With the Detroit Pistons trailing the Dallas Mavericks by two points with one minute left last night, they needed to force a miss and secure the rebound to give themselves a chance.  The Pistons were able to force a miss on two separate occasions, but couldn’t get themselves a defensive rebound on either, allowing the the Mavericks to run about 43 seconds off of the clock, effectively ending the game.

1st Offensive Rebound

As Jason Kidd brings the basketball up, Tyson Chandler sets a cross screen, allowing for Dirk to flash up to the elbow.

After a dribble handoff to Jason Terry, Dirk steps up to set a screen to run the pick and pop.  As this is taking place, Jason Kidd clears out to the opposite side to give Dirk the room to pop.  Jason Maxiell is in the middle of the paint, defending Tyson Chandler.

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Down by 2 points and with no timeouts left, the Detroit Pistons tried to get the ball to Ben Gordon at the top of the key.  Unlike some teams who panic when the first option isn’t there right away, the Pistons stayed calm, went through their progressions, and got themselves a wide-open three pointer:

As Tayshaun Prince gets the basketball from the referee, Rodney Stuckey flashes quickly to the corner.  As this happens, the two Piston bigs (Charlie Villanueva and Jason Maxiell) set down screens for Ben Gordon who flashes to the top of the key.

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The New Jersey Nets trailed the Detroit Pistons by two points with right around 30 seconds left as Devin Harris attacked the lane.  He ended up losing control of the basketball, and it looked like it was going to be the same old Nets all over again.  However, the Nets were able to recover and come away with the win due to the fact that Rip Hamilton gambled for the basketball:

We pick up the clip as Devin Harris beats the help from Richard Hamilton to get into the lane.  Rip is in good help position though as he can easily return to Anthony Morrow, the Nets’ biggest shooting threat.

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My Favorite Sets is a weekly series looking at some of my favorite plays from the 2009-2010 and breaking them down using FastModel’s FastDraw program, and then showing you what it looks like live.

Deadball situations  late in games are my favorite to watch, because it is basically a coaching version of 1 on 1.  You got both coaches trying to anticipate what the other is doing and reacting to that.  Watching this battle go down live shows you what a coach is made of (in terms of Xs and Os), and if a coach can get his team an open look, that shows you he knows what he is doing with the clipboard.  Here are a few that I really liked from this past season:

Spurs Free Up Roger Mason

Against the Cavs, the Spurs found themselves down by three points with about nine seconds left.  Needing both a quick hitter and a three pointer the Spurs were able to free up one of their better shooters, Roger Mason:

Box 1 - George Hill gets a brush screen from Roger Mason to get him to the corner, while Manu Ginobili flashes to the midpost, looking for the basketball.  After Hill clears Mason, Mason comes off of a Tim Duncan screen, looking to free him up on the outside.  Jefferson triggers the ball to Ginobili, who is in the midpost area.

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Austin Daye is currently in the middle of his second stint in the Las Vegas Summer League, and the one thing you notice about his play is that he just looks comfortable.  Kevin Arnovitz noted it in his Summer League Day 2 Roundup:

I’m not sure what’s more fun — watching Austin Daye create for himself, or for others. Daye missed 12 of his 20 shots from the floor on Saturday, but he was clearly the best player on the court for the second consecutive game. Daye sees the floor with clarity and and is forever a half-second ahead of the defense, which is an eternity in basketball. He can deliver a pinpoint pass — no matter how fast he’s moving or how fierce the pressure — and is aware of his teammates strengths and weaknesses.

Daye showed an ability to use his length to either get himself to the rim (to either finish or find a teammate) or to get off an open jumper:

Here, Austin Daye puts the ball on the floor, gets to the rim, and uses his long arms to be able to get a shot up and over a defender.

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I get on coach Mike Brown a lot, but against the Pistons last night Brown showed that he does know what he is doing when it comes to the offensive end.  After the Pistons tied it at 91 with about 5 minutes left, the Cavs put on an offensive clinic.

Possession 1 – Off Ball Screen To Free Up Mo Williams

The thing that impresses me the most with Cleveland’s offense is the fact that they do so much stuff off the ball (it is the theme of all of these sets).  It makes sense when you think about it, you know that the entire defense is going to be paying attention to LeBron.  This means defenders aren’t really paying attention to their man (as much as you would like), which means if you come with a backscreen off the ball it will really surprise the defense.

Mo Williams brings up the ball as LeBron James positions himself at the left elbow.  This is a spot on the court where once LeBron James makes the catch he can attack either side.

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I usually try to keep the Nets away from NBAPlaybook.com.  For one, they are an awful team who gets blown out a lot, so there aren’t too many “key possessions.”  Also, along with Mark Ginocchio, I co-run the Nets Truehoop Network blog NetsAreScorching, so most of my Nets stuff goes over there.  The Nets’ game last night against Detroit showed us some things that I want to talk about here.

“The Nets have the talent, why aren’t they winning any games?”  Being the blogger that talks about the Nets, I hear a variation of this question at least once a day.  Whenever I am asked, I give a generic answer that involves “Injuries, them being young, and the fact that they don’t have a real coach.”  You know what though, those are just excuses.  When the Nets played the Pistons (a team that I think the Nets are equal with in terms of talent), you saw the real reason.  They don’t execute late, while other teams do.

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Every morning I will take an in-depth look at a game that happened the previous night.  The game that I pick is the one that I think was the best and most interesting one of the night/weekend.

The Bulls have been struggling a ton this year, but for one night, everything clicked.  The Pistons helped them though.  The Pistons shot only 41.3% (33-80 from the field), including only 18.2% from 3 (2-11).  Meanwhile Chicago shot 57.1% (48-84).  The High shooting percentage was due in large part to the points in the paint the Bulls got, as well as the fact the Bulls got a ton of fast break points.

What The Bulls Did Right?

Getting Points In The Paint

Here, the Bulls run a pick and roll involving Joakim Noah and Derrick Rose.  Derrick Rose is going to come off of it,  not hard as if he was going to attack the basket, but he curves it off, giving himself an angle to make a pass on the roll.

The Pistons try to hedge out of this screen, but they don’t do a good job of it.  If the defender hedging is going to come out this far, he needs to turn the point guard around.  Here, Rose is able to get around the defender, and now the Pistons are in a tough spot.

The Piston covering Tyrus Thomas is in the toughest spot.  He sees Noah rolling uncontested (due to the poor hedge), but if he leaves to help out on Noah, he doesn’t know if anyone has his back, rotating over to cover Thomas.  Rose gave himself a good enough angle to make either pass.  A big key.

The defender chooses to stay with Thomas, and Derrick Rose threads the needle with a pass to Joakim Noah, leading to a big time dunk.

Getting Out On The Break

Coming off of a screen, Rip Hamilton gets trapped on the sideline when Joakim Noah hedges out hard on the screen (this is how you do it by the way, completely knocking the ball handler off of his path).

Noah’s active hands knocks the ball loose, and he quickly gains possession.

As Noah dribbles to gain possession, the Bulls now have a 4 on 2 fast break, with no Detroit Pistons past their own foul line.  In fact, one Piston seems to be walking back on defense as the Bulls take the ball on the break.

Noah gets the ball to a guard’s hand (Hinrich), and in this camera angle, there are no Pistons getting back on defense.

Hinrich passes it to Rose as the rest of the Pistons chug along, at least pretending to hustle.

Rose makes the 4th pass of the fast break (which was allowed to happen since they had 5 seconds of a 4 on 2 fast break), and Deng finishes with the lay-up.

What The Pistons Did Wrong?

Poor Offense/Shot Selection

After bringing the ball up, Rodney Stuckey swings the ball to Rip Hamilton.  Take note of the shot clock up top.  There is 19 seconds left on it.

Hamilton, after surveying the situation for a second or two, swings the ball to Jonas Jerebko, who is out on the wing, beyond the three point line.

Jonas Jerebko tries to enter the ball into the post, but Deng is playing off of him, effectively cutting off any lanes to get the entry post in there.

Jerebko then swings the ball back out to Rip Hamilton.

Rip Hamilton points to Ben Wallace, calling for a screen.

He gets it and tries to use it, but the Bulls defend it perfectly (again), because of that, Rip Hamilton is forced to dribble the ball back towards the right wing.

He then swings the ball to Jonas Jerebko who takes an ill-advised three pointer.  Jerebko has played pretty well this year, but he isn’t a three point shooter.  He is shooting 25.5% from 3 on the year including a big fat 0% over the last 5 games.  So why did he take the shot then?  Well, the Pistons basically spent 12 seconds passing the ball around the perimeter.  The ball did not spend one second/bounce inside the three point line, so when Jonas Jerebko got a open look, he must have thought “well, nothing is really going on, so I might as well shoot it.”

This is sad.  I remember the Pistons offense of the last decade where they would run Rip Hamilton off a ton of screens, and get him open mid-range jumpers at will.  What happened to that?  They are now resorting to just swinging the ball around and seeing what happens.

Every morning (or late-afternoon), I am going to breakdown the some key possessions from the previous night’s games.  Good possessions/bad possessions you can find them all here.

Some more late game stuff here.  We have three clips that we are going to look at.  One from the Detroit vs. Dallas game, one from the Nuggets vs. Warriors game (bet you know which one I am talking about here), and one from the Blazers vs. Grizzlies game.

Detroit’s Late Game Attempt

First of all, the Pistons are missing someone on the court.  Seriously.  Charlie Villanueva was 4-6 from 3, and he accounted for 4/5 of the team’s three point makes.  The rest of the team was 1-11.  Even the Mavericks’ announce crew was wondering why he wasn’t out there.  I understand if you want to run a play for Ben Gordon, that’s fine.  The Pistons use him as a decoy though, so why not throw your hottest shooter out there?

That being said, this is a fantastic play run by the Pistons.  You have Gordon acting as he is going to curl around a screen, instead, he sets a screen for Stuckey and then pops out.

Look where Jason Kidd is.  He thought Gordon was going to curl through, so he cheated it.  Ben Gordon set the screen though, and there is nobody to switch onto Rodney Stuckey (late in games, most teams switch all screens.  It looks like the Mavs were doing this too).

The result is Stuckey wide open in the corner.  He misses the shot, but it was a great look.  What I can’t understand, is why didn’t the Pistons run this for Charlie Villanueva?

The Blazers Going For It

Before we talk about the play, I wanted to talk about something.  The Blazers are catching some stuff about running their play so early in the clock.  I like this call though, in this situation.  You are down 1, you want to extend this game as long as possible.  If you score you are up 1 and if you miss, you give yourself another chance to tie/win the game depending how the foul shots turn out.

This is a designed play to give Martell Webster the shot.  Roy is going to drive, forcing the help to come.  Juwan Howard sneaks behind Webster’s man to set a pick, giving Webster an open look.

By the time Webster makes the catch, his man has a foot in the paint, and he needs to close out.

Webster gets to step into the pass and take an uncontested jumper, he just doesn’t knock it down.  A shame too, it was a nice play.  Oh, and sorry Blazers’ announcers, it wasn’t a foul either.

The Warriors Foul

So here it is.  This is pretty bad, but what makes it even worse is that the Nuggets executed George Karl’s play so badly, that if the foul didn’t happen, I would be talking about the Nuggets poor execution.

J.R. Smith is supposed to curl off a screen set by Nene.

However, J.R. Smith takes a straight line and runs right to the basketball.  Because of this, Nene can’t even get a good pick in.  The circle is where the play was designed for J.R. Smith was to make the catch.  He wasn’t going to get a three right at the line, but a 30 footer is a good shot with this much time left (and with J.R. Smith shooting it, the kid has range).

Instead, Smith makes the catch right near half court.  The Warriors defend this perfectly, they have two guys closing in on Smith, not allowing him to get a good look of…but…

They both jump in the air.  Ellis’ foul was a tough call, but you can’t give the refs a chance to make that call.  I don’t understand what jumping does either.  Does Maggette or Ellis really think that they are going block that shot?  Just stand there with your hands up and get the win.  If he makes it, so be it, but more often than not, he won’t be making that shot.  No reason to jump and contest.