Despite the loss, Andrew Bynum really impressed me last night. On one play in particular, he showed why he can be a really good player in the post as he continues to develop.
Andrew Bynum makes the catch here and quickly gets the ball on the rim, all while keeping the basketball up the entire time. In the past, I talked about how important it is for smaller guys to go quick and keep the ball up, so you can just imagine how productive it is for a seven footer like Andrew Bynum. The fact that Bynum can do this naturally while he is still developing a post game is a good sign for his post game a year or two down the line.
Kevin Arnovitz already did a fantastic job breaking down how Ray Allen got so wide open on most of his threes last night, but I wanted to take a closer look at the Ray Allen vs. Derek Fisher match up.
I briefly mentioned this before the series started, but Derek Fisher’s off the ball defense doesn’t work when covering a shooter who can run off screens, like Ray Allen. Like I said before, Fisher does a lot of stuff when getting screened that works in pick and roll situations. He punishes the screener, he hooks his body around them, and he gets very animated sometimes drawing the foul. All that stuff works, because he has a defender hedging on the ball handler. However, off the ball, that stuff doesn’t work, because there is rarely someone hedging out.
On this play here, Ray Allen has two options. He can come off of a Big Baby screen, or he can fake going off that screen, go baseline, and come off a screen set on the baseline. He chooses the latter option.
