My Favorite Sets is a weekly series looking at some of my favorite plays from the 2009-2010 and breaking them down using FastModel’sFastDraw program, and then showing you what it looks like live.
UPDATE: Corrected the Thunder set to show it correctly.
Last time, we looked at my favorite sets coming out of timeouts in dead ball situations. These are set plays drawn up in the huddle, so it is all on the coaches. During non-dead ball situations, it is more on the player to execute. Because it isn’t a quick hitter, where you see one or two quick passes and a shot, players are now forced to react to the defense and go from there.
With the departure of Amar’e Stoudemire and Lou Amundson (who is currently an unrestricted free agent) there is a void at the power forward spot that needs to be filled. While it is believed that Hakim Warrick will be the one to replace Amar’e as the Suns’ starter at PF, Earl Clark still has a chance to grab hold of the position, if only his game could take the next step.
Clark’s Summer League performance was average at best with a few great plays sprinkled in, showing flashes of what Suns’ fans hope Earl Clark can become with more playing time. However, for the most part during Summer League, I saw an unwillingness to attack the basket from Clark:
Here Clark grabs the rebound and brings the basketball up the court on his own. Now, this displays the pretty good ball handling ability of a 6′10″ PF, however Clark needs to either try and get to the basket (and take advantage of his ball handling ability) here or get it to a guard and start the offense. Even when Clark wanted to try and drive to the basket, he had a tendency to shy away from contact:
The Suns took Gani Lawal in the second round with the 46th pick in the 2010 NBA Draft. Entering the draft the same year that teammate Derrick Favors did, Lawal was “the other guy” and he saw his stock drop off (mainly because teams thought he was undersized at 6′8″ and 233 lbs). However, he has really impressed while playing for the Suns during the Las Vegas Summer League, proving he has the skills to make it in the NBA.
The Good
Physicality
Despite being undersized (in terms of weight) when going up against opposing power forwards and centers, Gani Lawal shows a physicality that is needed to excel when matching up against bigger opponents. This willingness to bang bodies helps Lawal on both sides of the court:
Here, Lawal gets the ball in the post with a taller defender covering him. Lawal simply drops his shoulder and drives it into the bigger defender, pushing him back a few steps. Lawal gets to where he wants to be on the court and attempts his shot (though he gets fouled).
When it seemed that the Suns were unable to resign Amar’e Stoudemire, they went ahead and signed Hakim Warrick. Obviously Warrick isn’t Amar’e Stoudemire (for one Warrick signed a four-year contract worth up to $18 million while Amar’e will be getting a deal in the vicinity of 6 years $100 million), but it does seem that the Suns plan on using Warrick as Stoudemire’s replacement next year. Now, there is no way that Warrick is going to duplicate Stoudemire’s production, but if he can at least get close while playing similar to Amar’e then this is a good signing.
Mike Schmitz of Valley Of The Suns did a fantastic job of getting the ball rolling on this topic, looking at Warrick’s strengths and weaknesses and looking to see if he can fit with the Suns. I am basically just working off of that here, and I will be looking to see if Warrick’s game is similar enough to Stoudemire’s to effectively replace him.
When you think Phoenix Suns basketball you think of Steve Nash working off an Amar’e Stoudemire screen, running the pick and roll to perfection. So the first thing that we need to look at is to see if Hakim Warrick can run the pick and roll effectively as the screener. To do this, we need to breakdown every aspect of the pick and roll.
The Screen
With a one inch and a thirty pound edge (Amar’e is 6′10″ 249 lbs while Warrick is 6′9″ 219 lbs), you would think that Amar’e Stoudemire would have an advantage when it comes to setting screens, however this is not the case. When Stoudemire sets screens he never really makes contact with the defender, opting to use speed to his advantage when rolling. This also allows for Steve Nash to work his magic:
Hakim Warrick sets screens the same way, not really looking to create contact but just to get in the defender’s way enough to free up a roll:
Suns’ coach Alvin Gentry made a name for himself these playoffs for having a tremendous amount of trust in his bench. Guys like Channing Frye, Goran Dragić, and Jared Dudley each probably won a game themselves at some point during the Suns’ playoff run.
Coach Gentry had a great feel for when to keep his bench in, and when to put his his starters back in, but in Game 6 against the Lakers, he made two poor decisions regarding his rotation that probably cost his team the game. Riding Dragić, the Suns were able to cut the Lakers’ lead to 5 points with just about 6 minutes left. The 6 minute mark in the 4th quarter is usually when Gentry puts Nash and the rest of his starters back in, but in Game 6, he decided to ride the hot hand. Coming out of a timeout with 5:35 left in the game, Gentry had the perfect opportunity to go back with his starters, but he didn’t. Here were the Suns’ next two possessions on the offensive end:
Nobody is really talking about this play, mainly because on the next possessions the Suns came down and hit the game tying three, but I thought it was an interesting move that should be looked at. For just about the entire game, the Lakers were switching all screen and rolls, basically inviting Steve Nash to become aggressive on defense. Nash obliged by putting up 29 points on 20 shots. Towards the end of the game the Suns weren’t even running the screen and roll, they were just setting the screen up high to get the switch and let Nash work against a mismatch:
As you can see, the Lakers don’t initially switch the screen, so the Suns just run it again. The second time, Gasol ends up on Nash who knocks down a step back jumper.
The Suns were coming off of a huge possession where they got two offensive rebounds and then a banked in three to tie the game at 101. All they needed to do was get 1 more stop with 3.5 seconds left to send the game into overtime. The Suns actually played really good defense to force Kobe into a tough shot, but they weren’t able to secure the rebound afterwords:
As Lamar Odom gets the basketball, Derek Fisher curls under Pau Gasol to the near corner. As this is happening Ron Artest replaces Fisher and fills his spot. The purpose of all this movement is to clear out space at the top of the key, where I think the play was designed to be run to.
I have to admit, I was surprised when the Suns came out and played zone for the majority of Game 4. I was thinking that it was going to be a one game thing where the Suns used the zone to grab the momentum and get themselves back in the series. However, it didn’t work that way. Coming out of halftime, the Lakers made a really nice adjustment on offense to counter the Suns’ zone. It was up to the Suns to counter that in the fourth, and coach Alvin Gentry stepped up and did.
Third Quarter
In the third quarter, the Lakers would bring the ball up and enter it to the wing opposite of where Kobe Bryant is set up. The purpose of this was to get the Suns’ basic zone to shift towards the ball and away from Kobe Bryant.
In the first quarter of Game 3, the Lakers torched the Suns defense once again. The Lakers scored 32 points in that quarter, and it ended up being the 9th straight quarter that the Lakers scored 25+ points. The Suns needed to do something extreme to get themselves back in the game, and they did exactly that by playing zone the rest of the game. In the second quarter, it was very effective. In the third, it seemed that the Lakers figured it out, but in the 4th it went back to being effective, and this is how the Suns ended up with the win.
Second Quarter
Point Total – 15
Why It Worked - It caught the Lakers off guard. The Suns sprinkled in some zone in Games 1 & 2, but they didn’t run it an extended period time like they did in the second quarter of Game 3. I don’t think that the Lakers were prepared for it, and they didn’t really know how to attack it (or where to attack it from).
The first thing that you notice in the above video (the Lakers’ second possession against the zone) is how unsure the Lakers are on offense. It is pass, catch, wait, then pass again. You attack a zone by quickly zipping the ball around the perimeter. This forces the defense to rotate with the basketball, thus opening passing lanes to the inside. When you pass it slowly, you allow the zone to shift and get set with each pass, and that is how the Suns are able to challenge Odom’s shot here.
The Lakers ran a ton of pick and rolls in game 2 with Pau Gasol as the screen man for most of them. This allowed the Lakers to take advantage of Amar’e Stoudemire’s poor pick and roll defense since he was the Sun usually responsible for defending Pau Gasol.
Defending The Ball Handler
Now Stoudemire wasn’t asked to defend the ball handler coming off the pick and roll too much, but when he was, he didn’t do a very good job of it.
In the above video, Jason Richardson gets caught in the Pau Gasol screen, forcing Stoudemire to defend Ron Artest. When you are defending the ball-handler on the pick and roll, the ultimate goal is to prevent him from getting where he wants to go with a hard hedge. Stoudemire doesn’t hedge hard at all, allowing Ron Artest to basically walk to the elbow and knock down an easy jumper.
