Familiarity, Contempt and Regular Season Only Scoring Plays
SHAQ WOULD YOU LET ME FINISH? A common piece of received NBA wisdom is that certain things will change in the playoffs "when the game slows down." Matt from Chicken Noodle Hoop and I were conversing over twitter the other day about Charles Barkley constantly stating but not really explaining why jump shooting teams might struggle in the playoffs - he never is really given time to go deeper than "live by the jumper, die by the jumper" before Shaq offers some 'insight '.
However, the point is well made if taken a little deeper. Jump shooting teams (however we define them) struggle in the playoffs for two related reasons: first, in the playoffs against better teams who have your offense well-scouted, you aren't getting the same looks. Not getting the same looks leads to less efficient scoring, giving up runs, and the psychological pressure of "this isn't working." Especially for younger or more inexperienced teams, your regular offense not working can easily lead to players breaking the offense off and going one-on-one rather than continuing to work for good looks.
One example of the kinds of little things that can get a team a ton of extra good looks in the regular season is the Hawks' secondary break action:
One example of the kinds of little things that can get a team a ton of extra good looks in the regular season is the Hawks' secondary break action:
To illustrate why this is so effective, we need to look at some basic semi-transition motion action, which is a staple of any decent-or-better pickup game, and is second nature to both run and defend for most players by the time they reach the NBA.
The PG enters the ball to a guard and clears to the opposite wing. The big man who presumably rebounded/inbounded at the other end (5) is trailing the play sets up as a ball reversal option at the top of the floor.
The guard uses the ball reversal option (note that more than a few teams like to run a semi-transition side PnR instead of reversing the ball out of this same basic alignment) - the big man immediately reverses the ball back to the PG. Here is where the Hawks wrinkle comes into play. In a standard "pass and screen away" motion offense the 2 guard will drive his man towards the basket to allow the 5 man to set a big screen on him:
The Hawks change this up by having the big man set a rub screen near the top of the floor:
In action:
The difference is subtle as the location of the screen only changes by about 5 feet. However, this makes a huge difference in how the 5 man's defender should ideally play the situation. In a the standard secondary break, the 5 defender drops into the pain to protect against the 2 guard curling over the top of the screen to the basket:
This natural tendency is what the Hawks are taking advantage of, as the big defender automatically drops to the FT line area:
Hansbrough would be in perfectly fine position if Horford was screening for Korver at the elbow area, as he would in the "standard" motion charted above. But since Atlanta is essentially running a Korver/Horford PnR by setting the screen at the top of the key or just above, Ty should be higher on the floor:
As he would be if defending a middle pick and roll:
Which, gets my back to my original point about offense being a little more difficult in the playoffs. This is a fairly simple play to defend if you are expecting it. Over the course of an NBA season, coaches will surely go over this action before games against the Hawks, but when you have a game every other day against a different set of players and offensive sets, it's easy to revert to "default mode" and drop into the paint.
In a playoff series, and certainly by the second game of a series, a decently coached team will have this action scouted and will have reminded their bigs to not automatically sink into the paint on ball reversal. And since the defenders will have to worry about the Hawks and only the Hawks, they will be better able to execute defensively. Thus the game "slows down" because one of Atlanta's primary weapons for early offense has been removed.
In a playoff series, and certainly by the second game of a series, a decently coached team will have this action scouted and will have reminded their bigs to not automatically sink into the paint on ball reversal. And since the defenders will have to worry about the Hawks and only the Hawks, they will be better able to execute defensively. Thus the game "slows down" because one of Atlanta's primary weapons for early offense has been removed.
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