Nick Sciria's breakdown of Portland vs. Utah (detailed)

[Saint Cy of JFC]

Also seems hard and near impossible to stop him without trapping.

I still like the idea of making him finish at the rim against Gobert. He did a great job of it, but I like it better than open 3's for him or other players.

 

[NAOS]

At very least we needed to adjust coverages so they didn't know exactly what was coming. Going under would have been a solid option with how they were playing.

I was hoping that we'd have 3 or 4 different looks that we'd throw at them. Seems like an obvious decision. Oh well.

PnR defensive strategies tap into my football-brain. You need to have different looks. And within every look, you need to be pushing the envelope physically, just to see what the refs will permit. Screeners are doing this kind of ****... defenders need to, too.

 

[franklin]

There were 2 other options Quin could have gone two.

1) Trap the pick and roll. The Clippers had a great deal of success doing this until their entire team got injured last year.When the pick is set that high, trap the ball handler and his only option to pass is the big man. It would have given Portland a 4 on 3, but this is a 4 on 3 with their big (Ed Davis) with the ball in a non threatening area of the floor. Mason Plumlee is very good in the short roll, but they weren't playing him. Ed Davis has no ball handling/playmaking skills. This is the option I would have gone with.

2) Reduce the ball pressure. The reason why Portland is setting the screen so high is so that they can ensure an effective screen on George Hill. The Jazz play Ice coverage on pick and rolls, but it doesn't work when the picks are set 40 feet from the basket. If a pick is being set that high, they should have scrapped the coverage and had George Hill back up to the three point line. Giving Dame free roam anywhere on the court is dangerous, but I'd much rather give him space 40 ft from the basket than giving him space at the three point line with a full head of steam. This requires a lot of communication to work, but Quin should have at least tried it. At the very least, it would have thrown them off a bit. Stotts did this to us by finding a creative way to switch and stalled our offense.

I was hoping that we'd have 3 or 4 different looks that we'd throw at them. Seems like an obvious decision. Oh well.

PnR defensive strategies tap into my football-brain. You need to have different looks. And within every look, you need to be pushing the envelope physically, just to see what the refs will permit. Screeners are doing this kind of ****... defenders need to, too.

At very least we needed to adjust coverages so they didn't know exactly what was coming. Going under would have been a solid option with how they were playing.

Has JF come full Fire^99 circle? I remember when Corbin needed to be fired when he used different options defending the pnr.

 

[FalseFlagg K]

George Hill's defense was bothersome, at times, but far from incredible. Lillard scored 39 points on 65% from the field.

agreed

 

[fgcamel]

Not sure if this is really very meaningful, but I've just been playing around with the advanced metrics from the game and it really does just show that they were on fire from 3.

5-7 on tight coverage (defender within 2-4 ft)
4-5 when open (4-6 ft)
and 4-7 when wide open (6+ ft)

So that leaves you with trying to run them off the three point line, which seems destined to break down when you have guys like Diaw and Withey out there.

They also went 4-8 in shots with under 4 seconds on the shot clock, which drives me nuts.

 

[FalseFlagg K]

high % of threes, plus i really don't think Lillard finishing over Rudy at that rate is going to happen again. We played well, they just hit a truckload of shots & you have to take your hat off to them and move on.

 

[MDAV28]

Lillard is one of the best guards at splitting a double team or an attempted hedge, trap. I liked forcing him to the rim or into a mid range. Rudy was put in an impossible situation but if he keeps making contested shots over Rudy, then he makes them. It won't happen everytime, he was feeling it.

 

[MDAV28]

Not sure if this is really very meaningful, but I've just been playing around with the advanced metrics from the game and it really does just show that they were on fire from 3.

5-7 on tight coverage (defender within 2-4 ft)
4-5 when open (4-6 ft)
and 4-7 when wide open (6+ ft)

So that leaves you with trying to run them off the three point line, which seems destined to break down when you have guys like Diaw and Withey out there.

They also went 4-8 in shots with under 4 seconds on the shot clock, which drives me nuts.

I'm just happy we held them to so few really. They usually get a lot more up than 20

 

[♪alt13]

I unfortunately can't embed tweets in this stupid form, so just click on this link instead

https://twitter.com/Nick_Sciria/status/791344840634228736


take home points for me:

- George Hill's defence was incredible
- offence didn't look great out there w/o Hayward or Favors-- <40% of our buckets were uncontested while >60% of Portland buckets were uncontested
- Gobert made some questionable moves in the P&R against Lillard. Game tape will help-- and other than Curry I'm not sure there's a tougher cover in the P&R
- their bench was better than our 3rd-stringers

Lots of video included with his tweets. Also, it turns out that the live-ball air-snatch by Hill was done when we were down 13 in the 2nd quarter. Huge moment in the game

[tweet]791344840634228736[/tweet]
[tweet]791393733312905216[/tweet]
[tweet]791399083516846080[/tweet]

 

[framer]

I was hoping that we'd have 3 or 4 different looks that we'd throw at them. Seems like an obvious decision. Oh well.

PnR defensive strategies tap into my football-brain. You need to have different looks. And within every look, you need to be pushing the envelope physically, just to see what the refs will permit. Screeners are doing this kind of ****... defenders need to, too.

Lillard gets calls if you try to rough him up. He gets calls when you don't touch him either.

 

[NAOS]

Lillard gets calls if you try to rough him up. He gets calls when you don't touch him either.

there are two opponents involved in the PnR

 

[Park Bites]

honestly a healthy fav in this game and the Jazz would have won. A secondary weakside help defender like Favors would have changed the out come. It would have given Diaw time with the scrubs where he can excel.