Poor Defensive Strategy Leads To Blazers’ Game Winning Lob
After seeing the Spurs botch a final play of their own with 0.9 seconds left (the ball ended up being thrown out of bounds without being touched), the Portland Trailblazers had the basketball on the side with the game tied, looking to take the lead. While the Blazers were able to use a decent play to get the game winning tip, it is my opinion that the flawed defensive strategy of the Spurs and the execution of that strategy was more responsible for the basket than the actual play.
As the basketball goes to the trigger man, the Blazers have a lot of things going on. Wesley Matthews flashes to the basketball near the halfcourt line as LaMarcus Aldridge flashes to the corner behind the three point line. The main action however is Brandon Roy coming off of a screen set by Nicolas Batum.
The Spurs’ strategy was to play straight man while switching any screens. One of the results of this strategy is Tiago Splitter chasing Aldridge out to the three point line. This opens the lane for Nicolas Batum and his path to the rim. Before the screen can get set, Batum slips the screen and heads straight towards the rim on the weakside. Batum showing the screen forces the Spurs to initiate the switch, with Tony Parker picking up Batum and Manu Ginobili picking up Roy.
Parker is a tad bit late on the switch, and this creates a window for Andre Miller to make the pass into. Also notice that the lane is clear because Splitter is out standing in the corner with Aldridge.
Parker actually does a pretty good job of recovering on the play, but the height difference is too great and Batum is able to get the basketball, tip it in the direction of the basket, and win the game for the Blazers. Here is the play in real time:
Before we start talking about this play and comparing it to some others, it is important to note that this situation had 0.9 seconds left compared to the 0.5, 0.4, or 0.3 seconds in the situations we have looked at in the past. This is important because in this situation (with 0.9 seconds left), the catch and shoot is more of a threat than if there was 0.5 seconds or less left.
With that being said, I am not too sure with coach Gregg Popovich’s strategy here. It was reported on Twitter that during the post game, Popovich blamed a late switch for the play (courtesy of @mtokito from the Oregonian):
Popovich on #Blazers‘ winning lob: “We were switching it, and we did a poor job of switching. They did a great job of executing. “
However, that final screenshot tells us that Tony Parker did in fact get an effective switch. The real problem was that there was nobody protecting the paint, and the Blazers were able to take advantage of the height advantage to get the lob. In my opinion, the Spurs should have kept Splitter in the paint, ready to help on any backdoor cut that would occur. Yes, this leaves Aldridge open in the corner, but a rushed three in the corner (yes, 0.9 seconds is enough time to catch and shoot, but it is still going to be a rushed shot) is probably a lower percentage shot than a lob. Plus, we have seen teams get stops when using the zone to protect the rim time after time. There is something to it.
I am normally not a fan of backdoor lobs without screens being set because they tend to only work when the defense is playing straight man to man (which is exactly what happens here), but if you are going to run a lob like this, running it off a slipped screen is the right way to do it (the Knicks showed us the wrong way). You do have to give the Blazers credit for catching the Spurs off guard with their play, but I think if defended properly, we would have seen overtime in Portland.
