At points of last night’s Orlando-Boston game the score was closer than the Suns-Lakers game the night before, but it just didn’t have that feel. Thursday night, you always had the feeling that despite the lead being as much as 18 at some points, that the Suns were just one spurt away from getting back in the game. In Boston last night, I never had that feeling, and Ray Allen was a large reason why. Up 13 early in the third quarter, Ray Allen knocked down back-to-back threes extending the lead to 19, and essentially ending the game for good. Even Stan Van Gundy talked about the importance of these threes (quote from The Baseline):
“I think after Ray’s two threes, I don’t think we quit at all, but I think what happens is your confidence and what really happens more than that is you don’t sustain your game,” Magic coach Stan Van Gundy said. “You start doing things, trying to get it back in a hurry … instead of sticking with your game and going possession by possession.”
Let’s look at the two threes that ended Orlando’s season.
Three Pointer #1
Now, Rashard Lewis is the one at fault here. He gets stuck covering Ray Allen as the Magic switch the first screen on the right side. The ball gets swung around and there is a pick and roll at the opposite side, with Ray Allen standing at the top of the key. It is initially well defended, but off the ball there is some problems:
Nobody is really talking about this play, mainly because on the next possessions the Suns came down and hit the game tying three, but I thought it was an interesting move that should be looked at. For just about the entire game, the Lakers were switching all screen and rolls, basically inviting Steve Nash to become aggressive on defense. Nash obliged by putting up 29 points on 20 shots. Towards the end of the game the Suns weren’t even running the screen and roll, they were just setting the screen up high to get the switch and let Nash work against a mismatch:
As you can see, the Lakers don’t initially switch the screen, so the Suns just run it again. The second time, Gasol ends up on Nash who knocks down a step back jumper.
The Suns were coming off of a huge possession where they got two offensive rebounds and then a banked in three to tie the game at 101. All they needed to do was get 1 more stop with 3.5 seconds left to send the game into overtime. The Suns actually played really good defense to force Kobe into a tough shot, but they weren’t able to secure the rebound afterwords:
As Lamar Odom gets the basketball, Derek Fisher curls under Pau Gasol to the near corner. As this is happening Ron Artest replaces Fisher and fills his spot. The purpose of all this movement is to clear out space at the top of the key, where I think the play was designed to be run to.
We have talked about Rajon Rondo’s rebounding here in the past, and I think he is one of the better rebounding guards in the game. However, there are times where Rondo crashes the offensive boards that I think teams could make him pay for hanging around the basket. Teams don’t really try to take advantage of Rondo hanging around for an offensive rebound, mainly because they know he is quick enough to get back on defense. However in game 5, something just looked off with Rondo. I don’t know if it is fatigue or a nagging injury, but Rondo doesn’t look as quick has he has been in the first 4 games, and now you are starting to see Jameer Nelson run on him a bit.
Look at where Rondo is as the shot goes up. Normally, most PGs at this spot on the court as the shot goes up sprints back to go on defense. Not Rondo. He floats towards the basket looking for a long rebound. Here is the result:
I have to admit, I was surprised when the Suns came out and played zone for the majority of Game 4. I was thinking that it was going to be a one game thing where the Suns used the zone to grab the momentum and get themselves back in the series. However, it didn’t work that way. Coming out of halftime, the Lakers made a really nice adjustment on offense to counter the Suns’ zone. It was up to the Suns to counter that in the fourth, and coach Alvin Gentry stepped up and did.
Third Quarter
In the third quarter, the Lakers would bring the ball up and enter it to the wing opposite of where Kobe Bryant is set up. The purpose of this was to get the Suns’ basic zone to shift towards the ball and away from Kobe Bryant.
A lot of people like to talk about Doc Rivers as a coach who “lucked into” the big three and his championship. They also like to call him a poor Xs and Os coach, and I totally disagree. Sure he has one of the best shooters in the history of the NBA, in Ray Allen, on his team. Other teams know about Ray Allen too though, and Doc Rivers is still able to come up with creative ways to get him the basketball with space to shoot late in important playoffs games.
That was the case here with Game 4 tied, however Paul Pierce tried to win the game himself. Instead, Pierce ended up losing the basketball, and eventually the game.
After bringing the ball upcourt, Rajon Rondo hands the ball off to Paul Pierce. As soon as Pierce secures the basketball, Rajon Rondo and Ray Allen switch spots on the court.
In the first quarter of Game 3, the Lakers torched the Suns defense once again. The Lakers scored 32 points in that quarter, and it ended up being the 9th straight quarter that the Lakers scored 25+ points. The Suns needed to do something extreme to get themselves back in the game, and they did exactly that by playing zone the rest of the game. In the second quarter, it was very effective. In the third, it seemed that the Lakers figured it out, but in the 4th it went back to being effective, and this is how the Suns ended up with the win.
Second Quarter
Point Total – 15
Why It Worked - It caught the Lakers off guard. The Suns sprinkled in some zone in Games 1 & 2, but they didn’t run it an extended period time like they did in the second quarter of Game 3. I don’t think that the Lakers were prepared for it, and they didn’t really know how to attack it (or where to attack it from).
The first thing that you notice in the above video (the Lakers’ second possession against the zone) is how unsure the Lakers are on offense. It is pass, catch, wait, then pass again. You attack a zone by quickly zipping the ball around the perimeter. This forces the defense to rotate with the basketball, thus opening passing lanes to the inside. When you pass it slowly, you allow the zone to shift and get set with each pass, and that is how the Suns are able to challenge Odom’s shot here.
There has been much talk about the Boston Celtics’ defense during the Eastern Conference Finals, and rightfully so. The Magic have been out of funk the entire series, but game 3 was special. How special? The Magic scored only 71 points on 91 possessions, while turning it over nearly 20% of those possessions (all numbers from Synergy Sports). In the following video, I take a look at a few keys to Boston’s defense:
Coming into the Western Conference Finals, Channing Frye was the X-factor. His ability to knock down outside jumpers was supposed to pull one of the Lakers’ big men outside, clearing the lane for the Suns’ pick and roll game. However, in the first two games Frye hasn’t been able to put a pebble into the ocean going a total of 1-13 including 1-9 from the outside. It has gotten so bad, he only logged 8 minutes in Game 2. So what happened to Frye’s shot?
Missing Early
Now, I don’t know if the hot hand theory exists or not, but I can tell you for sure that Channing Frye is a guy who needs to see a shot go in the basket. Channing Frye didn’t grow up a shooter (he had 392 3 point attempts this year, his second highest single year total is 33) and I don’t think he has that shooter’s mentality of “shoot until you make it,” where even though he is 0-10 he’s going to shoot the next one and know it is going in. In game 1, Frye missed his first three shots, and in game 2 he didn’t make a single shot, I think that really hurt is confidence and got him thinking about every single jumper he was taking.
The Lakers ran a ton of pick and rolls in game 2 with Pau Gasol as the screen man for most of them. This allowed the Lakers to take advantage of Amar’e Stoudemire’s poor pick and roll defense since he was the Sun usually responsible for defending Pau Gasol.
Defending The Ball Handler
Now Stoudemire wasn’t asked to defend the ball handler coming off the pick and roll too much, but when he was, he didn’t do a very good job of it.
In the above video, Jason Richardson gets caught in the Pau Gasol screen, forcing Stoudemire to defend Ron Artest. When you are defending the ball-handler on the pick and roll, the ultimate goal is to prevent him from getting where he wants to go with a hard hedge. Stoudemire doesn’t hedge hard at all, allowing Ron Artest to basically walk to the elbow and knock down an easy jumper.
