Suns Pick and Roll Defense (Part One)
Right this way, sir. One of the more interesting development of this early season has been the competitiveness of "tanking" teams like Boston, Philadelphia and especially Phoenix. It's another discussion, perhaps for another day with the guys from PPP, but these teams are building correctly - they aren't trying to lose (more or less intentionally) by playing known crappy veterans (looking
at you, Utah Jazz, playing Richard Jefferson 40 minutes a night), but are willing to take some lumps with their young guys which does three things.
First, the instant playing time and freedom gets guys used to the NBA in a fairly consequence free learning environment. Anthony Bennett is struggling in Cleveland for a number of reasons (pick and weight from among he's bad, Mike Brown is bad, he's fat), but the biggest is that he's simply not seeing enough floor time. Cleveland thinks they are competing for a playoff spot, so they feel they can't live with him making mistakes and learning on the job. (This is an error in my opinion, how much worse than Earl Clark and Alonzo Gee can he be in short spells?) By contrast Michael Carter-Williams, Miles Plumlee (essentially a rookie after logging 55 minutes last season in Indy) and Kelly Olynyk have been allowed to play their way into the NBA. All three will be better for it, while Bennett is in danger of losing his entire first year in the league, not to mention his confidence as his name starts to get included with Kwame Brown and Michael Olowokandi as #1 pick busts.
Second, it gives you a better handle on what you actually have. This year is the first time that three of Utah's young assets (Favors, Kanter, Burks) are getting consistent, extended playing time. For some reason, Utah has decided to start John Lucas III and the dried up husk of Jamaal Tinsley instead of finally letting Alec Burks (a lottery pick in his own right) show his stuff. Luckily for the Jazz, Lucas and Tinsley were so bad and the team as whole so hopeless that they appear to have finally given him the car keys. At least until Trey Burke is healthy. The three teams mentioned are going to have far more information to work with when it comes time to decide what to do with players like Avery Bradley, Jared Sullinger, Evan Turner, Plumlee, the Morris twins, etc. Further, the guys who show they can play can become trade chips.
Third, what's the downside? If the kids lose, that's more lottery balls. If they win, well then you have discovered you have some of the best assets in the NBA: productive guys on rookie (and therefore underpriced) contracts.
In any event, this praise is a long-winded way of introducing what I really wanted to discuss, which is Phoenix. The Suns have come out of the gate like a ball of fire (UCWIDT?) And while this is immensely enjoyable for neutral fans and particularly Suns partisans who were told to expect their team to abjectly suck, it's premature to start making playoff plans. On one hand, the Suns are benefiting from some unsustainable offensive performances (for example up until this past weekend, Eric Bledsoe was finishing at the rim at a LeBron James level clip. Bledsoe is a nice player, but...) On the other, their half court defense has been sketchy. Though they currently sit 5th in per possession defense (allowing .996 ppp), this seems likely to regress. I think they are running somewhat lucky in terms of opponents simply missing 3 pointers, and as I hope to illustrate below the fold, I think their poor pick and roll coverage will be their defensive undoing.
Second, it gives you a better handle on what you actually have. This year is the first time that three of Utah's young assets (Favors, Kanter, Burks) are getting consistent, extended playing time. For some reason, Utah has decided to start John Lucas III and the dried up husk of Jamaal Tinsley instead of finally letting Alec Burks (a lottery pick in his own right) show his stuff. Luckily for the Jazz, Lucas and Tinsley were so bad and the team as whole so hopeless that they appear to have finally given him the car keys. At least until Trey Burke is healthy. The three teams mentioned are going to have far more information to work with when it comes time to decide what to do with players like Avery Bradley, Jared Sullinger, Evan Turner, Plumlee, the Morris twins, etc. Further, the guys who show they can play can become trade chips.
Third, what's the downside? If the kids lose, that's more lottery balls. If they win, well then you have discovered you have some of the best assets in the NBA: productive guys on rookie (and therefore underpriced) contracts.
In any event, this praise is a long-winded way of introducing what I really wanted to discuss, which is Phoenix. The Suns have come out of the gate like a ball of fire (UCWIDT?) And while this is immensely enjoyable for neutral fans and particularly Suns partisans who were told to expect their team to abjectly suck, it's premature to start making playoff plans. On one hand, the Suns are benefiting from some unsustainable offensive performances (for example up until this past weekend, Eric Bledsoe was finishing at the rim at a LeBron James level clip. Bledsoe is a nice player, but...) On the other, their half court defense has been sketchy. Though they currently sit 5th in per possession defense (allowing .996 ppp), this seems likely to regress. I think they are running somewhat lucky in terms of opponents simply missing 3 pointers, and as I hope to illustrate below the fold, I think their poor pick and roll coverage will be their defensive undoing.
Good pick and roll coverage basically comes in two flavors (there are many more strategies than this, such as "downing" a side pick and roll by forcing the ball handler to refuse the screen, see the slideshow for an example, ironically enough from Phoenix)
The main coverages of pick and roll are the aggressive hard hedge style made famous Kevin Garnett :
Garnett has aggressively jumped outside of the screen in an attempt to force the ball handler towards midcourt.
And the contain and recover style, used a lot by the Pacers whether by Roy Hibbert or here by David West:
Here West is not giving Rose either a straight line to the basket or a corner to turn, instead showing him to the short corner. George Hill and he have communicated well enough to not allow Rose an easy pocket pass to Jo Noah on the roll.
For the most part, the Suns appear to be attempting the latter. However, they are kind of a mess. First of all, the man defending the screener often takes a bad angle, either giving the ball-handler a corner to turn by having his feet parallel to the baseline, or sliding too quickly towards the baseline, giving up the pocket pass or crossover into the paint.
Or sometimes both:
Oh dear Marcus Morris. Brooklyn (as is their normal style) did absolutely nothing special here. Andray Blatche threw the ball to Alan Anderson, sauntered over to set a simple pick. Perhaps Morris was expecting Green to force Anderson down, but this is too high on the floor as it would leave ample space to drop a pass to Blatche wide open at the free throw line. Not a good look for anyone.
And lest you think I'm cherry picking, there are examples upon examples of these (and other failings by both the ball defender and the help defenders) mistakes. In part two, I'll take a look at the losses to Portland and Brooklyn where inability to guard the pick and roll played a huge part in dropping two winnable contests.
Part 2
Part 2
RSS Feed
