Against the Rockets (and some former Knicks), the Knicks ran out to a pretty big lead, but the Rockets were able to climb back in it. Part of it was because the Rockets are a pretty good team, but the Knicks helped out big time. The Knicks made a couple of mental errors that lead to easy baskets for the Rockets:
Poor Outlet Passing
On two separate occasions, the Knicks turned the ball over in the backcourt. The first comes after a Rockets three pointer:
Now, both J.R. Giddens and Chris Duhon are at fault here:
This is because Trevor Ariza is hanging around and it should have been noticed by either guy (or at least 1). This is something that a lot of teams do to get the ball out of the PGs hands, but it rarely turns into a steal. However, Giddens grabs the ball out of the net and just tosses to where Duhon is without looking. For his part, Duhon floats away from the basketball as it comes to him instead of meeting the ball and ensuring the catch. The Rockets went from being down 14 to being down 9 after this. This was a huge 5 point swing in this game as the Knicks went from pulling away to trying to hang on to the lead.
In addition to Talkhoops and Cowbell Kingdom (The TrueHoop Network’s Kings blog), Zach Harper is now writing every Thursday over at RaptorsRepublic (The TrueHoop Network’s Raptors blog). Yesterday, Zach did a great job of breaking down the Raptors’ comeback against the Hawks. Here is a tiny sample:
The recipe of a comeback has to have a couple of essential parts in no particular order. You usually need:
- A little bit of luck
- Multiple defensive stops
- Some offensive execution
- A fortunate occurrence
- Some late-game heroics
Go back in the history of every comeback in the NBA and you’ll see this same recipe. Actually, don’t go back and check on that. It doesn’t always happen. But it does happen often and it certainly happened for the Raptors on Wednesday night. Let’s check out what happened.
The first part of the comeback happened with about 1:15 left in the game with the Hawks up 105-101. Here’s how the recipe played out from here:
There is a lot of great stuff here, so yeah, definitely check it out.
What makes the Magic so dangerous late in games is that they have so many options. You have Vince Carter, Dwight Howard, and Rashard Lewis for starters. Late in overtime against the Heat, all three played a pretty important role in taking a 3 point lead and making it 6.
The Magic run Vince Carter off of a screen set by Dwight Howard. Dwight is going to roll straight to the rim after setting the screen.
As Dwight starts his roll, Carter returns to the side he was on before he set the screen. Michael Beasley ends up sinking in the middle, to help defend Dwight Howard on the roll.
As Vince Carter rises up to pass, Michael Beasley is actually bodied up with Howard, and Jermaine O’Neal is stuck in no man’s land at the top of the key. That means that there is no defender near Rashard Lewis.
As Rashard Lewis rises up to shoot the three, you are left to wonder who made the mistake here. Was Michael Beasley’s help designed, or did he do it on his own? I tend to believe that he did it on his own because if this was schemed there would be at least some rotation to Lewis, but there is none.
As I said at the start of the post, this is what makes the Magic so dangerous. You have a very, very, very good big man in Dwight Howard that teams need to pay attention to. Then you have 4 guys who can knock down an outside shot, and that forces the defense to make a decision. Who are they going to leave to double Dwight. Here, they picked Rashard Lewis and ended up paying for it.
After Russell Westbrook hit a jumper with 3:22 left in the fourth quarter, he was able to cut the Bobcats lead to 4 points. Larry Brown took a timeout, and the possession following it was a pretty important one. If the Bobcats score, they can extend the lead to 6 with about 3 minutes left. If the Bobcats don’t score, the Thunder can cut the lead to 2 or 1 points, and who knows what will happen then. As it turns out, the Bobcats run a beautiful set out of the timeout and push their lead to 6, and the Thunder don’t come closer than that the rest of the ballgame:
Boris Diaw comes to the top of the key and receives the inbounds pass. The beauty of using Diaw (who himself is a pretty good passer for his size) is that you are pulling a front court defender away from the basket, clearing the lane for the potential lob. After Stephen Jackson makes the pass, he cuts through the middle of the lane, using a Tyrus Thomas screen. Over on the far side, Raymond Felton comes up off of a screen set by Stephen Graham. Nothing really important going on over there, as you can tell by the two players jogging through the motions.
With the Lakers in Sacramento last night to play the Kings, Tyreke Evans put up 25 points, 9 assists, and 11 rebounds. Despite the near triple-double, I think the Lakers did a very good job defending Evans (most of the time). The Lakers used Ron Artest (and Kobe a little) on Tyreke Evans, and he seemed to struggle a bit with them covering him. Here is the breakdown:
With Ron Artest (and Kobe) Covering Evans – 17 points (on 5-12 shooting – 6 of 9 from the FT line), 6 assists, and 8 rebounds in 38:14.
With others (Jordan Farmar and Shannon Brown) Covering Evans – 8 points (on 2-3 shooting – 4 of 5 from the FT line), 3 assists, and 3 rebounds in 4:08.
The numbers show the difference (17 points on 12 shots vs. 8 points on 3), but I think what really shows the difference is looking at the highlights.
With Ron Artest On Him
With Ron Artest covering Evans, you had a big body that wasn’t going to let Evans bully him into the paint. The result was a lot of dribbling on the outside:
Once Evans crosses half court, he takes 7 dribbles without going inside the three point line and then passes it to Spencer Hawes. Now Hawes hits the three, but I think the Lakers would rather have Hawes shooting threes than Evans getting inside and creating havoc. In fact, this was how the Lakers played Evans all night as they were determined to let the other players beat him:
I get on coach Mike Brown a lot, but against the Pistons last night Brown showed that he does know what he is doing when it comes to the offensive end. After the Pistons tied it at 91 with about 5 minutes left, the Cavs put on an offensive clinic.
Possession 1 – Off Ball Screen To Free Up Mo Williams
The thing that impresses me the most with Cleveland’s offense is the fact that they do so much stuff off the ball (it is the theme of all of these sets). It makes sense when you think about it, you know that the entire defense is going to be paying attention to LeBron. This means defenders aren’t really paying attention to their man (as much as you would like), which means if you come with a backscreen off the ball it will really surprise the defense.
Mo Williams brings up the ball as LeBron James positions himself at the left elbow. This is a spot on the court where once LeBron James makes the catch he can attack either side.
In my opinion, the head coaching position is a little undervalued by casual NBA fans. I think the reason for this is because whenever you turn on the game you see guys like Kobe, Dwyane Wade, and LeBron James going 1 on 1, and some people assume (incorrectly) that the players are doing whatever they want out there.
Last night’s Nuggets-Rockets game showed you how important a quality head coach is. The Nuggets were without George Karl (who was receiving cancer treatment), and without him they made a ton of uncharacteristic mistakes you don’t see the Nuggets make. These mistakes ended up costing the Nuggets the game.
Mistake 1: Letting Trevor Ariza Get His Shot Off
Here, the Nuggets are up by 5 points with a little over 1 minute to go. If the Nuggets are able to get a stop here, they would pretty much have the win locked up (after a lot of foul shots). When Trevor Ariza makes his catch, you just get a feeling he wants to shoot a three (Ariza shoots 5.9 threes a game). Carmelo Anthony recognizes it, and he crowds Ariza.
When the Bucks entered the fourth quarter against the Pacers, it looked like it was going to be an easy 12 minutes. The Bucks were leading by 14 at the start of the fourth, and have only allowed 62 points to the Pacers. However, the Pacers decided to make things interesting in the fourth quarter. In fact, with 2:19 left a Solomon Jones dunk made the score 90-94, cutting the lead to 4 points. The Bucks were reeling and they needed a bucket to try and put the game away. This is the quick hitting play that they ran:
The Pacers tried to speed the pace up with a full court press. It almost works, as the Bucks’ inbounder throws a pass to Carlos Delfino who is standing at halfcourt. Delfino could have sped the ball up but knowing the situation (and how important this possession is), Delfino stops at halfcourt and waits for Jennings who meets the basketball.
About halfway through the fourth quarter the Blazers were trailing the by 9 points, 93 to 102. The Blazers then went off, going on a 17-3 run to close the game and come away with a 5 point win. The craziest thing is that the Blazers did this with Brandon Roy scoring 3 points in the 4th quarter (granted he did score 38 in the first 3). Let’s take a closer look at this run:
Possession 1 – Blazers Steal
After Portland made a couple free throws to cut the lead to 6 points, they dropped back into a zone defense. It isn’t a straight up zone though, as it appears to be more of a match-up zone. If you watch Blazers’ players as the Warriors make cuts, you can see the Blazers “handing off” players, making sure everyone knows where they need to be. You can tell the Warriors look a little confused, and because of that they aren’t in sync. The pass to the middle is late, allowing for the defense to get their hand on the ball and get the steal. 3-0.
Even before the Kings’ game against the Raptors started, it was a big night for Tyreke Evans. Wednesday night, the Sacramento Kings held a ceremony for Tyreke Evans in order to show their support for his Rookie of the Year candidacy. There were t-shirts given out, video presentations and a special introduction for Tyreke Evans. Evans responded to all of the love by posting his very first triple-double of his career. Let’s take a look at each aspect of the triple-double closer.
The Assists
In my opinion, assists are the toughest stat to compile when a player is going for a triple-double. This is because it is all dependent on your teammates. You can throw some great passes, but if your teammates don’t finish they don’t count. However, if you teammates are stroking it, you can have your assist count rise really quickly, and that’s what happened last night. Out of Evans’ 10 assists, only 4 of them were inside 10 feet, and the three that were at the rim were in transition:
