In the last Warriors v Jazz game an interesting play happened at the end of the game that could be offer some foresight into the future evolution of NBA offenses. It’s wildly common in today’s NBA to run endless pick and roll variations to free up a ball handler or shooter. It’s an incredibly simple concept and very difficult to defend with regular man to man offenses. Defenses have adjusted to defending this action by switching off every screen. Not every team is doing this yet, and there is still some fan thought that automatic switching is lazy. It will continue becoming more common with the way that the NBA evolves. This change, if it keeps up, will keep up the trend of the NBA necessarily becoming more and more athletic. You will need your bigs to be able to switch out onto point guards and not get blown by. You will need your point guards to be able to box out a power forward reasonably well. It’s almost unbelievable to expect more athleticism to be required in this sport, but I anticipate it. Ok ok, time to exit the weeds. The point of this article was to point out how far behind NBA defenses are from offenses. It’s a recent development that isn’t universally applied for teams to switch every pick, but already offenses are adjusting to this action. In one of the most pivotal fourth quarter plays in this game, we see the offensive juggernaut (lol) Utah Jazz adjusting to the switch everything defense to great effect. Here is an example of the Warriors switching everything to good effect. Here is Utah adjusting to the switch everything defense. Super simple. Almost unrecognizable, but huge in its implications. Let’s step through the play. Hayward is bringing the ball up the court with the rest of his team flattening out just above the rim. Livingston is set to guard Hayward. When Hayward gets close enough to the 3 line Rodney Hood turns back to come up and set the screen on Livingston. Klay Thompson follows Hood. Livingston relaxes a bit, because once Hood sets the screen that’s coming he will simply have to stick to Hood and not worry about fighting over the screen and chasing Hayward. Immediately we see the wrinkle however. Before Hood gets all the way to the 3 line he turns and starts pushing against Thompson. Hayward drifts right to get behind Hood. Livingston sinks back a bit towards the elbow still anticipating needing to switch. Klay starts to realize that Hayward is going to shoot and tries to fight around Hood, but it’s too little too late. Hayward gets a wide open 3. This is probably making assumptions, but after the play Livingston kind of helplessly turns and looks at his bench like, “What am I supposed to do there?” It’s a pretty genius wrinkle to the pick and roll. If a defense is going to switch every screen the offense is going to look at ways to muck up the defense and force them to make decisions. Switching the pick and roll completely eliminates the need to make decisions by the defenders with the added benefit of requiring less physical effort and exertion. Adding in the wrinkle of screening the off ball defender however switches the dynamic.
You can completely negate the ball defender from the play by driving the opposite direction. Now, there is the possibility of switching not being a viable option. If the ball defender is going to stick with the play they will be forced to fight through the “incidental” screen that is the off ball defender and the screener, while making up a decent distance. If the on ball defender chooses to blitz the ball in this situation the screener can slip his screen to the middle of the floor. A good pass will find them around the free throw line with no immediate defender. This puts them in the triple threat position of drive, shoot or pass. I think you can expect to see this kind of action mixed in much more frequently against teams that switch every screen.
Comments
|
AuthorArchives
November 2017
Categories
All
|