This offseason, we are bringing back our NBA How To series that we ran last year.  Looking at how things get done on the basketball court, we are going to start this year’s series of posts looking at offensive rebounding.

Offensive rebounding might be one of the most important actions that take place on the basketball court.  When a team gets an offensive rebound, they give themselves extra opportunities to score the basketball.  There are a few different ways to grab offensive rebounds, and we are going to look at them here, using some of the best offensive rebounders (in terms of offensive rebound rate) as an example:

Working For Position:

Kevin Love finished 7th in the NBA, posting an Offensive Rebound Rate of 13.6.  While not being the most athletic player or the highest jumper, Love is able to grab offensive rebounds by using body position.  Kevin Love is always working for position as the ball goes up in the air, and at times, he is even working for position before the shot goes up:

NBA players looking to secure the defensive rebound rarely box out anymore, and this allows a player like Love to establish rebounding position every single time the shot goes up and the basketball is in the air.  As defenders turn and stare at the rim waiting for the basketball to come off, Love is slipping in front of them.  Another thing that Love does is that he fills lanes well.  As one of his teammates attacks the rim, Love makes himself available for the pass, but if it doesn’t come he doesn’t give up, he simply uses the position that he got in to follow up the shot and secure the offensive rebound.

Read more…

Last year, the Toronto Raptors were the worst defensive team in the NBA, allowing 109.8 points per 100 possessions (5.4 points per 100 possessions above the league average).  With that in mind, there is little surprise that the Raptors seem to be focusing on that side of the basketball this offseason.  First and foremost, they hired Mavericks’ assistant Dwane Casey as their head coach.  Casey was the architect of the Mavericks’ championship defense and the man who was responsible for the team’s turnaround on that end.

The second thing that the Raptors did during the offseason that showed an emphasis on the defensive end was drafting Jonas Valanciunas.  While Valanciunas is staying overseas for one more season, the Raptors’ front office and new coaching staff have big expectations for him on the defensive end.  While doing my player comparisons for Basketball Prospectus, Kevin Pelton’s player similarity scores showed us that Valanciunas compared most closely to Tyson Chandler.  Funny enough, the man who just coached Chandler and will be coaching Valanciunas in the future saw the same things, as Holly MacKenzie tweeted:

Quote from Casey on Valanciunas: I just came from having Tyson Chandler and Tyson Chandler at this age was not as good as this young man.

After this season (once he comes over), Jonas Valanciunas will most likely be the Raptors’ starting center.  His starting power forward?  Most likely Andrea Bargnani.  Despite the reputation Bargnani has for being soft and a terrible defensive player, I think the combination of Valanciunas and Bargnani can work on the defensive end.  While Raptor fans are probably rolling their eyes at me, because both Valanciunas and Bargnani have strengths and weaknesses right now defensively.  Luckily for them, their strengths compliment each other well, and they should be able to hide each other’s weaknesses.

Despite the reputation, Andrea Bargnani is actually a good post defender.  In the 205 times he was posted up last season, Bargnani held his opponent to just 182 points (0.888 PPP) on just 46.8% shooting.  The key is length.  Bargnani has length, and when defending on the basketball, especially in the post, he knows how to use it well:

Read more…

Last year, we took a look at players coming to the NBA after playing at least as season overseas. This year we are going to be doing the same thing, and with Bismack Biyombo being drafted in the first round and a manageable buyout, he is definitely going to be in the NBA next season, which is why we are taking a look at him.

Past Editions: Ricky Rubio | Jan Vesely

Bismack Biyombo took the world by storm by posting a triple double in the annual Hoop Summit game featuring the best prospects in the world.  Despite playing just 13 games in the ACB (the Spanish Pro league and maybe the second best league in teh world), Biyombo found himself as the #7 pick to the Charlotte Bobcats.

Strengths

Pick And Roll Offense

Everything that you have read or heard about Biyombo tells us that he is extremely raw on the offensive end.  While that is true, there is one area where Biyombo is slightly better than average, and that is in the pick and roll game.  As the roll man on pick and rolls, Biyombo shot 64.7% and posted a PPP of 1.091 (top 50% of all international players) while drawing a foul 31.8% of the time.

The way that Biyombo sets screens is straight out of the Amar’e Stoudemire/David Lee/Daivd West mold of not really setting a screen, but showing it and then quickly rolling to the rim.  My guess is that Biyombo or his coaching staff had him doing this for a couple reasons.  First, it lets him avoid setting moving screens, and second, it allows him to get to an area where he can catch and go right up with it easily:

Read more…

Last year, we took a look at players coming to the NBA after playing at least as season overseas.  When an international guy gets drafted, I usually wait on his buyout news before assuming a player is coming, but when someone as smart as Jonathan Givony (the man behind Draft Express – he called a guy from Qatar being drafted) tells you that it’s “100 %” he’s coming over, then you take that as fact.  That’s why we are looking at Jan Vesely the day after the draft.

Past Editions: Ricky Rubio

Vesley comes to the Washington Wizards with a reputation as a high flyer, calling Blake Griffin “the American Jan Vesely” but outside the big dunk highlights, nobody really knows much about him.  In this scouting report, we are going to look at a few strengths and weaknesses outside the big dunks.

Strengths

Post Offense

Vesely is a player who offensively is very comfortable posting up with his back to the basket.  In the 92 post up possessions that Vesely had over the course of the season, he posted a PPP of 1.022 (good for a top 14% finish among international basketball players) on 65.4% shooting.

One of the biggest reasons for his success in the post is his ability to establish very good position down low:

Jan Vesely does a fantastic job of using his body and his butt as a tool that lets him be physical with his defender and get his body on the block.  Position is so important when posting up, if you start too far away, you aren’t going to be efficient as a post player.  When Vesely gets the ball so deep in the post, it makes all of his moves so much easier.

Read more…

Maybe one of the most interesting aspects of this draft is the number of lead guards who not only dominated their teams’ possessions in college, but also took a large number of their teams’ shots.  For whatever reason, all of these players are going to be forced to go from bringing the basketball up and looking for their own shot in college to being more of a “pure” point guard in the fact that they will be running an offense and looking to set up their teammates.

With that being said, I thought it would be interesting to look at eight of these shot dominant lead guards and see which one has the potential to become the best “pure” point guard out of the bunch.  Here are the nine guards we will be looking at today:

To be included on this list, you had to be in DraftExpress’ mock draft, be the primary ball handler of your team, average under 6 pace adjusted assists per 40 minutes, use more than 20% of your team’s possessions, while taking more than 20% of your team’s shots.  As you can see, outside of Jimmer Fredette and Kemba Walker, these are all guys who are probably going to be drafted in the second round.  If they want to make a roster, they are going to have to prove that they can play more of a traditional point guard role than they did in college.

To see who can become the best “pure” point guard, we are going to look at 2 different factors, hitting shooters and pick and roll playmaking.  We are going to look at tape of each player and give them a score out of 10 for each category:

Read more…

One of my favorite Xs and Os bloggers is Brett Koremenos over at HoopSpeak, so I was genuinely excited when he extended an offer to participate in a mock draft with him for HoopSpeak.com (you should be reading this site every single day).  Over there, Brett and I pretended to be a GM 15 times each, not trying to predict the draft, but choosing guys who we thought were the best fit for the team.  I think we did a pretty solid job:

1- Cleveland Cavaliers: Kyrie Irving. Irving played just 12 games in college due to a foot injury that kept him out for most of the regular season, but if you are the Cavs, you can’t really pass him up. Out of all of the players in the draft, I think he has one of the most pro ready games.  He’s very comfortable running the pick-and-roll and while he isn’t the most athletic guy, he can hang in the air and finish around the rim nicely against taller defenders. While there are things that he needs to work on (his kick out passes tend to miss his teammate’s shooting pockets), I think they are easily correctable if he puts the work in. All in all, I’m pretty certain I just chose Cleveland’s point guard of the future. – SP

Cavaliers Selection: Irving

2- Minnesota Timberwolves: On behalf of KAAAAAAAHN and the Timberwolves, I will select Jimmer Fred…kidding! I’ll take the logical choice in Derrick Williams. Williams and Irving are the two best players in this draft. Even though Minnesota’s roster is a jumbled mess of pieces that don’t fit any other player here is probably a reach. While I’m not as high on Williams as most, I think David West-ish numbers are a reasonable projection for his future and that type of production is not worth passing up to take a flier on someone else. – BK

Timberwolves Selection: Williams

Those were the two obvious ones, head on over to HoopSpeak and check out the rest!

Ettore Messina was one of the best head coaches in European Club Basketball history, winning the EuroLeague title four times with two different teams.  Messina has been rumored to take a number of different head coaching jobs over the years, and for whatever reason he just didn’t seem to be interested, until now.  Messina has finally joined the NBA, agreeing to join the Lakers’ staff and as Ric Bucher reported, even though he will be listed as an assistant coach, his role will be to act as more of a consultant than an assistant coach.

With Mike Brown being a defensive head coach, it is my opinion that Messina will be a consultant on the offensive end more than the defensive end, so I thought it would be interesting to look at Messina’s offense with Real Madrid (the team that he coached for the past two seasons), and see if there is anything interesting that he could bring over to the Lakers.

BallInEurope, a great European basketball blog did a great interview with Land O’ Lakers, and in it, he talked about Messina’s offense:

In addition to his preference in the half-court, Laker fans will certainly be cheered by Messina’s specialty of working with the post. Nobody in Europe, where frontcourts tend to be notably smaller but the bigs typically have the complete skill set in shooting, really employs anything like a triangle offense. But if Mike Brown was serious when he implied that some stuff with the triangle would remain in the playbook, you can bet that some of those Gasol-Bynum double post plays will have been tweaked/modified/perfected with Messina’s input.

The numbers certainly back that statement up.  According to Synergy Sports Technology, Real Madrid’s possessions ended with a post up 12.5% of the time, their second most (first was spot-up jumpers) used play type.  Messina ran a few interesting sets that look to get the post that could work with Bynum, Gasol, or any other big that joins the Lakers (specifically if Kevin Love gets traded).  Like everything else we have looked at the Lakers possibly running, it continues the theme of being simple, yet effective.  Here are 2 post up sets that they can bring over.

Cross Screen To Post

One of Ettore Messina’s favorite ways to get the ball to the block was by running a cross screen for him with a guard being the screener and then coming off of a down screen/pindown screen on the weakside of the basketball, turning it into a double low post set (something that Mike Brown knows about).

Read more…

Last year, we took a look at players coming to the NBA after playing at least as season overseas.  With Ricky Rubio’s announcement that he is joining the Minnesota Timberwolves and coming to the NBA this upcoming season, I thought it was a perfect time to start up the overseas scouting report again.

Ricky Rubio is the much talked about 20 year old, drafted by the Minnesota Timberwolves two seasons ago when he was 18 years old.  Despite his stock being very high when he was drafted, a combination of a buyout and his lack of excitement about the Timberwolves resulted in Rubio staying in Spain (but switching teams) for the past two seasons.  During that time, Rubio’s stock has taken a pretty big hit, mainly because of his “play” with Regal Barcelona.

Before we get started with the scouting report, I do want to discuss the drop in Rubio’s assists and everybody’s reaction to it.  With Rubio being more of a true point guard than a scoring point guard, everyone seems to be pointing at the drop in assists/40 minutes from his final season with DKV Joventut to this past season with Regal Barcelona and it causes Rubio’s critics to say, “Obviously, this is a sign Rubio is getting worse.  He peaked at 18!”  However, if you look at how Rubio is used, instead of looking at just the numbers, you notice there were other reasons for his his drop in assists:

Note:  This numbers are coming from Rubio’s ACB play over the past three seasons.  2008-2009 with DKV Joventut and 2009-2011 with Regal Barcelona

Read more…

After a furious run by Bennet Cantù with two free throws cutting Montepaschi Siena’s lead to four points with just 0:50 seconds left, Siena had the ball looking to get a basket to put Bennet away for good.  After 15 seconds or so of scrambling, Siena went to a quick set that I have become very fond of recently, allowing them to get a wide open three point shot, clinching the game for good:

After beating the press and getting the ball to Bo Lester McCalebb, their point guard, Montepaschi Siena’s two bigs set up around the three point line to set a staggered ball screen for McCalebb, who uses them.

Read more…

Leading 2-1 in the best of seven Lega Basket Serie A finals, Montepaschi Siena found themselves up 10 points with about 5:30 left in the fourth quarter.  After a delay, Siena was taking the ball from the baseline, and they were able to work a nice baseline set that resulted in an open jumper for the man inbounding the basketball that allowed them to extend their lead over Bennet Cantù.

We pick up the play after Marco Carraretto inbounds the basketball near half court.  Once that happens, Rimantas Kaukėnas gets a staggered screen set for him, allowing him to get to the top of the key and make himself available for the pass.

Read more…