Amar’e Stoudemire’s Poor Pick And Roll Defense
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.
