Spain Fails To Execute On Both Ends
Before the FIBA Worlds started, everyone was predicting that Spain would be the team to threaten Team USA and give them a run for their money once the tournament reached the round of 16. After a puzzling loss to France and a win, the Spanish team actually had themselves set up nicely, and if all went according to plan they would be facing Team USA in the Championship game. However, Lithuania threw everyone a curveball by beating Spain 76-73. While Lithuania did a terrific job coming back from double digits in the second half, and taking the lead late, a lot of this loss can be put on Spain’s errors on both ends of the court.
Defensively
Defensively Spain did a pretty good job of matching stops with Lithuania for most of the final two minutes. However, Lithuania was able to tie the game and score the eventual game winning basket (the one that gave them the lead for good) on two pretty bad defensive lapses:
Gasol’s Bad Pick And Roll Defense
Here, Lithuania runs a pick and roll with Marc Gasol’s man as the screener. Gasol is in good position on the show, but he bites on a pump fake and closes out too hard on the shooter. This leaves the roll man wide open for a pass and forces help from Ricky Rubio to come. The roll man does a fantastic job of quickly kicking the ball out for a wide open three point shot.
Now, onto the go-ahead basket:
On this possession, Lithuania tries to run a pick and roll with Linas Kleiza as the roll man. However, the play gets blown up and the ball ends up in Kleiza’s hands a good five feet behind the three point line. The man who kicked out the ball to Kleiza cuts behind him to give Lithuania some court balance.
Ricky Rubio’s man cuts to the basketball, and Rubio follows. This is what eventually sets up Kleiza’s drive.
Rubio’s man cuts back towards the wing, and again Rubio follows, staying attached to him even though he is about 30 feet away from the basket. Kleiza sees the lane and takes advantage. While Rubio makes the initial mistake, Marc Gasol’s error plays a huge roll here too. Right now he is in good help position, but that changes.
As Kleiza turns the corner and hits the gap, Marc Gasol is still in pretty good help position. However he needs to come and challenge Kleiza and cut off his attack to the rim.
Gasol doesn’t do that, rather he stands still and simply raises his hands. That method doesn’t work and Kleiza is able to knock down the shot. Now obviously, Gasol is worried about fouling out here (he did have four fouls), but in a time game with :40 seconds left, you can’t worry about that. Here is the play in real time:
Spain’s Late Game Defensive Breakdown
Offensively
On the offensive end, Spain’s play was even worse. Their last basket from the field took place with 3:01 remaining in the game, and they only scored two more points (from FTs) from that point on. Here is the play where they scored.
Marc Gasol’s Dive To The Basket
Here, Spain runs a pick and roll, but Gasol isn’t open on the initial roll to the basket. It gets kicked to the wing where Rubio hits a still cutting Gasol. The reason I show you this is because this is the last time Spain runs anything like this. They got away from their off the ball movement and PNRs, and it hurt them offensively.
Here, the ball gets swung to Juan Carlos Navarro, and without waiting for a screen or a cut, he simply drives to the basket. Spain’s lack of movement means that there are plenty of Lithuanian help defenders in position to challenge the shot. Navarro gets up a challenged lay-up and ends up missing it.
In this set, Spain are running a play to get Marc Gasol the ball on the post. I haven’t watched a ton of Spain’s games, but I never really see them do this (usually they get Gasol the ball on the move with a cut or a PNR). Gasol ends up not even really getting a touch here due to a poor pass, but this play (and the one they run a little later on) shows the extreme change of philosophy for Spain’s offense.
We have seen Ricky Rubio and Rudy Fernandez hook up for some really nice backdoor alley-oops, but again late Spain seemed to really change their philosophy. Here, they run a play to get Rudy the ball on the wing and let him attack. Again, the problem is no movement outside of Rudy’s cut to the wing, and the help defense is able to force the turnover.
With 6 seconds left, Spain had one final chance to tie the game with a three pointer. However, they weren’t even able to get a shot off. Two big mistakes I saw Spain make. First, they had the man making the catch running away from the basket and towards the ball. This means that he had to make the catch, stop, turn, and then start sprinting again. That takes up a valuable second. The second mistake is that they try to make a pass. In my opinion if you are bringing the ball up with 5 seconds or less on the clock (there were 6 here, close enough) then you can’t try to make a pass. Not enough time, and with all eyes on the ballhandler passes get deflected (which is what happens here). You need to dribble up to the three point and take a shot. It might not be a good look, but it probably will be the best one you get. On the turnover, Spain was trying to get the ball to Rubio. If they really wanted him taking that last shot, then they should have gotten it to him on the inbounds.
