The NBA is a copycat league, and for good reason: Once players discover something that works, they aren’t shy about borrowing it.
Thus, a move that might only be the province of one or two players can quickly catch on around the league, sometimes to the point that the originator barely gets a whiff of notice. Over the course of two decades, for instance, a “Euro step” move mastered and popularized by Manu Ginobili quickly became part of virtually every perimeter player’s arsenal. (He’s also from Argentina, not Europe, but whatever.) Similarly, Jarrett Jack’s lethal rip-through move became Kevin Durant’s and Chris Paul’s, until the league legislated away the advantage.
Of late, there’s a new trendy move that builds on the Euro step, a hesitation move on the way to the rim that nearly every young perimeter player is feverishly working on adding to his game.
But every trend starts somewhere, and when I started digging, it seemed this one may have started with … Nemanja Bjelica?
Yes, really. The Serbian forward is long gone from the NBA and retired from his international career in March 2024, but his legacy lives on in a move that, perhaps, started with him. Since then, however, it has been adapted, modified and improved to the point that it’s almost unrecognizable from its origin point.
The move is what a lot of players call a “Euro decel,” for the deceleration at the end, but that isn’t a new phenomenon. Players like Kyle Anderson and Luka Dončić have been doing that for years.
More recently, however, a very particular application has become the rage — what I call the “Euro stop.” This isn’t just a player slowing down or speeding up on their way to the rim, a la Anderson or Dončić. Instead, the player comes to a dead stop in the middle of the move, often hanging awkwardly with one leg in the air as a defender flies by.
Here’s one of the league’s leading practitioners, the San Antonio Spurs’ Harrison Barnes, pulling it off to draw a foul on the Boston Celtics’ Jayson Tatum. Notice how Barnes mixes in a shot fake in the middle of his stops and then comes to a stop at the end, with his right foot staying airborne and left leg planted, before going into his shot:
It took years to get from players like Bjelica and Anderson slo-mo ambling their way to the rim to the types of steps and fakes that Barnes and his rookie teammate Stephon Castle now routinely incorporate. Castle, in fact, has become one of the league’s heaviest practitioners of the Euro stop, routinely pausing mid-move to wrong-foot defenders.
They are now teammates in San Antonio, but how we got from Barnes to Castle is a much windier pathway than you might think, even if the end product looks remarkably similar. Let’s let Barnes retell some of it:
“It’s funny, 2019, I was in Dallas. We had played Sacramento, at home, and Nemanja Bjelica hit me with that move,” Barnes said (though it appears he’s referring to this game on Dec. 16, 2018). “So when I get traded to Sac, me and Bely became good friends, but he would always do that move. And he kind of walked me through the steps, like ‘Brother, I’m not as athletic as you guys, I’m not gonna go dunk it, so I have to figure out ways to do it, all these shot blockers want to go and block my shot so I have to figure out ways to manipulate my shot.’”
Barnes spent the 2019 offseason working on his move with then-Kings assistant Noah LaRoche, but it took a while to perfect. Barnes broke it out occasionally but not nearly as often as he has the past two seasons in San Antonio. He was still figuring out how to apply it in live action.
“We just worked on that move, just tried to manipulate it, different ways to mix up the variability of the shot,” Barnes said.
One of the first times he broke it out in a game, ironically, was against his old coach in 2019-20.
“One time in Cleveland I did it on a break, and like three people ran by, and [former Kings coach] Luke Walton was assistant coach at the time and was screaming for a travel,” Barnes said. “I went right by him and said, ‘You’ve seen this move before!’”
Most notably, Barnes didn’t incorporate the mid-move shot fake until a year and a half later, and even that part was nearly dead on arrival when he tried it in a game on Nov. 7, 2022. Here’s the clip:
“One of the first times I did it was in Golden State; I actually got called for a travel,” he said. “I was like, ‘Look, I didn’t put the other foot down.’ When you show the ball, you’re still moving; referees at that point weren’t used to seeing it. Now, so many guys do it, they know what to look for, and they’re not going to call it as much.”
That’s one of the most controversial parts of the Euro stop approach. Some coaches insist it should be called a travel — especially when an opponent does it — and nailing down the steps so that it’s legal is a fairly technical process.
I asked Monty McCutchen, the NBA’s senior vice president, head of referee development and training, about it, and he explained everything that goes into the move and what makes it (usually) legal. The key is that, if a player comes to a full stop mid-move, they can’t restart; some players come close, especially with the mid-move shot fakes that players like Barnes and the Minnesota Timberwolves’ Anthony Edwards have incorporated, but if you watch the tape, they’re still progressing.
“You can’t stop a move in the middle — truly stop, not just go super slow — and restart another no-move. That would not be allowed,” McCutchen said. “The shot fake after the first step is fine as long as they keep moving. They can’t stop there and do nothing then decide they’re going to take another step.
“[But] stopping on that second step is allowed. If they put the third step down, then that should be called a travel. If that move is slow and it comes to the end on one foot on the second count, they can just stop there as long as they keep that right foot [for a right-handed move with left leg planted] up in the air.”
Barnes was an early adopter, but probably not the one fans are most used to seeing these days. Players such as Aaron Gordon of the Denver Nuggets and Edwards have incorporated it as well and have more opportunity to get to the rim than Barnes. Heading into the 2023-24 season, Edwards tried it in a preseason game in New York, and it worked so well that he kept it in his rotation:
Edwards has continued to develop it, even though he’s not getting to the rim as much this season. The clip below from November might be the finest example of the entire trend, an absolutely filthy adaptation of Barnes’ move. Edwards was in the midst of an off-ball cut when he attacked the rim, hard-stopped after one step instead of two and ended it with a floater off one leg.
Gordon, meanwhile, said the move became important for him due to “getting old” and that it happened organically during the course of a game. Unlike most players, the 29-year-old has done the move with either leg as a plant foot (most right-handed players will only do the ‘stop’ on their left leg).
“I did it one time in Phoenix, and then it just clicked for me, and now it can do it both ways,” Gordon said. “I like to do it off the glass. It just came natural.”
The real growth in usage of the Euro stop, however, has been in the league’s younger contingent. LaRoche, Barnes’ assistant coach in Sacramento, has since moved on to Memphis and began teaching the young Grizzlies the same steps. Rookie Jaylen Wells has been a prominent early adopter.
“I used to always slow-step. That was kind of my thing; everyone compared me to Kyle Anderson because of how slow I moved on my layups,” Wells said. “Once I got to the league, they showed me how you can just hold a zero step, hold a one step, hold a two step. That’s all we did with [LaRoche].”
One of the other assistants with LaRoche in Memphis in 2023-24 was player development coach Mike Noyes, who went to San Antonio this past offseason where he began working with Castle on … you guessed it … the Euro stop.
Castle has proven an avid student, breaking it out early and often this year. In a game in early November, he got the Utah Jazz’s mammoth shot-blocker Walker Kessler with it twice:
“It’s just a way to combat your unathletic-ness,” Golden State’s Brandin Podziemski said, “a way to throw off the timing for shot blockers.”
Podziemski said he started working on the move in his final year in college, but it took a lot of practice to master. He also noted Dončić, Castle and two other young Grizzlies — Scotty Pippen Jr. and Santi Aldama — as players he’s seen use it effectively.
And that list keeps getting longer. This Euro stop is a move that’s developing in real time. Like, how about an athletic big man doing it off his non-dominant leg? Watch Cleveland’s Evan Mobley busting it out just before the All-Star break, as Minnesota’s bewildered Naz Reid turns to his bench as if to ask, “What am I supposed to do about that?”
Because it takes off-court work to master, plus the strength in the left leg (for a righty finish) to stop momentum and hold a step without traveling, we may see a big change in this move’s popularity between seasons when players can spend more time in the lab … much as Barnes did after his fortuitous meet-up with Bjelica. We’re likely to see even more creative ways of pulling this out as well; once you break down the steps, you can see how many options there are.
On that front, let’s give Barnes the final word on the strategy and why it ultimately works.
“I think, physically, it’s the practice — slow and methodical and just trying to get the steps down. But it’s also just having an awareness of how bigs play defense,” Barnes said. “A lot of shot blockers time steps, they’re not looking at the ball. … So it’s figuring out different ways of … getting that finish. Maybe you add a ball fake, maybe it’s a shot fake, maybe it’s go off the first step, second step, whatever it may be. It’s different ways to throw the defense off.
And maybe, if enough players do it, things will come full circle?
“When bigs start recognizing that and saying down on that,” Barnes said, “then the normal layup is there.”
(Illustration: Demetrius Robinson / The Athletic; photos: Michael Gonzales, Jordan Johnson, Darren Carroll / NBAE via Getty Images)
