everyone should be thanking the NBA’s most analytically inclined coach, Mike D’Antoni, for creating an unstoppable monster with a very thick beard.

Finally, Harden is being properly used as the most complete offensive player in the league, and his passes are a big reason why. Harden is third in the league in assists, with 9.3 per game, and few of them are boring.

SO MANY of them come from between-the-legs passes:

And no, that does not exclusively mean they come from between his own legs:

Nobody is more thankful for Harden’s passes than his teammate Clint Capela. Eighty-one percent of his field goals have been assisted this season, according to NBA.com’s stats page. Of that 81 percent, nearly 61 percent came from Harden. Harden’s passing is single-handedly (pun!) making Capela’s career season.

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Chris Humphreys-USA TODAY Sports

Nikola Jokic

By Nate Scott

What’s funny about the way Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokic passes the ball is that he makes the whole thing look so easy that it actually undercuts how special and unique the passes are.

To watch him do it, it makes too much sense. Tall guys, Jokic shows us, should be good passers. Jokic is tall, so he can see better. He has long arms, so he can reach farther. Of course he’s a good passer. Why the hell wouldn’t he be?

Of course this undersells how precise his timing and how excellent his vision is. At the top of the key, it’s not just that he can see better — Jokic knows which pass to pick out and when to deliver the ball. Good cut, bad cut, whatever. If you cut, Jokic is going to figure out how to get you the ball.

My absolute favorite Jokic passes, though, come from the right block. It’s his preferred space on the floor. The Nuggets have made a cottage industry out of getting the ball to a wing in the corner, feeding Jokic on the right block, and then running the wing to the hoop so he can stick his hand up in the air, a la Smalls in The Sandlot.

It doesn’t even matter if his teammate is looking — Jokic is going to find him:

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Photo by Rob Carr/Getty Images

JOHN WALL

By Michael Sykes

John Wall is an athletic wonder. He might be the fastest player in the NBA. But that’s not what makes him special — it’s the way he sees the floor that separates him from the pack.

He’s not one of the league’s best passers because of how pretty his dimes are — and, believe me, they are. It’s the simple fact that he creates buckets with his eyes. He baits defenders with a glance while going another way with his hands:

This isn’t your typical no-look pass. Wall doesn’t look away from the play just for the sake of being flashy. There’s a purpose behind his look. He plays on the defense being conditioned to take away the corner three and gets Marcin Gortat a wide-open layup.

And it’s common for him. He does the same thing again here:

Jamal Murray hesitates for a split second and then BOOM. It’s too late. Gortat is dunking on his head, despite being able to jump only two centimeters off the ground. How? The John Wall effect.

I’m also confident Wall is an actual Wizard. You won’t convince me otherwise until you explain to me how the heck he got this ball from his hands and into Gortat’s through three players:

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Stephen R. Sylvanie-USA TODAY Sports

LONZO BALL

By Kristian Winfield

When it comes to Lonzo Ball, there are so many passes to choose from.

There are his 3/4 court outlet passes:

His full-court outlet passes:

His pinpoint halfcourt entry passes, which still amaze me:

How about that Summer League punch pass?

And even his drive-and-kick game:

But none of Lonzo’s passes is more important to his team than the simple push pass:

There’s so much value in a simple toss ahead. By moving the ball, Lonzo is pushing the tempo before the defense even has a chance to set up. It’s like creating transition opportunities out of what’d otherwise be halfcourt sets.

Even Lakers head coach Luke Walton was gushing over Ball’s passing ability on ESPN’s The Lowe Post podcast with Zach Lowe:

“It’s a simple thing,” Walton said. “But, like you said, when you’re a wing player or you’re a big man and you know if you run the floor, that ball’s going to hit you, and he does it 100 percent of the time.

“We preach to our wings and our bigs to sprint that lane, sprint that lane. But when the ball’s actually getting thrown to them, now they’re more likely, now they want to get out there. Those are free points, free layups for them,” Walton continued, adding that just watching it has some of Lonzo’s teammates pumped up to play with him.”

For much of the opening third of his rookie season, the focus had been on Lonzo’s shooting woes, and for good reason — the man was shooting 25 percent from three until early December. But now that it appears he may have found his stroke, we can focus more on the great things outside of scoring that he does.

Passing is chief among those things, and it’s something Ball enjoys doing. Why? Well he explained why in a postgame interview on Spectrum SportsNet:

“I think it just unifies a team,” he said. “Plus, it’s contagious. One person’s passing then everybody starts passing. Thirdly, it moves faster than a person. Obviously, you can pass the ball faster than someone can run down the court all day. It just makes sense to me, and that’s just how I play.”

That’s why Magic Johnson wanted Lonzo as his point guard. And from the looks of things, the Lakers got a good one.

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Photo by Jason Miller/Getty Images

MANU GINOBILI

By Nate Scott

I love Manu Ginobili’s passing because I love the game of soccer, and there is no player alive who better takes the passing principles of soccer and applies them to the hardcourt.

See, in soccer, it’s rare that you actually pass a ball directly to a teammate’s feet. Often, you’ll get yelled at for doing just that. In soccer, the pass is supposed to lead your teammate to where he needs to go. It anticipates the next pass, or the shot, and delivers the ball ahead of time.

In other words: You don’t pass to where your teammate is; you pass it to where he needs to be.

Manu Ginobili, more often than not, and in such beautiful ways, passes the ball to where his teammate needs to be.

Ginobili also has mastered the through ball in basketball, which is another soccer thing, but he has adopted it in the NBA and I love it. A through ball not only finds a teammate, but it takes the defender out of the play by sliding it past him, thus catching him flat-footed and stuck as his man is in behind him:

Remind you of another Argentine athlete?

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Photo by Rob Carr/Getty Images

BEN SIMMONS

By Mike Prada

When we talk about great passers, we speak of their ability to read the floor. The word “read” does a lot of work in that sentence. It implies a conscious activity, as if the passer is actively taking in information with his eyes, processing it with his brain, and then identifying and executing the best decision with his arms.

Taken literally, then, Ben Simmons does not “read” the floor. That word doesn’t properly describe how Simmons dissects a particular alignment while running at full speed and instantly knows to execute the pass that’s multiple steps ahead of the defensive coverage. He intuitively understands how all the chess pieces interact in a way no other playmaker does.

Take this pass:

It looks special at regular speed. Slow it down, and you get a better sense of how much work Simmons does in a split second:

Let’s break it down:

• Simmons veers left, which makes J.R. Smith think he’s plotting a backdoor pass to Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot. Notice Smith jump to cover the passing lane. Simmons even holds the ball out with his left hand as if he’s about to make a one-handed backdoor delivery.
• As Simmons jumps, he stares back toward Trevor Booker and Richaun Holmes. LeBron James — a pretty smart dude himself — reacts to that head turn by jumping into a passing lane that doesn’t exist. This allows Holmes to clear James.
• While still in mid-air, Simmons tilts his head toward the opposite corner, where Jerryd Bayless is standing. That look convinces Dwyane Wade to take one half step out of the lane in anticipation of a potential pass to Bayless.
• In doing all that, the pass to Holmes is suddenly open. Simmons is able to comfortably lob it over Jeff Green, and it can fall softly into Holmes’ hands because Wade is still nailed to the floor ready to close out on Bayless.
• By the way, Simmons is still in mid-air. By the way, he’s run at full speed and is now fading away to the corner. By the way, less than a second elapses between the time Simmons picks up his dribble and when he releases the pass.

I sent that slow motion clip to my Limited Upside podcast co-host Ben Epstein, an avid Sixers fan. He’s exposed to seeing Simmons’ genius on a nightly basis, so he knows better than almost anyone to look for these details.

Without revealing that breakdown, I asked him to tell me everything he saw going on in that slow motion clip. He mentioned some of the bullet points --- the Bayless part, in particular — but not all of them. He missed J.R. Smith’s nudge. He noticed only LeBron’s step back upon his fifth viewing.

He couldn’t see all of that it in slow motion. Neither could I without watching the slow motion GIF over and over again. Neither could you, I suspect.

Ben Simmons saw all of that in less than a second. Less. Than. A. Second.

To suggest Simmons “read” the floor there does a disservice to the word “read.” Nobody “reads” so much so fast consciously.

It’d be more accurate to say Simmons “feels” the floor like a Jedi connecting to The Force, but even that’s too limiting. He has an ingrained instinct that processes an incredible amount of information instinctually.

That’s what makes him my favorite passer in the NBA.

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Who are your favorite NBA passers? Let us know!