So how has Glen Davis been able to finish at the rim this series?

No Wasted Motions

When you are smaller than the defenders who are playing against you, you can’t wait for them.  What I mean by that is if you have a step on them (or have them out of position), you can’t wait for them to recover, you need to attack.  No extra dribbles or meaningless pumpfakes:

Lamar Odom (Glen Davis’ defender) needs to hedge out on the screen, and that frees up Davis for the roll.  Paul Pierce hits him and Davis makes the catch and goes straight up with it before the help defense can make it over.  If Davis takes a dribble or makes a pump fake there, he loses his advantage and the defense would be able to alter the shot.  However, by going quickly, Davis catches the defense off guard and is able to finish with the And 1.

Using His Body

Glen Davis doesn’t have your prototypical scoring power forward body, but his body is part of the reason why he is able to finish at the hoop so effectively (especially against bigger players).  First, let’s go back to the Jazz-Lakers to see how it isn’t done:

Carlos Boozer is bigger, stronger, and more athletic than Glen Davis but because he lead with the basketball all series he was struggling to score around the rim, getting blocked a ton.  This is wrong, and Glen Davis did the exact opposite:

As Davis makes the catch on this dive to the post, Pau Gasol has his hands on him, trying to push him away from the basket.  At this point, Pau has the advantage on this play, he is in between Glen Davis and the basket plus he is bigger.

Glen Davis surveys the situation and decides that he needs a dribble this time.  As Big Baby puts the ball on the floor, he loads up ready to throw his body into Pau Gasol.  Gasol seems to feel that the contact is coming, and he braces himself.

Davis makes the contact, and now at this point he has the advantage in this situation.  Pau Gasol is off balance, and he is now almost under the basket.

Look what we have here now.  Glen Davis, the nonathletic and smaller player rises over Pau Gasol to finish at the rim.  Gasol was off balance and knocked on his heels, and this is what keeps Gasol from even jumping off the floor.  Here is the play in real time:

Another example is the first play we looked at where Glen Davis didn’t dribble:

After rising up without a dribble, Glen Davis just throws his body into two different Laker defenders.

The one who is bothered the most by the contact is Andrew Bynum.  He went from keeping his hands straight up in a position that could alter the shot to not even looking at the basket with his hands down, allowing for Davis to finish at the rim.

Dwight Howard has one of the quickest big man spin moves I have ever seen.  However, when he comes out of that spin move notice that he hesitates and allows the defense to get back to him, negating the effect the spin move has.  He was still able to convert on this play because of his size advantage over Rasheed Wallace.  This was the only time that Dwight did it in game 2.  Let’s go back to game 1 and look at some of his moves against Kendrick Perkins (A game where he really struggled).

Here is another spin move by Dwight Howard. He gets himself some pretty good position, but he hesitates slightly and that allows Kendrick Perkins to reposition himself and alter the shot.

Instead of spinning here, Dwight Howard does a half turn and wants to take a hook over his right shoulder. A good quick move gets him an easy look, however Dwight pump fakes twice and that allows Perkins to get in there an alter the shot once again.

It wasn’t just on post moves either. Here Howard grabs the offensive board and instead of keeping it up and going right up with it, he brings it down and that is why the shot gets blocked.

Now, let’s look at some of his moves from Game 2:

That’s a pretty big difference huh?  I am not one of those guys who believes that Dwight Howard doesn’t have a post game.  He has really solid footwork and great speed/athleticism that makes up for the fact he doesn’t really get the best position at times.  His moves have been effective in this series, it is just that in game 1 he didn’t explode out of his moves.  The coaching staff must have caught this and relayed it to him because he was really coming out of his moves quick in game 2.

A big thing to look for in game 3 is on Dwight’s first post up.  Does he come out of his spin/hook move quick and get a clean look or does he hesitate and miss.  If he goes quick, look for him to have a good game, if not, he may struggle like in game 1.

Why They Got Blocked

Bringing The Ball Down

Big guys in the paint are taught not to bring the ball down when they make the catch the day they start playing basketball, that is how important it is.  Usually though, you don’t want to bring it down because you don’t want the smaller players to be able to get their hands on the basketball.  Another reason (which is why it is important in this context) is it allows for shot-blockers to gather and get in position to block the shot.

As the pass gets made to Boozer, look at how high he makes the catch.  If he just takes it straight from there, he would be able to get the ball at the rim before any of the bigs can alter the shot.

However, right after making the catch, Boozer brings the ball down all the way to his waist to gather himself.  This gives Andrew Bynum the time to recover and get in position to make the block.

Which he does as Boozer tries to bring the ball back up through Bynum and to the rim.  Here it is in real time, notice how when Boozer brings it down it kind of slows his momentum as well.

No Pump Fakes

It is hard to pump fake guys that are taller than you, because they usually don’t have to jump to block your shot.  However, if you perform a pump fake in the right situation, you can get someone taller than you to bite on the fake.

Here, Fesenko makes a pretty nice spin move, but gets blocked because Andrew Bynum is right there to swat it away.  This is a perfect opportunity for an up and under move.  If Fesenko throws a pump fake after the spin move, Bynum simply flies by him, and he would have had an easy lay-in.

Leading With Ball Not Body

This is the worst thing that you can do when attacking someone who is bigger than you.  If you lead with the ball, it means that you are shying away from the contact.  If you are just putting the ball out there while shying away from the contact, your shot will get blocked more often than not, especially if you are going up against a player taller than you.

Here, Carlos Boozer spins away from 1 seven-footer, but he is then met by another one.  Instead of taking another dribble and going right into Odom’s body, he tries to lay it in from one step in the paint.

This angle gives you a pretty good idea of what I am talking about.  There is no way anything is going to happen (a foul or a made shot) besides a block, because Boozer is basically serving it on a trade for Lamar Odom.

How They Can Score

Going Quick

Here, Boozer makes the catch and quickly goes.  He doesn’t allow for Andrew Bynum to get his body in position to effect the shot.

Pump Fakes

Like I said earlier, pump fakes aren’t going to work too much against bigger guys because they tend to not leave there feet, but Paul Millsap shows us a way it can be effective here.  Millsap gets into the lane, stops his dribble, then throws  a pump fake.  This pump fake allows him to get into an even better position so he can finish in the lane.

Drawing Contact

With the rest of these examples, I have been able to show screenshots or videos displaying it, but for this one I can’t because the Jazz aren’t doing it.  As I mentioned before they seem to be shying away from the contact instead of leading with their body, jumping into the chest of the Lakers’ bigs, and then finishing strong.  You go into a player’s body, you negate his ability to jump.  If the Lakers’ bigs can’t jump, they won’t block as many shots, and who knows, if you lead with the body you could draw a couple of fouls on them.

As the ball gets handed to Stephen Jackson, Boris Diaw quickly turns and puts his defender on his back to receive the basketball.  This is the second time in two days we have seen this, and I think we are going to be seeing this more often, especially if you are confident with how your PF handles the basketball.  Why risk a 5 second violation running a play when you can quickly get it to your PF and run a play from there (its a given that you are talking about a situation where there is time on the clock.  If there is 1 or 2 seconds left, teams won’t be doing this).

As Diaw makes his catch, Raymond Felton comes across the lane and gets a screen from Gerald Wallace.  His defender (Marcus Thornton) actually goes the wrong way around the screen and Felton is wide open.  Instead of being baited into taking the shot, Felton runs through the play as drawn.  I think this is the doing of Larry Brown.  He has everyone knowing their jobs and doing what they are supposed to do out there.

As Felton makes his catch, D.J. Augustin sets a backscreen for Stephen Jackson.

We saw a variation of the pick the picker play yesterday, and here is another one.  As Jackson comes off of Augustin’s screen, Augustin’s defender (Darren Collison) has to stay for a split second to make sure James Posey is still with Jackson.  This split second pause is what allows Diaw to set up a screen and get a good one in there.  Augustin does a great job coming off of it, and he is wide open.

D.J. Augustin knocks down the wide open three.  What I wanted to direct your attention to is the clock.  You already know my opinion on fouling and extending the game, so I absolutely love the fact that the Bobcats went quick.  If they miss here, there is still plenty of time to foul, and they will be at most down 3 with around 10 seconds left.

Going quick also allows Larry Brown to show faith in his defense.  He is basically saying, “We are going quick, and if we score I know we are going to get the stop to win.”  And that is exactly what happens here.  The Bobcats get the stop, the win, and they clinch their first ever playoff berth.   Here is the play in real time:

Fighting for their playoff lives, the Houston Rockets were down 4 points with 1:06 seconds left.  Their opponent the L.A. Clippers just pulled down an offensive rebound and bring the ball upcourt:

Now, it is obvious that the Clippers are trying to kill some clock here, and they effectively do.  20 valuable seconds come off the clock before Baron Davis hits his jumper.  This brings up something that has always bothered me when it comes down to coaches strategy, why don’t NBA teams foul earlier when they are losing (not counting the Hack-a-Shaq)?  The Rockets don’t foul in this situation, but they aren’t the only one, most teams in the NBA won’t foul here, and I think it’s silly.  In my opinion, when you are down by more than 1 possession with a minute left you want to extend the game as long as you can, and one way to do that is you foul.

Now, let’s use the above situation from the Rockets game as our starting point.  If the Rockets foul as soon as the Clippers get the ball and Baron Davis makes both of them, they are down 6 points with 1:06 left instead of being down 6 with 46 seconds left.  That is 20 seconds he could have saved, and in a NBA game 20 seconds is pretty damn valuable.  Another benefit of fouling is that there is no guarantee that the shooter will make both (remember that Golden State-Phoenix game a couple of days back).

The Rockets actually come down and quickly score in their next possession, they are now once again down four, but this time with 40 seconds left:

Again, the Rockets don’t foul and again Baron Davis runs down the clock, but this time he hits a three instead of a two and effectively closes out the game.

If the Clippers would have fouled in both of these situations, they would only be down 6 with about 40 seconds left, and while it is still a long shot, it is much more manageable than being down 7 with 17 seconds left.  Also, that is if the opposing team makes both of them, and that is never a guarantee, especially late.

Now, the video starts when Devin Harris takes the foul to give with 6.9 seconds left in the third quarter.  This is after he hit a jumper to cut the Grizzlies lead down to two points (After they were down 16 to start the half).  The Grizzlies re-enter the ball, and end up scoring as time runs out.  Yes, the foul is early, but the biggest problem here is where the foul takes place, right around half court.  Mike Conley isn’t a threat out there, so if Devin Harris was to allow him to dribble it down to the three point line or deeper in, it could have taken another 2 to 3 seconds off the clock.  The mistake ended up giving the Grizzlies a two point lead and taking away all the momentum from New Jersey.  Memphis also scored the first basket of the fourth quarter, so you had a 2 point game quickly jump back up to a 6 point game because of the foul.

This is what leads us to the second play.  The Nets are down 5 points with 12.2 seconds left, and after Devin Harris hits a free-throw, it is obvious that the Nets are going to try and foul.

I know that most teams try and deny the inbounds pass, but I think that is the wrong play here.  In this situation, you want to get the foul as quickly as possible.  Sure a turnover is fine, but in most cases you aren’t going to be able to force one, so you should play behind your man, let him make the catch, and foul him before too much time runs off.  Instead, Terrence Williams gambles for the steal, allowing 5 seconds to run off of the clock.  The worst part is Terrence has no chance of making this steal, and even if he gets his hands on it, he is just going to be smacking it out of bounds.  The worst part is that Rudy Gay ended up missing one of two foul shots allowing for it to still be a two possession game, but with under 8 seconds left, all hope was basically lost.

The first example comes from J.R. Smith when Kobe Bryant tries to post him in transition:

As Lamar Odom brings the ball up, Kobe takes J.R. Smith right into the middle of the lane, sealing him in the paint, and then calling for the ball.

Odom takes a little too long to get the ball into Bryant, and this allows for J.R. Smith work out from behind Kobe Bryant and to the outside.  This is the first key to playing defense in the post.  You want to get on the outside, because this allows you to have the best chance at getting a hand in the passing lane.

You don’t want to completely gamble though, and that is what J.R. Smith does well here.  He gets to the outside and gets a hand in the passing lane.  If he doesn’t get his hand on the ball, he is still in pretty good position here, in between the basket and his man (Kobe Bryant).  Kobe is at fault here a little bit, by not holding his seal.  What I mean by this is that as soon as the ball gets passed to him, he gives up his position to go make the catch.  When you are posting up, you almost want to hold the seal to the very last second, letting the ball come to you, instead of going to get it.

The next post defensive play we are going to look at comes from Ron Artest.  Artest did a fantastic job on Carmelo Anthony the entire game.  Artest was able to frustrate Anthony and not let him get the ball on the block.  In my opinion Carmelo is the best non PF/C in the post, so defending him in the post is no easy task.

Ron Artest gets his body on Carmelo, not letting him post up in the block.  He also picked a side, playing half way in the middle.

Look how far out Carmelo is from when he started.  Artest is able to get his hand on the ball (again, because the sealer gives up his seal too early when receiving the pass), getting a steal and a fast break lay-up.

How important is post defense.  Well when you can do it correctly for the duration of a game like Ron Artest did, you end up forcing the player posting up out of his comfort zone.  Look where Carmelo started making his post up catches in the second half.  This is all the way out to the three point line.  Carmelo is far less dangerous with his back to the basket catching it at the three point line then he is when he makes his catch on the block.  Just by where Carmelo makes this catch, you can see that Ron Artest won this possession.

We are going to first look at Baron’s play that happens with under a minute left and the Clippers up 2:

After dribbling the shot-clock down until there was 10 seconds left, Baron Davis starts to attack the basket.  Baron’s defender (Raymond Felton) is playing far too close to him, and this allows Baron to get around him.

Once Baron gets on his hip, he has a lane to the basket.  He starts to attack as a defender comes and closes out.  Instead of taking off for a lay-up, Baron sees a lane on the baseline.

He takes that lane and gets underneath the basket.  This is such a vulnerable place for the defense.  Not only because it is a difficult to get help to the ball (notice how 5 Bobcats are in the paint), but because with defenders in help position, it is hard for them to keep an eye on their man as well.  This is what allows for cutters to get open for easy lay-ups (check out the section “Using Pick & Roll As A Decoy“).

Here, Baron Davis is able to kick it out to Eric Gordon.  As Gordon makes the catch, D.J. Augustin tries to close out, but he is a little late with it, and that allows for Gordon to get into the lane.

Where he is able to finish, giving the Clippers a 4 point lead.

Now that we have seen how effective getting to the baseline and staying on your feet can be, let’s look at the very next play made by D.J. Augustin which shows why you don’t want to get caught in the air.

After an offensive rebound on a three point shot, the all ends up in D.J. Augustin’s hands.  Being down 4 with around 30 seconds is a tough spot to be in, and the Bobcats need a quick score here.

Augustin attacks the basket, and gets his defender on his hip as the help is rotating over.  This looks very similar to the same situation Baron Davis was in a possession earlier.

Instead of taking the baseline lane that was available, Augustin takes off for a lay-up, and gets himself caught in the air.  I know that he needs to get a quick score here, but if he takes one more dribble to the baseline, he would have been able to kick it out to new Bobcat Tyrus Thomas.  Now, Thomas might not be the best shooting option, but he showed in the playoffs last year he is able to hit those baseline jumpers if given an open look.

Augustin, now caught in the air, tries to get a shot up at the rim, but he ends up losing possession of the ball and tossing it out of bounds.

Augustin was upset that there wasn’t a foul called, but the replay showed there wasn’t much contact and that the ball was in fact off of Augustin (it was first called Bobcats’ basketball then reversed).

Despite every shooter in the NBA having a different shooting form, there are four basic things that should be the same (and that are the same among the best shooters in the NBA). They are the hands, the lower body, the follow through, and the landing.  I thought it would be interesting to put these shooters side by side, and break down their shots at these four points.

The Hands

Hand positioning – Hand positioning is key because this is where your rotation comes from (maybe my favorite part of the three point contest is watching the competitors shoot the money ball.  Seeing the almost perfect rotation is fun to watch).  Rotation is important on your shot because this is what helps a shooter get some good bounces.  I am sure everyone has heard of the saying “shooters roll.”  Well if you think about it, this is only said about good shooters, and this is because they put the proper rotation on the ball.

As you can see, all of the players hand positioning is basically the same.  You have the right hand right in the middle of the basketball, and the left on the side, supporting it. Cook’s form is a little funky (he takes his left hand off the ball super-early), but he still has his right hand in the center of the basketball, so it works.   The only shooter who doesn’t have the right hand positioning is Channing Frye.  His left hand is too much on top of the basketball, and his right isn’t in the center of the ball.  The result can be seen in Frye’s rotation.  Instead of the perfect end over end rotation you usually see, Frye’s balls have a side-winding type of rotation, with the ball going end over end, but it also spins from right to left.

Release Point – Now everyone’s release points here are different, but that is ok as long as the hands are in the right spots.  I just thought it was interesting to look at how the taller guys (Danilo Gallinari and Channing Frye) have higher release points.  This helps get their shots off, because if they keep it high, nobody contesting the shot would ever be able to block it.

The Lower Body

The Feet – The lower body (feet, and legs) are very important, because if you don’t have them facing the basket, you aren’t going to come close to making the shot.  The first thing is the feet.  You want to have them even, and shoulder with apart.  In a perfect world, you would want them facing the basket, but if they are facing the general area of the basket (and are facing in the same direction) you are usually good.  5 of your shooters have their feet in the proper position, the one who doesn’t is Channing Frye.  Frye’s feet are pointing to each other.  The problem with that is now you aren’t on balance, so when you life off for your shot, you don’t get a consistent lift or landing.

The Legs -

Just as with your feet, you want to have your legs shoulder with apart and even.  The knees should be slightly bent (because you are getting yourself ready to jump).  Channing Frye again doesn’t have proper leg placement, and this all starts with his feet.  Because they are pointing in, his knees have to follow.  Which is why he has a bowlegged look when he shoots.

The Follow Through

The Wrists – Along with the hand positioning, the follow through is also key when you are talking about rotation.  You need to snap your wrist hard enough so you can get the ball really spinning.  As you do that, you need to keep your left hand from affecting the basketball.  Most shooters are able to keep their left hand at the side of the ball without it affecting the shot.  Some can’t though.  The solution, do what Danilo Gallinari does.  Notice how is left hand is lower than the others?  Well, this is because he slides his hand down as he begins his follow through.  My guess is that he does this because his left hand has the tendency to get involved with the shot.  I actually had this same problem growing up, and my AAU coach taught me the technique  to slide the hand down to prevent your off-hand from getting involved in the shot.  It worked pretty well.

The Landing

Set Shooters – All of the participants of this year’s competition are set shooters.  Most good three point shooters are set shooters, because if you are a jump shooter taking 5 or 6 threes a game (while participating in other basketball-related activities), you are going to tire yourself out pretty quickly.  So set shooters don’t go up and down landing in the same spot.  What they do is jump forward, landing slightly in front of where they take off.  The landing is pretty important in terms of shooting form because if you land facing the same direction as you took off in, that means there was no twisting of your hips during the shot, and that means that everything went smoothly.  Take a look at Cook though.  Notice that his hips are turned as he is landing.  Now this is probably just because of the contest (he seemed to be rushing to get another ball), but these turned hips mean he was pulling away from the follow through and that probably affected his shot.  As a matter of fact, that definitely affected his shot (I believe he had the lowest first round score).

He save the ball under his own basket.  Now, you can’t knock the hustle that Corey Brewer shows here, but there are other options he has.  Instead of throwing it blindly underneath his own he could throw it away from the basket, into the corner (where there was a teammate).  With around 5 seconds left, he can also just heave it as far as he can down the court and hope that time runs out (I understand this might have been difficult to do based on his body position).

His final option is eating the basketball and taking it out of bounds with him.  Now that doesn’t sound like a smart idea, but think about it, would you rather set up your defense to try to get another stop or would you rather keep the ball in bounds as two of your teammates are falling out of bounds?  By eating the basketball and going out of bounds with it, he is putting his team in a better position to win.

Now, here is another example.  This is from the Nets-Celtics game last week:

The ball gets saved by Devin Harris as he is going out of bounds.  By saving the ball on his own end like that, he is basically taking himself out of the play, and the Celtics are able to use this to get a wide open back-breaking jump shot..