Does it really matter how precisely a play is ran if, in the end, it’s a missed opportunity? It’s a question to think because there is a natural tendency to dismiss plays that don’t result in points. If baskets aren’t scored, the chances are the plays that occurred on those possessions won’t stay lodged in your memory banks after the game is over. And we see them all the time — a kick-out to a brick, a beautifully threaded bounce pass that’s mishandled, an open lane for a dunk that’s saved by a great contest. Plays that could have been. Here’s where we pay our respects.

The Hornets shot a putrid 28.9% against the defensively challenged Suns on Friday night and finished the game with an 86.7 offensive efficiency. That’s bottom of the league poor. They did it by missing from everywhere, even at the rim, where they managed to shoot only 48%.

One of those misses came off a well-designed set that caught the Suns sleeping and gave Marco Belinelli an open lane for a layup. Here is a video of the play:

Even though the play ends in an ugly miss, there is still good action in the set itself. At the start, Hornest forward Al-Farouq Aminu sets a cross-screen on the Sun’s Marcin Gortat. Gortat’s man, Emeka Okafor cuts across the paint to establish deep post position. As Okafur moves toward the block, Belinelli sprints around a Carl Landry screen and curls toward the basket.

Hakim Warrick, not exactly a defensive savant, doesn’t pick Belinelli up as he comes off the screen while Jared Dudley, Belinelli’s defender, gets caught up in it allowing Okafor to feed him with a well-timed bounce pass near the rim.

Belinelli doesn’t meet any opposition until he’s one jump from the basket and even then Grant Hill moves to avoid the foul. Here is the play again:

If the Hornets want to avoid being in the West’s bottom rung, they need to avoid missing opportunities like this.

After Jarrett Jack’s big bucket, extending the game to four points, the Lakers found themselves trailing by four points with 9.3 seconds left in the game.  The Lakers needed a quick basket (either a two or a three), something that didn’t burn a lot of clock, allowing them to foul and regain possession.  Using Kobe Bryant as a decoy, the Los Angeles Lakers were able to get a wide open dunk for Pau Gasol in just 1.1 seconds:

The play starts with the trigger man getting the basketball, and when he does, Kobe Bryant curls around screens set by both bigs (Andrew Bynum and Pau Gasol) at the top of the key.

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With 34 seconds left and the basketball, the New Orleans Hornets were coming out of a timeout with a two point lead on the side.  Looking to both waste time and clinch the game, the Hornets were looking to create a mismatch for Chris Paul.  Once Paul got that mismatch, he was able to force the defense to help, opening up the lane for a well-timed cut:

After taking 10 seconds to get Paul the basketball (they were clearly allowing some time to burn off the clock), he was faced with Derek Fisher defending him.

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With Chris Paul and the Hornets destroying the Lakers’ pick and roll defense in game one, it is only natural to want to look at game two and see if a) the Hornets were able to have the same success with the pick and roll and b) if the Lakers’ were able to stop them/did anything different.

Synergy Sports Technology’s new twitter account (seriously, give them a follow.  Tons of great information) gave us the answer to the first thing we want to look at, and they tell us that the Hornets weren’t even close to as successful on the pick and roll:

@Lakers yielded 69.2% FG (1.47 PPP) on the Pick and Roll in Game 1, but only 45.5% FG (0.71 PPP) in Game 2.

0.71 PPP is actually even better than their 0.775 PPP regular season pick and roll defense.  So now the question is if they did they do anything different?  Well, yes and no.  Yes in that they didn’t have their bigs hedging and they didn’t switch, no in that the defense that they did use is actually their normal pick and roll defense.  They just played it better.

Land O’Lakers had a great post the other day before game 2 looking at some adjustments the team needed to make and here is the one that stuck out to me:

Aggression. Following Sunday’s loss, Jackson noted his bigs needed to do a better job in support of the guards. Andrew Bynum said Monday he plans to do his part. “When you’re playing teams that don’t post the ball [frequently], you kind of get lax and stand up and down. I could be a bit more active in patrolling the lane and dealing with those floaters.”

Give up the right shots. The Lakers want to run teams off the 3-point line, and keep them out of the paint. Person noted while Paul was taking a lot of jumpers inside the arc, most were in or at the paint. Too close. The Lakers want to force jumpshooters into a true mid-range shot, that area from 15-19 feet.

This is what I had my eye on when watching the Hornets’ pick and roll, and despite their success over the course of the game, they did struggle a bit with Paul again early.

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I’ve linked to Kevin Ding’s article about the Lakers’ pick and roll defense quite a few times here, and I am doing it again.  Their strategy comes down to funneling all of the action to their bigs (particularly Andrew Bynum).  It was very effective all season as they only gave up 0.775 points per possession to pick and roll ball handlers (sixth in the NBA).  However, the one flaw is that it frees up the midrange.  Quoting Ding’s article:

The concession is the Lakers will let opponents take mid-range jumpers from 15 to 19 feet. The Lakers can stay out on 3-point shooters better and keep point guards from getting all the way to the basket. When Tony Parker got hot early for San Antonio on Sunday, the Lakers moved up their plug just enough to deter him.

Person said “the only true mid-range shooters left in the game” are Kobe Bryant and Paul Pierce anyway. New York’s Carmelo Anthony jumps to mind, but he gets a lot of his work done with physicality and isn’t necessarily a pure shooter. In any case, let’s all watch closely how Atlanta’s Joe Johnson, Miami’s Dwyane Wade and LeBron James and Dallas’ Dirk Nowitzki do with the mid-range jumpers they get the rest of this Lakers trip.

As I mentioned in my series preview (where I predicted a 30+ point game and a win for the Hornets in the first two – ok I’m done bragging now), this is what Paul does best off of the pick and roll.  Yesterday was no different as Paul forced the Lakers to abandon their pick and roll defense early going from their original strategy, to hedging hard, to finally being forced into switching.  None of these defenses worked as the Hornets scored 29 points on 20 possessions with Paul as the ball handler in the pick and roll, good for a PPP 1.45.  That’s almost double what the Lakers give up normally.

Funnel To Bigs:

Here, Paul comes off of the ball screen and attacks the rim.  You can see that the Lakers are funneling him to the middle, preventing any kick pass to his teammates.  The problem is that Paul is so quick that Bynum is unable to step up to Paul in time, allowing him to get the runner at the rim.

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At the end of each day, I am just going to put a recap thread up where you can find all of the day’s posts to make it a bit easier.

Here is what we looked at for the upcoming Lakers-Hornets series:

• Offensive Breakdown
• Defensive Breakdown

Check in tomorrow when I finish looking at the Thunder-Nuggets series (the defensive breakdown) and the final two Western Conference series (Spurs-Grizzlies/Blazers-Mavs).  Playoffs only 1 day away.

Los Angeles – The Numbers*

• Defensive Efficiency: 101.3 (6th)
• Opp. TS%: 51.4% (2nd)
• Opp. Assist Rate: 20.95 (20th)
• Opp. Turnover Rate: 12.80 (23rd)
• Defensive Rebound Rate: 72.31 (22nd)
• Block Rate: 5.5 (10th)
• Opp. Free Throw Rate: 23.6 (1st)
• Opp. Three Point Rate: 24.2 (7th)

Los Angeles – Strengths

Pick And Roll Defense

A while ago, Kevin Ding of the Orange County register published an article about the Lakers and how they are developing their new pick and roll defense:

Jackson noted how Miami was trying Sunday to have its big men come all the way out to show on pick-and-rolls by Chicago’s Derrick Rose–to no avail in stopping the ball. Rose could not be checked and thus was easily able to create offense for the Bulls–something that often happened to the Lakers with Bynum and Pau Gasol: “Now when that guard gets around that screen, you’ve got 5-on-3,” Jackson said.

“As a consequence, we’re starting to try and funnel them in to a place where we have Andrew in position,” Jackson said. “He’s a plug. He’s in there stopping penetration.”

…

[Lakers assistant coach Chuck] Person said “the only true mid-range shooters left in the game” are Kobe Bryant and Paul Pierce anyway. New York’s Carmelo Anthony jumps to mind, but he gets a lot of his work done with physicality and isn’t necessarily a pure shooter.

So what the Lakers are doing here is keeping Bynum in the paint when a pick and roll takes place, funneling the action to him and stopping penetration.  This is the Lakers’ new pick and roll defense, and it what has them at the top of the PPP leaderboard for pick and roll defense.  When it comes to defending the ball handler, the Lakers have the 6th best pick and roll defense, allowing just .775 points per possession.  They are even better when it comes to containing the roll man, as they are 5th in terms of PPP.

With this defensive strategy, the Lakers find themselves susceptible to midrange jumpers.  However, as Person mentioned in Ding’s article, they are willing to live with it, because they are confident in their belief that there are only a few guys who can knock down those shots consistently:

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Los Angeles – The Numbers*

• Pace: 93.3 (18th)
• Offensive Efficiency: 107.9 (7th)
• True Shooting Percentage: 54.5% (11th)
• Assist Rate: 20.70 (10th)
• Turnover Rate: 12.33 (3rd)
• Offensive Rebound Rate: 29.19 (5th)
• Free Throw Rate: 29.3 (16th)
• Three Point Rate: 22.0 (16th)

Los Angeles – Strengths

Posting Out Of The Triangle

The Los Angeles Lakers are one of the best teams in the NBA in terms of posting up their opponents.  As a team, the Lakers are 4th in the league in PPP and are shooting 46.8% on post up opportunities.  One of the reasons why they are able to be so successful is because they are able to use their Triangle Offense to get post up opportunities.  The first set the Lakers run (and they seem to run this the most out of their post plays) is a basic set designed to give the man posting up room to work with:

On both of the above plays, the design is to get the basketball into the paint and then clear out for their big with the basketball.  This gives the big a whole half of the court to work with, and with everyone clearing out, there isn’t a worry about a double team.  This allows the Lakers’ bigs to take their time, make their move, and finish.

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When it was announced that David West would be out for the season about two weeks ago, the obvious replacement was his backup Carl Landry, who was acquired from the Kings earlier in the season.  While Landry is a quality player, the question is can he successfully replace David West, not only in terms of production, but in style of play.

This is because if Landry can’t replace West and what he does, and do it in the same way, the Hornets are going to be forced into switching around what they do on the offensive end.  So the first thing that we need to look at when asking if Carl Landry can replace David West is the possession breakdown.  The following graph shows how both players have been used this season with the Hornets (numbers from Synergy Sports Technology):

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A team’s performance after a timeout may be the best way to judge a coach’s Xs & Os knowledge, and his ability to draw up plays. The Clipboard Awards is a competition where I choose the top three post-timeout plays each night, adding up the scores over the course of the season.

Play 3 (1 Point) – Doug Collins/Philadelphia 76ers

The Sixers beat the Blazers’ full court press and get into their set with Lou Williams taking the basketball to the wing and then hitting Thaddeus Young at the top of the key.  Young swings the basketball and then sets a pindown for Jodie Meeks.  After setting that screen, Young comes off of an Elton Brand screen, coming open in the corner.  Young makes the catch and knocks down the open jumper.

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