How The Lakers Free Up Kobe
With the game tied and 9 seconds left, everyone and their mother knows that Kobe Bean Bryant will be getting the basketball. So how was he able to get free for a pretty easy (for Kobe) jumper? Some great execution from the Lakers and some poor execution from the Raptors:
After Ron Artest inbounds it to Pau Gasol, he cuts backdoor while Kobe comes to the basketball. The Lakers have run a play like this in the past, except instead of a backdoor cut, it was a backscreen set. Phil Jackson chose not to go with the backscreen, and I think that is smart. It prevents the Raptors from switching the cut and denying Kobe outright. On the other side, Lamar Odom sets a back screen for Derek Fisher.
Pau looks over to the other side to keep the defense honest as Kobe makes his cut to the basketball.
Kobe makes the catch, and actually has the baseline drive if he wants it. Instead, he hangs onto the basketball and allows for Antoine Wright to get back into defensive position.
The double team now comes at Kobe. However, Bargnani has to run a long way to get to Kobe. This is because of the great floor spacing by the Lakers.
Before Bargnani can get to Kobe in time, he simply dribbles away from the double team towards the baseline and calmly hits a jumper for his 7th game winner of the season.
Now the Lakers did a good job of spacing the floor and executing the play Phil drew up, but it wouldn’t be right to ignore what the Raptors did wrong on this play to allow Kobe to hit the jumper. So, let’s take a look at this from the perspective of the Raptors.
The first error made by the Raptors is when Pau Gasol has the basketball. Remember that token fake that he offers up? Well, Bargnani bit on it and that freed up a passing lane for Gasol to get the ball to Kobe. Look at what is going on over on the left hand side. Nobody is even ready to make the catch, which makes Bargnani going for the ball fake even worse. Bargnani should have had the recognition to know where Kobe was on the court, and he should have been on Pau’s right side, not even letting him look over to the side where Kobe is. Make him dribble, make him shoot, or make him pass to the left. All of those options are better than letting him Pass to Kobe.
Alright, so after Kobe makes the catch, you know the Raptors want to send a double team. Like I said before, the Lakers spaced the floor out real well, so there weren’t too many chances to send another man at Kobe, but here was one. As Ron Artest retreats to the corner with his back to the basketball, Hedo Turkoglu had a chance to run at Kobe. If he comes at him from the baseline, he probably would have prevented the baseline jumper.
However, Turkoglu doesn’t come. Bargnani comes from the other side. Now, this isn’t the worst thing, but since Bargnani had a lot of ground to make up, Antoine Wright needs to do a good job of keeping Kobe there until the double comes. However, this doesn’t happen, and Kobe gets to the baseline. Let’s look at this from another angle.
You see where Wright is? He is giving up the sideline by doing this. Now, I am sure the Raptors talked about where the double was coming from in the timeout, and if Wright knew the double was coming from Bargnani over the top. If he knew that, he should cheated towards the sideline, letting Bargnani come for the trap. Instead, he insisted in being in Kobe’s shorts, which makes sense if he is playing him straight up, but that isn’t what was happening here.
It is a nice breakdown from the Lakers perspective, but I have to question some of your analysis on the Raptors side. There is no way that bringing Hedo over to double team is better than what they attempted. 3 things strike me as incorrect:
- Hedo had even farther to come for the double team than Bargnani did.
- With that much time on the clock, you give Artest enough time to realize what is happening and camp out under the basket to receive a pass for the lay up.
- Even if Ron still continues to the corner, the whole painted area is left wide open. Kobe could potentially split the double team with an open lane to the basket or one of the other Lakers being defended 3 on 4 could make a dive cut down the lane for a lay up
Rob, thanks for the comments. I totally see where you are coming from, and you are spot on in your comments. To me though, it all depends on what you want to give the Lakers. I honestly would rather have someone like Ron Artest or Lamar Odom have a wide open look then keep the ball in Kobe’s hands. That is just my opinion though. Also, if Hedo came over, that wouldn’t be the only player movement on the Raptors side. You would hope his double would trigger a set of rotations that cover up the Lakers’ openings in the paint. One final note, you also need to know Kobe’s mentality. Do you really think if he is doubled hard, he will pass. I personally think he wouldn’t, and that factors into the decision as well (when considering whether or not to leave players open to double Kobe).
Again, thanks a ton for your comments and input. Hope you enjoy the site!
Excellent breakdown. Only thing I want to point out is that even if Wright plays it as you suggest and forces Kobe towards the double, Kobe is going to split it and get a layup. Like you said, Bargnani had a lot of ground to cover and I don’t see him getting there in time to trap. This was all bad for the Raptors, and I think the biggest mistake was Hedo following Artest through and giving Kobe a clear side. Oops.
If Hedo comes out, should Bargnani rotate off Gasol to cover the paint? Even though Artest is open down there, that’s still going to require a great pass by Kobe to get it to him. Only open shot the Lakers have then is a Pau 22-footer or a drive-and-foul. Either has to be better than a Kobe baseline jumper.
Ok rob, Hedo did have even farther to come. However he would have been comming from the paint. Which means he would prevent the baseline jumper. Yes kobe could have split the double team as we have seen him pull off many times but this way it gives him less time to make decisions and potetially pass or shoot from farther out. The raptors just had to know the ball was going to kobe so from not playing a double team on him with a zone defence from the start was poor desision making.
Kobe
The Raptors biggest problem was letting him get the ball so easily in the first place, and right where he wanted it. All this talk about double teams should be focused on double teaming him before he gets the inbounds pass. The Lakers have shown that they are quite lost when the ball is inbounded to anyone other than Kobe at the end of games. Waiting until he has the ball allows for too many bad things to happen. He is great at creating a decent shot even if a double is attempted )like last night), and he has shown the willingness to pass IF a teammate is aggressive and gets themselves to the proper spots on the floor to finish (usually Gasol on pick and rolls or dive plays).
Rob they could have sent the whole Raptors team to guard Kobe, he still wouldnt have made have a made a difference. Kobe had a point to prove, which simply was not another loss and especially not another loss to RAPTORS! I think not!
I agree with Rob Bean. I think a double from Hedo potentially could be a slightly better option but also potentially disastrous and weighing the outcomes, the double from Bargs is the better option.
I think Wright played Kobe fairly well. He should have cheated a bit more to the baseline…but we’re talking a few inches here. Bargs was far enough away that prevents Wright from cheating too hard or else possibly giving Kobe a direct line to the basket…again, another disastrous result. Its usually better to force baseline than force middle…and definitely in this case without a shotblocker already in the paint.
Kobe has passed off at the last second, as in the Memphis game. They ran Marc Gasol at him and he passed off to Artest for the potential game winner. You can’t assume Kobe WILL NOT pass.
Which brings my last point. The biggest error is often even letting the star get the ball in the first place. This though is usually easier said than done. And more importantly, Kobe now has talented enough teammates that still must be accounted for on some level. Its not a coincidence that Kobe is hitting so many game winners this year. In the few years following Shaq’s departure…Kobe had one of the worst supporting casts ever. Running with starters like Smush Parker, Luke Walton, Devean George, Kwame Brown, etc. So there is a difference between knowing Kobe is going to get the ball and likely going to take the last shot….and KNOWING Kobe is going to get the ball and having to take the last shot. Kobe no longer has to take game winners with 2 or 3 guys running at him instead of 1 or 2.
So with that said, Wright didn’t make a huge error. Keep in mind that Kobe’s fadeaway from the baseline from 19 ft out was still a fairly difficult jumper to make.
(Great site by the way.)
The biggest issue here is that Jay Triano did not clearly communicate with Antoine Wright where his help should be coming from, and how strongly he should play to that help. We can sit here all day and argue who should have rotated where but if you look at Wright, he is playing like it is, as you said, “straight up”.
Kobe also does his part to fool Wright into giving him the baseline. If you watch actual footage of Bryant – he puts the ball over his head, swings it down and moves his right foot from an open “facing the basket” position to one where his right foot is now between his defenders legs. This effectively “hypnotizes” or lulls Wright into a false sense of security where he is no longer thinking “baseline jumper”. Wright steps closer to Bryant, but doesn’t completely seal off baseline, and he sinks his hips. Kobe then lowers his shoulder to give Wright a nudge in order to give himself the spacing he needs to remove his leg from between Wright’s. Because Wright’s stance is so wide and low, he isn’t prepared for the forward motion he needs in order to step in front of Bryant again – this is how you take advantage of a low-hip wide-stanced defensive position because you are much more capable of lateral movement than forward and backward movement. Once Wright recovers it’s already too late to cut off the baseline.
David Moore
Don’t confuse me for a Raptor fan. I am a big Laker and Kobe fan (they aren’t always the same with some people). I just didn’t think that the initial analysis was completely accurate in this article. That was a relatively “easy” game winner attempt by Kobe. Keep in mind that this is Toronto, not necessarily a defensive juggernaut. They gave up 81 points to him a couple of years ago. Defensive scheming doesn’t appear to be their strong suit.
Great analysis and comments.
I’m a Raps fan. The 1st two frames, I’m pretty much ok with. But as of frame 3, shouldn’t basically the whole team (other than Wright) be slouching off of their man more? Like, into the paint, maybe? I mean, am I crazy, or shouldn’t you be ok with Kobe trying to pass to either Pau or Odom at/near the 3-point line with 5 secs remaining and still being in a reasonable position to recover? I think maybe that way the double team might have gotten there in time to make a bit more of a difference.
But then, is Kobe really that clutch? I think he has been this year, for sure, but the stats suggest that from 2003 to 2/4/2009 (I don’t know if thats feb 4 or april 2?) he is definitely not.
Out of the 50 or so top producers of “Game winning shots”, Kobe has the worst fg%…. .250, to be fair, the league average is .298.
Check it out: http://www.82games.com/gamewinningshots.htm
Also of note, during that time Kobe has 51 shots and only 1 assist.
Maybe the raps wanted Kobe to shoot? Maybe they figured he was due for a miss…..
UPDATE
Apparently his 7 of 12 possible game winners this season has really helped his numbers!
http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/post/_/id/14218/new-numbers-on-kobe-bryant-in-crunch-time
I believe these are based on shots with less than 10 seconds remaining, whereas the 82games.com one was based on shots with less than 24 seconds remaining.
Skipwitz,
Kobe does have a pretty bad track record of game winners since 2003….which is what I was alluding to in my post. The shots Kobe had to take in the 2003 to 2007 seasons were incredibly difficult. People thought his play was extremely selfish, but both Phil Jackson and Tex Winter (one of the greatest basketball minds in history) both agreed that Kobe had to take on that role for the team to succeed. One only has to go back and look at the Laker roster from that period to see why Kobe had only 1 assist. He actually (and obviously) has more passes for game winners than 1 but the 1 assist is also a mark of the incompetency of Kobe’s teammates at the time.
Kobe’s game winners this season have been much much easier shots (not that crazy one over Wade obviously) than with those teams and a lot of it is due to better teammates. Believe me, if that were Smush Parker, Luke Walton, Kwame Brown out there instead, you’d see 6 guys surrounding Kobe!
A lot of stat-heads like to use Kobe’s 25% clutch shooting against him….but fail to understand the context behind the numbers (as is the case with most stat heads). Everything in basketball needs to be taken into context. If 25% was a true indicator of Kobe’s clutchness….then it should follow that you REALLY would rather have 50 other guys in the league take a game winner than Kobe….which is pretty ridiculous.
(Btw, I am a big fan of advanced metrics in basketball…..but its so important to also watch games and understand the context behind those metrics. After all, this isn’t baseball.)
Just saw this for the first time. Very insightful breakdown. As a Raptors fan, though, I have to undercut your analysis a bit based on the simple fact that the Raptors are atrocious defensively and, in all liklihood, just about anything the Lakers tried had a good chance of succeeding. I mean… gosh… out of the 5 Raptors on the floor, Jack and Wright are decent, Bosh is OK, and Hedo and Bargnani are disasters. The Raptors have no ability to win with defense. End of issue. (*sigh*)
Thanks! This is a great breakdown of the set the lakers run. They ran it against Memphis and Sac Town for the same result.
I really like this inbounds they run at the end. The beginning is identical to the one they ran against Memphis, it only replaces Pau’s pick with a Kobe iso. To Rob Bean’s argument about denying Kobe the ball, the Lakers run this play for a reason. They intentionally run the inbounds for Pau to avoid the aforementioned double on Bryant. They wait to give Kobe the ball until the ball is in play, which nulls the idea of doubling him because obviously Pau would dish to wide open Fisher/Odom/Artest. Regardless of the team, doubling an off-ball player doesn’t make sense.
This is the same SLOB ATO play that the Lakers used to defeat the Sacramento Kings and Memphis Grizzlies….Amazingly, the Grizzlies were so lost in their attempts to defend Kobe’s backscreen. They had Gay and Mayo involved in the play and Gay hesitated for a count in regards to his decision to either switch the screen or fight through.
It amazes me that in an NBA late game situation that Gay didn’t instinctively switch the “same size” backscreen with Mayo. Gay’s hesitation enabled Bryant to make an easy wing catch. Obviously, I’m sure that it was pounded into his head during the prior timeout…this mental lapse cost the Griz the game.
Let’s back this analysis up even further and ask the following 2 questions, pertaining to the way in which the Raptors chose to deploy their individual defenders against this well-known Lakers SLOB action:
1. re: Individual match-ups
Turkoglu [should have been Antoine Wright instead] vs Artest …
Bosh [should have been Amir Johnson, instead] vs Odom
Bargnani [should have been Chris Bosh, instead] vs Gasol
Jack vs Fisher
Wright [should have been Sonny Weems, instead] vs Bryant
2. re: How Turkoglu, Wright & Bargnani were initially used during this sequence
If Turkoglu was not going to be asked to pressure the inbounds passer while out of out of bounds then he should have been sitting on top of Bryant in the Right Low Post position, in full denial mode [i.e. facing Artest with his rear end pressing into Bryant's stomach.
With Turkoglu in this position, then, Wright should have been fully behind Bryant, in a sandwich position, preventing any lob pass going toward the basket.
With Turkoglu and Wright in these two positions, Bargnani should have been in a full better left-side half-front position, in order to deny the initial inbounds pass from Artest to Gasol. i.e. If Gasol would have tried to back-cut vs Bargnani for a lob/layup attempt from a quick pass directly into the key/moving towards the hoop, Wright ... who has decent quickness, athleticism and size ... would have been in a good position to disrupt this pass, while in a sandwich defensive position vs Bryant in the Right Low Post]
[* Please Note: If Chris Bosh would have been used to check Gasol, with Weems used to check Bryant, and Wright used to check Artest ... this would have put the Raptors in an even stronger defensive position to prevent the Lakers from being able to get the ball to Bryant using this specific set play, as Bosh is a superior athlete compared to Bargnani, Weems is a superior athlete compared to Wright, and Wright is a superior athlete compared to Turkoglu.]
With 9 secs left in regulation time and the score knotted at 107, the Raptors had the wrong combination of players on the court in the first place!
Great breakdown. As Khandor mentioned, the right players weren’t on the floor and the match ups weren’t what they should have been. Bargnani biting on the Gasol fake and the Raptors’ inability to do a better job of denying Kobe the ball in the first place left the Raptors in a difficult position. At the point that Kobe had the ball, Hedo running at Kobe should have been a better option than sending Bargnani to double. The way the Raptors were spaced leaves a pretty easy pass to Artest for a lay up. (quick aside: I think Kobe would make that pass if it’s available and regardless of how good Kobe is, I’d rather have him taking an off balance jumper than an uncontested lay up from Artest). However, the easy pass to Artest would not have been an option if Jack hadn’t been guarding his man so tightly.
Why was Jack glued to Fisher when there was no way that Kobe was going to make a risky cross court pass for a Fisher 3 instead of taking his own shot?!
If Jack had been sagging off Fisher, playing the passing lanes as he should have been, the Raptors could have sent Turkoglu instead of Bargnani. Not only would this have left the Raptors in a better position to rebound the ball in case of a miss, both Bargnani AND Bosh would have been available to help in case Kobe splits Wright and Turkoglu. Especially if Bargnani had sagged off Gasol after he made the pass, like he should have. (Which would have made the pass to Artest even harder)