The job: the ball just got swung to a shooter and you're helping one pass away. Cover ground fast, then arrive under control — close enough to contest, balanced enough to stop a drive. Hit ▶ and watch your speed meter drop as you chop your feet.
Closing a wide-open three (~38%) down to an arm's-length contest (~29%) is a ~10-point swing league-wide — up to ~17 for a shooter like Korver (55%→38%). That gap is the closeout.
Bands are official NBA tracking (Very Tight/Tight/Open/Wide Open); 3P% ≈ 2020–22 league via tracking-based analyses. The blow-by / drive outcomes elsewhere in this viz are coaching heuristics — no public tracking stat measures them.
Stick your arm out and your fingertips should just graze his jersey. That single step of space is the whole game:
Too tight and you've got nowhere to go — one shot-fake or jab and he's driving past, or you foul him. Too soft and you're waving at a wide-open shooter from a mile away. The sweet spot is one step: close enough to bother the shot, far enough to slide with a drive.
Chopping your feet on the way in (Tab 1) is how you hold that cushion — it kills your momentum so you stop at a step instead of flying into him.
A perfect cushion still gets beaten if you close out square to a live driver: he just picks a side. Good closeouts arrive on an angle, shading one shoulder to take a direction away.
High-low hands: your top hand is up in the shot; your low hand walls off the drive you're taking away. Here you funnel him baseline, into the short corner where help is waiting — not middle, into the open lane.
Try all three and drive it: forcing middle feeds the layup; square is a coin flip; forcing baseline is contained.
The classic teaching is chop your feet — break the sprint into short steps to arrive low and balanced. But plenty of coaches now argue the chop is over-taught and slow: it bleeds so much speed you arrive a beat late and give up the contest. Their answer is the sprint-stop — a hard sprint into a quick 1-2 plant — which gets you there faster to bother the shot, trading a little balance for a lot of closing speed.
Neither is universally right. Read the matchup: sprint-stop a shooter to contest the shot in time; chop-step a live driver so you can still slide when he attacks. Toggle the two and watch the tradeoff.
Press ▶ and orbit around the closeout.
From above you see the path and the cushion. From the side you see the body: on the sprint you're tall and fast; as you chop, your hips drop and your chest stays up — that low, wide base is what lets you change direction.
At the cushion you land in a staggered stance with your top hand high in the shot and your low hand out to wall the drive. Tall and reaching = beaten. Low and balanced = a real contest.
You control the closeout. The shooter reacts to your mistakes — get all four right for an A.
A great closeout is distance (an arm's length), balance (chopped down, not flying), angle (force baseline, take the middle away), and timing (leave on the flight of the pass, not after the catch). Miss any one and a real shooter makes you pay — an open look, a blow-by, or a straight-line drive.
Tip: crowd him and he rips past; jog and he shoots; force him middle and he's at the rim; leave late and you never arrive. Only the full recipe holds up.
Your defender chases your cursor with real momentum — the white ring is where you're pointing, the D is where your body actually is. Yank the cursor at the shooter and you'll overshoot, exactly like flying in without chopping.
The shooter reads you every frame: too far and he rises up; too tight or off-balance and he drives past; arrive at an arm's length under control and hold it — contested, stop. If he drives, keep your cursor between him and the rim to wall it off.
Sprint out, then ease the cursor to a stop at the green ring — that's the chop. Chain stops to build a streak.
Distance, speed, and whether you even throw a high hand all change with who has the ball. The rule of thumb coaches use: sprint ~90% and break down late on a shooter (get there, contest); sprint only halfway and break down early on a driver (sit on the drive, give the jumper).
The two special cases: a pump-faker — contest with a high hand but never leave your feet; and a non-shooter — don't close out at all, stay in the gap and dare him to shoot.
Closeouts don't happen in a vacuum. You're late because you were doing your job — helping. And you can close out hard because there's help behind you. Press play.
Where the claims come from. Evidence tier: 🟢 primary (official tracking / source data) · 🟡 secondary (analysis or coaching site citing data or established fundamentals).
Being straight about it: the defender-distance bands and their FG% are real tracking data. But several numbers in the interactive sims are coaching heuristics, not measured:
Research compiled July 2026. Bands and effect direction are stable season-to-season; per-band percentages are rounded from the seasons noted above.