On the 2nd and 3rd possessions, the on ball defenders were really just in the wrong place at the wrong time. As soon as they favored one side of the ball handler, Chandler came up and screened their other side, and they were unable to get around since it was such a tight screen. Also, on the 2nd, McGee was completely flat-footed, which is just unacceptable when you’re the only thing between the ball handler and the basket.

I don’t see any real problem with the 6th possession. It was a very high pick and roll, so the off ball defender set up to defend at the 3 pt line, which makes plenty of sense. He wasn’t flat-footed, and was able to run with Felton. Felton was just barely ahead of him and made the awkward lay up. The big man in the middle of the paint (can’t recognize him) should’ve stepped back to get in Felton’s way since his man went all the way out the 3 pt line and was essentially out of the play.

Gotta love the Bobcats utilizing the simple pick and roll though.

Chandler continues to work well in p&r’s as he does a good job of changing the angle of his picks…this is extremely hard to defend for not only the defender guarding the ball, but also the defensive big. There are about 6 ways to defend the pick & roll and in this case w the defender guarding the ball tries to fight over the pick with the big “following” back into the paint. Here the defender guarding the basketball needs to do a better job of fighting over the pick…time and time again in these clips the on ball defender gets hammered by the screen. The on ball defender can’t reach reach and “feel” for the pick because that count of hesitation will enable the ballhandler to beat him away from the pick. If the on ball defender were to apply more ball pressure he can in fact negate the pick…regardless, the on ball defender must get his lead foot over the pick..Obviously, the strategy Washington used was specific to the skill set of Felton/Chandler. You are not going to see Chandler pick & pop so the defensive big doesn’t need to worry about showing hard on the pick and then scrambling to close out onto a big who can knock down an 18 foot jumper.

I see this action a ton with Devin Harris/Tony Parker/Derrick Rose/Wade, etc…..the on ball defender hangs his teammate out to dry as the defensive big is stuck trying to defend those athletes coming at him with a full head of steam. If the screener switches the angle of the pick more times than not the defensive big will have committed too far to the side of the pick and the ball handler will have a clear lane to the rim. It truly is difficult to defend the pick & roll which ends up being 85% of any NBA game…teams that run move the ball side to side and run continuous pick & roll will be successful and it’s not bad to have a few shooters on the floor that can spread the floor. The problem is that p&r requires so much communciation and players covering for one another which done time and time again on a possession is difficult to accompllish.

I feel that NBA players are so skilled offensively that it’s not a matter of making a great defensive scheme, but rather the constant adjustments and changes on the fly to hopefully keep the offense guessing and not always knowing what the opponent will do regarding pick and roll. I really like the hard show and recover to the roll man, but you really need your help defenders to cover in the paint for a count or two until the defensive big recovers to the roll man or employ a different defensive rotation which would call for the defensive big to rotate out to the skip pass which would be a very long run and most likely lead to an open shot or poor close out by the defensive big, but at the end of the day teams need to try to take something away from their opponent and they are willing to give certain things up.