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.
