Yesterday, host country Lithuania played their best game of the tournament taking it to Serbia and coming away with the 10 point win.  Coming into the game, you could tell that Lithuania had one thing on their mind, to attack Serbia, and Nenad Krstic in particular, with the pick and roll on the offensive end.  38 of Lithuania’s 77 halfcourt possessions were pick and rolls, a whopping 49% of possessions (they have run it 25.9% of the time over the course of the tournament), scoring 51 points on those possessions (good for a PPP of 1.342).  While Lithuania’s pick and roll play is good, it isn’t that good, and their success was due in large part to Serbia’s poor pick and roll defense.  In addition to exposing Krstic and his inability to show and get back to his man, Serbia’s weakside help was horrendous.  The result?  On the 9 possessions where Lithuania hit the roll man, they scored 16 points on 8-9 shooting:

Whenever a Lithuanian ball handler would use a ball screen (almost always set by the big that Nenad Krstic was defending) and Serbia would respond by having Krstic hedge as the man defending the ball handler as the big rolls straight to the rim.

With Krstic out hedging, that leaves the weakside wide open.  With one defender chasing a Lithuanian shooter out behind the three point line, this forces the man defending a Lithuanian in the corner to sink into the paint and help on the roll man.

With the fact that the help isn’t coming from the weakside corner, it forces Krstic to hedge and get back very quickly.  At his age and with his footspeed, Krstic simply is unable to do that, and the result was a wide open dunk.  Here is the play in real time:

Lithuania was shooting lights out all game, so one of the reasons why help didn’t come because it seemed that these defender in the corners were very hesitant.  However, if you are going to have Nenad Krstic hedge out on the ball handler, you need to sink in and help every single time.  The result was a whole lot of easy finishes at the rim:

Serbia’s help in the corner always came after the pass was made.  They were reacting to Lithuania instead of reading the situation, anticipating, and getting there before the play happened, forcing Lithuania to react to the defense.

Poor rotations didn’t just free up the roll man, but when they were late arriving to him, it freed up other cuts around the rim:

On this play, the screener rolls to the rim, he gets the basketball, Serbia’s help comes late, and as a result the big is able to survey the situation and hit the open cutter as Krstic is late getting back into the action.

Krstic’s poor hedging also gave Lithuania’s ball handlers plenty of space to create.  Krstic wasn’t quick enough to keep the guard from penetrating, allowing him to attack the basket, force the defense to collapse on the ball handler, and freeing up cutters and shooters.  In addition, if Krstic would slouch off and hedge soft, in an effort to prevent dribble penetration to get by him, the Lithuanian ball handler would simply rise up and hit a jumper coming off the screen :

There was just too much space for the ball handler and the roll man, allowing them to create and finding lanes to score.  While Krstic is the main problem here, the man defending the ball handler (almost always Milos Teodosic) deserves some blame as well.  With no defender coming over top of the screen aggressively, it was creating even more space for the ball handler and making it even harder on Krstic, forcing him to keep his hedge longer, which opens up the roll man.