The screener sets up on the ball side of the cutter, and the cutter uses him to move away from the ball into open space. The pass that finishes it is a skip, thrown over the top of the defense rather than around it.
A pin-down and a flare are mirror images. One brings the cutter to the ball; the other sends him away from it. Many playbooks run both off the same screener so the defense has to guess.
Why coaches use it
It attacks the defender who is doing his job. A man who is fighting over the top of screens, or who has slid toward the ball to help, is exactly the man a flare beats, because he is moving in the wrong direction when the screen arrives.
It also produces a stationary catch. The cutter arrives at a spot and waits there, which is the easiest shot to teach a young shooter and the easiest pass to teach a young passer.
The cost is the pass. A skip travels a long way, and a defense with active hands will take one every game. Make it a two-hand overhead pass off a pivot, not a one-hand fling across your body.
How it is guarded
The cutter’s defender has to get skinny and beat him to the spot rather than trailing, because trailing a flare means arriving after the shot is gone.
Behind that, the screener’s defender usually bumps or holds the cutter for a beat, which buys the recovery. Switching is simple and effective, and it is why teams pair a flare with a slip: if the defense switches early, the screener has a free run to the rim.
Weak-side flares like the hammer add one more wrinkle, because the defender who has to recover is the same one who just helped on a drive.