In the aftermath of the Hawks-Magic game three, a lot of the talk will be about Jamal Crawford’s crazy isolation banked three pointer to put game away. However, the possession before that gave the Hawks the lead is the play that should be talked about. It wasn’t an intricate play, just a simple pick and pop, but the spacing on the floor lead to a wide to a wide open shot for Al Horford, one he knocked down:
With Jamal Crawford bringing the basketball up, it looks like the Hawks are going to run a simple isolation set with Crawford on the left side of the court and the rest of the players on the right side.
Late in their game against the Chicago Bulls, the Indiana Pacers had two possessions to either take the lead or tie the game. On both plays, the Pacers were unable to get a good look off. There were a couple of factors why, but during both plays, the Pacers were unable to get a solid screen set. This both forced the Pacers to make incorrect decisions and allowed the Bulls defense to show how good they were:
This play with the score tied starts with Tyler Hansbrough setting a downscreen for Darren Collison. Collison uses the downscreen to flash towards the basketball. He gets it easily.
Once Collison gets the basketball, Roy Hibbert comes over and tries to set a ballscreen for Collison at the top of the key.
With 43 seconds left, the Philadelphia 76ers got a bucket to cut the Miami Heat’s lead down to four points. Here, the Philadelphia coaching staff had a decision to make, either foul, and send the Heat to the line or play it out and hope to get the stop. The Sixers played it out:
They were able to get the stop, but the Heat (especially Wade and James) did a great job winding the clock all of the way down, getting a mismatch by using a ballscreen, and getting the shot off at the last possible second (the ball was in the air as the shot clock buzzer went off) before attempting the shot. Basically, the Sixers went from being down 4 with 43 points to being down 4 with 17.4 seconds left. This was the Sixers’ next possession:
With 33.4 seconds left and the basketball, the Chicago Bulls found themselves in a situation where they needed a go-ahead bucket. In this situation, you can do one of two things, go quick to try and perserve the 2 for 1, or make sure you get the best possible shot. The Bulls went with the latter, and were able to get the go ahead basket due to some poor help defense on the weakside by Indiana:
After using up some clock, the basketball finally gets into the hands of Derrick Rose and he dribbles it out at the top of the key. As this happens, Carlos Boozers sets a downscreen for Joakim Noah, who comes off of the screen and sets a screen of his own. That screen is a ball screen for Derrick Rose.
Rose shows as if he is going to use the screen, but he stays up high as if to see how the Pacers were going to defend the screen (maybe trying to see if he is going to trait/bait the Pacers into the switch).
