The EuroLeague qualifiers, a sixteen team single elimination tournament determining the final two EuroLeague regular season participants, started up yesterday with 4 of the first 8 games taking place. During the course of these games, we are going to take a look at some of the action.
When I did my scouting report on Jonas Valanciunas earlier this offseason, I pointed out that one of his man weaknesses was post defense. As Valanciunas represented Lithuania over the course of the summer, both on the U19 and the Men’s level, we have seen this lack of strength hurt him here and there. However, yesterday while playing for his domestic club, Lietuvos Rytas, his poor post defense, especially the ease of which opponents can back him down, was very apparent.
Anytime his opponent got the ball on the block, Valanciunas was backed down very easily, leading me to tweet about his lack of strength. A Lithuanian basketball follower responded with this:
@SebastianPruiti Lithuanian NTs coaches say that Valančiūnas has enough strength but he doesn’t know to use it properly.
Watching tape, especially from yesterday, this lack of technique is pretty apparent. Take this possession for example:
The EuroLeague qualifiers, a sixteen team single elimination tournament determining the final two EuroLeague regular season participants, started up yesterday with 4 of the first 8 games taking place. During the course of these games, we are going to take a look at some of the action.
With 2.0 seconds left in the third quarter of their game against Cholet, Cibona had the basketball on the baseline coming out of a timeout. Looking to get a basket to extend their one point lead, Cibona came out and ran a nice set that was designed to take advantage of Cholet’s switching defense:
The set starts with two Cibona players standing on the strong side elbow in position to set a double screen. On the weakside, you have a guard on the block and a wing player on the elbow. As the ball goes to the trigger man, both players on the weakside head over to the strong side. The man at the elbow heads deep behind the three point line as if he is providing a safety valve and the man on the block is the player designed to use the double screen.
For the past two offseasons, we have been looking at players coming to the NBA after playing at least as season overseas. With the lockout, we are going to have plenty of time on our hands. With that being said, I plan on doing scouting reports for each of the 30 first round picks from this past draft.
With the 13th pick, the Phoenix Suns drafted forward and twin, Markieff Morris. For the past couple of seasons, it seemed that the Suns have employed the worst brother of a NBA tandem, but with the selection of Markieff Morris, the Suns might have finally got the better brother on their team.
Strengths
Post Play
This past season with the Kansas Jayhawks, Markieff Morris really showed that he knows how to play with his back to the basket. 34.1% of his touches on offense were post touches, and he was able to uses those possessions very efficiently. Out of the 157 post possessions that Morris had this past season, he scored 152 points, posting a PPP of 0.968, which put him in the top 16% among all college players while shooting 50.9%. Counting foul shots, Morris scored on 51% of his post possessions. One of the things that makes Morris so effective in the post is that he knows how to use his body to work for position allowing him to get exactly where he wants before he makes the catch on the block:
What I like about Morris and his post game is that he is a smart player. In the above clip, Morris wants the basketball right on the block, however his defender fronts him. Instead of trying to get in front and making more work for himself, he simply puts his arm into his defender’s back and pins him, providing a passing lane for his teammate at the top of the key. Once he makes the catch, he recognizes that he needs to go up quickly to avoid the help coming on the weakside.
UPDATE:As pointed out to me on Twitter, EuroLeague is doing away with their two-legged format this season, opting for single elimination games for the qualifying rounds.
As I mentioned yesterday, EuroCup qualifiers started yesterday and it gave us our first look at a game taking place within the two-legged series format. With the more important, and some would argue more completive, EuroLeague qualifiers starting tomorrow, I thought it would be interesting to look at the main quirk of a tw0-legged series, end of game situations.
In their game against Lukoil Academic, BK Prostejov found themselves trailing by six points with 33.96 seconds left after getting a basket in transition and then calling timeout. Now, in normal situations, Lukoil would be trying to run down the clock as much as possible and Prostejov would try and prevent that from happening by fouling. That didn’t happen here:
Instead, Lukoil ran a set looking for a quick hitting three as Prostejov dug in and played tough defense. This is because point differential carries over to the second leg (a six point loss means that you need to win the next game by 7 or more to advance), so you have Lukoil trying to expand their lead and give themselves more of a cushion as Prostejov is trying to cut into the lead, unwilling to foul and give up points in a situation where the win doesn’t matter, the points do. In fact, Lukoil is the team that ends up fouling, taking one to prevent a fast break basket. After another timeout, Prostejov had the basketball with the ball on the side:
Depending on who you talk to, we will either get a full season, half season, or no season at all due to the NBA lockout. This has got people bummed because it means that there will be no high-level basketball, but that’s not the case. While, everyone would love to have a full NBA season going on (this site is called NBAPlaybook), there is some great basketball that is about to kickoff this week and early October. Both international leagues, EuroLeague and EuroCup, are having their qualifiers start up this week, while top domestic leagues are kicking off as well. Here is a quick look at the upcoming schedules for the two international competitions, which have games starting as early as today:
EuroLeague Qualifiers
The Champions League of basketball, EuroLeague Qualifiers has 16 teams fighting for just two spots. Here is the bracket:
As you can see, 8 teams are fighting for spot A while 8 more teams are fighting for spot B. What is interesting about these qualifiers is that they are played as two-legged series, meaning teams play twice with the winner being determined by point differential. Even if you lose that first game, you want to keep things close to make sure you have a chance in the second leg. Also, these qualifiers are no longer home and home match-ups. Instead, there is a host country for each bracket. Bracket A is taking place in Lithuania, while Bracket B is taking place in Belgium. Here are the schedules, first for Bracket A:
Last year, I started something called NBA Mythbusters, I’m bringing it back this offseason.
Background
In a tournament that featured plenty of surprises, Macedonia’s fourth place finish might have been the biggest surprise of them all. Their performance, which took them all the way to the semifinals where they gave Spain a scare and saw them qualify for next year’s tournament determining the final Olympic spots, was powered by a 6 foot point guard from New Orleans, Bo McCalebb. McCalebb’s performance was so good that people are beginning to wonder if McCalebb is a NBA talent.
Evidence
Note: Numbers used throughout this post will be referencing numbers during EuroLeague play unless noted otherwise.
McCalebb, who played at the University of New Orleans 2003-04 to 2007-08, went undrafted before moving on to Europe, playing at Mersin BB in Turkey, Partizan Belgrade in Serbia, and Montepaschi Siena in Italy (he lead the last two teams to EuroLeague Final Fours during the past two seasons). Looking back at his draft profiles, both from NBAdraft.net and the fantastic DraftExpress, there seemed to be two real weaknesses in McCalebb’s game that lead him to getting undrafted. First, as an undersized scorer, teams would have wanted McCalebb to move to the point guard position. However, McCalebb seemed to lack the point guard skills required of a NBA-caliber point guard. Second, McCalebb struggled shooting from the outside.
With this in mind, we are now going to look at McCalebb’s transformation during his three years in Europe and whether or not McCalebb has improved these aspects in his game:
Point Guard Decision Making
One of the ways I like to evaluate point guards and their feel for decision making is by watching them play in the pick and roll. This is because there are so many decisions a point guard has to make in the pick and roll. Will he attack the rim, take the jumper, or pass it? If he passes it, will he be hitting the roll man, a cutter, or someone spotting up on the wing? Can he put the pass on the money? There are a lot of factors at play, and with more NBA teams building their offense around pick and rolls, it’s an important skill for a point guard. In the 2009-10 season with Partizan Belgrade, McCalebb was still struggling with this, turning the ball over on 13.3% of his pick and roll possessions while his teammates were scoring just 1.0 PPP on his passes.
You can see that McCalebb’s first option is still scoring when he comes off of the ballscreen. While he is a very dangerous scorer when attacking the rim, too often he was putting himself in positions where he would be forced into a turnover, almost confirming what NBA scouts/teams thought about McCalebb when he was in college.
For the past two offseasons, we have been looking at players coming to the NBA after playing at least as season overseas. With the lockout, we are going to have plenty of time on our hands. With that being said, I plan on doing scouting reports for each of the 30 first round picks from this past draft.
In the past two seasons, Alec Burks really exploded onto the scene as a wing who can put up numbers and get to the rim. His final season at Colorado was enough to convince the Utah Jazz, who don’t really have a penetrating wing on their roster, to use their second lottery pick on him.
Strengths
Creating His Own Offense
Most likely Alec Burks best skill is his ability to create his own offense, using his dribble to beat his man, get in the lane, and finish at the rim. In isolation situations, Burks has posted a PPP of 0.897, which places him among the top 23% of all college players last season. Burks is very quick and he is a very good ball handler, and that allows him to beat defenders:
When in isolation situations, Burks quickness is on display when he changes direction. Usually, Burks drives to the rim consist of at least one change of direction cross-over dribble, putting the defender on his heels and allowing him to get to the rim. Once he does get to the rim, Burks has a soft touch that allows him to convert a high percentage of shots. On shot attempts “around the rim” as labeled by Synergy, Burks posts a PPP of 1.242 (which puts him in the top 25% among all college players) on shooting percentage of 59.7%.
If there is one thing that really impressed me about France’s defense throughout EuroBasket it was their defensive rotations. When France was playing defense, it looked like five guys on a string, rotating, helping teammates, recovering, and getting steals and forcing misses. But then came the EuroBasket Finals on Sunday. Spain ate France alive, scoring 98 points in 76 possessions with a good chunk of them coming off of broken rotations from France and their defense. So how did a team that rotated so well get burned so badly in the finals? Well, Spain is unlike every other team in the tournament because they can put 5 offensive threats on the court at the same time, and that really bothered France, and even when they did rotate correctly, they got burned:
Those two shots that the Spanish bigs knocked down there are the shots that France were willing to give up the whole tournament as they rotated the man covering that big to the middle of the floor to take away the pick and roll pass. It didn’t really hurt them because many teams didn’t really have two bigs who could be an offensive threat, and they were leaving open the less offensively skilled one of the two. Against Spain, a team that has three bigs who can knock down that shot, the individual talent of all five guys on the court was far too great for these rotations to work. So what happened? France stopped rotating and started playing selfish defense, staying with their man despite needing to rotate:
With EuroBasket’s semifinals taking place this afternoon, I thought it would make sense to preview the games by looking at one key question from each game.
Can Bo McCalebb Have A Big Game?
If Macedonia have any chance of continuing their dream run and turning it into an Olympic bid (which is guaranteed to both finalists) Bo McCalebb is going to have to have a big game. In recent games, McCalebb, who is 7th among all EuroBasket players in points per 28 minutes averaging 17.8, plays the team game for most of it and then when it comes to crunch time, he steps up, attacks the rim, and tries to be the guy to get Macedonia the win. That has worked so far, but it won’t work when playing against Spain. Spain has the 4th best defense in terms of points allowed per 70 possessions, and they have an ability to extend and put pressure on an offense, taking them out of what they are trying to run.
The one whole in Spain’s defense? Providing help when there is dribble penetration out of isolation situations. Out of the 65 isolation possessions that Spain has seen during the tournament (isolation isn’t something seen a lot during this tournament), they have given up 58 points on 43.1% (25-58) shooting. Their PPP of 0.892 puts them 20th among the 24 EuroBasket teams. Spain’s biggest problem when handling dribble penetration is that their bigs (the Gasols and Serge Ibaka) really struggle when they have to leave their men and provide help:
With the Gasols, it seems that both Pau and Marc regonize when they need to help, but they simply don’t have the speed, athleticism, or sometimes even the desire to leave their men and provide help on time, usually leading to finishes over them when they are arriving a little too late. With Serge Ibaka, who is an athletic monster, it is something completely different. Often times, Ibaka gets caught focusing on his man a little too much and by the time he realizes that he needs to help, even he can’t get there.
Before Lithuania and Macedonia tipped off, I looked at Macedonia and noted how if they continued to play the pick and roll like they did over the course of their previous EuroBasket games they were going to be in for a long night. This is because Lithuania lives and dies with their pick and roll, running it at an insane rate, and using it to create space for their below average ball handlers. When they had success, they win games. When they failed at the pick and roll, they lost games. The way Macedonia played the pick and roll in the past, it seemed like a perfect match for Lithuania. It seemed like Macedonia was so concerned with the roll man getting the basketball, the big defending the pick and roll would either stay with the roll man or hedge very softly. This gives the ball handler space, exactly what Lithuania wanted:
Not only did that space allow ball handlers to pull up for open jumpers, but it also defeated their original purpose, which was to keep the roll man from getting the basketball. This is why their PNR defense, especially when it came to defending the ball handler coming off of screens, was so ineffective in previous games.
So what happened during the game? As expected, Lithuania ran their pick and roll over and over, 35 out of 70 halfcourt possessions, a whopping 50% of the time. Lithuania scored just 30 points on those 35 possessions, committing 7 turnovers in the process. This is because there was a massive change when it came to Macedonia and their defensive strategy, deciding to hedge hard and trap the ball handler instead of playing passive. To put things in perspective out of the 162 pick and rolls that Macedonia defended before, they trapped/hedged hard just 29 times, or 17.9% of the time. Against Lithuania, they trapped/hedged hard on 25 of 35 pick and roll possessions, or 71.4% of the time. That is a gigantic shift in strategy. The result? Turnovers and contested shots due to the defense taking away space (even shots that are made are taken over defenders instead of being wide open):
One big factor in Pacer demise against a 3-man Heat team? Tyler Hansbrough. Three terrible first half shots & two huge second half travels 14 hours ago
James and Battier came over to remind Wade that Battier wide open from the corner is a better option than Anthony finish at the rim. 14 hours ago
