With the game tied at 80 (and before the Suns threw their small ball lineup out there), the Suns were inbounding the ball out of the corner, on the sideline. This is a pretty tough place to get a play run from, but the Suns get a pretty good look by giving Jared Dudley some options:
After making the inbound pass, Dudley looks as if he is going to come off of an Amar’e screen and make a cut to the middle of the paint. Richard Jefferson sees this and he decides to go over the top of the screen to try and beat him to the middle. Now is this the right move? I don’t know, to me it seems like he didn’t want to fight through the screen.
Alvin Gentry is a coach that insists on getting his key guys (Amar’e and Nash) rest during the start of the fourth quarter, so bench play has been a very important aspect of this series so far, especially in game 2 last night. With 9:30 left in the game and with Steve Nash already sitting out, Gentry took out Amar’e and replaced him with Channing Frye. The Suns lineup was as follows:
Goran Dragic
Leandro Barbosa
Jared Dudley
Grant Hill
Channing Frye
The Spurs countered with a small lineup of their own, but this 5 shooter lineup from the Suns presents a ton of problems for the Spurs on the defensive end, most notably, who is Tim Duncan going to cover?
Besides the issue of who Tim Duncan is going to cover, this small lineup places the Spurs defenders in positions they aren’t used to:
Here, the Suns run a pick and roll with the PF Grant Hill setting a screen for Goran Dragic. Manu Ginobili was the guy covering Hill, so he is the hedge man. Manu probably isn’t the off-ball defender on the screen and roll a ton, and his experience shows here. He hedges way too hard, and once Dragic makes the pass to Hill the Spurs are forced to rotate as the Suns work the ball around until they eventually get a bucket. That all comes from Ginobili’s poor hedge.
