mogrovejo
04-22-2010, 07:10 PM
Is your team underperforming in the playoffs? Does it seem it’s going to be a short post-season? Don't worry, there's still hope for your and your beloved ballclub.
As long as they follow my advice. Here's the remedy that teams down in the series can use to turn things around and progress to the 2nd round. For the purpose of this post, I considered teams that lost HCA as losing teams:
Miami Heat:
A team struggling to find a reliable scorer besides their best player.
1. Put Arroyo on the bench, play Wade as the point-guard and insert Dorrell Wright in the starting line-up using him to guard Rondo. Easy, elegant, solution that by itself would change the complexion of the game on the floor.
2. Crash the offensive glass. To defend Boston in the transition, the key is to disrupt the outlet to Rondo. If that isn’t successful, the key is having the safety back ready to foul him. 3 guys should be enough to do that, 2 players should go for the board every shot.
3. Without one of the frontcourt players getting it gear, it’d be tough to score enough to beat Boston. So, find a way of doing it. Beasley has a tremendous face-up game, let him isolate and go to work. It’s risky due to his high level of dumbness, but there isn’t any other chance.
Milwaukee Bucks
They’re so undermanned and Skiles have already tried so many different things that I’m not sure there’s much to do. They basically need their players to raise up their game and execute really well. Tough for them, facing a clearly superior opponent and missing the foundation of their defence+offence. It’s not only about Bogut being a very good player; just as important is how pretty much everything – the over-aggressive defence + the half-court offence [1 – inside-out game; 2 – high-post distributor; 3 – multiple backdown screens on the ball] – is built around his presence. So:
1. Need to stop the Bucks frontcourt. There’s no point in keeping Joe Johnson under control if Smith and Horford are going to kill you every game. Horford combination of mobility and size makes his mid-range game pretty tough to stop 1x1 by guys like Thomas or Gadzuric – he needs to be bumped before getting the ball. Smith will cool down at some point.
Both Smith and Horford have been on the court for 65:10 of the 96 minutes. The Hawks have outscored the Bucks 144-105 in that time. Neither Smith nor Horford have been on the court for 15:08 of the 96 minutes. The Bucks have outscored the Hawks 36-24 in that time. Smith but not Horford has been on the court for 6:32 of the 96 minutes. The Bucks have outscored the Hawks 23-11 in that time. Next game, Horford must be a non-factor offensively. Make him work, tire him out, deny him the ball.
2. Need to take advantage of Atlanta’s switching defense. To take advantage of that, you need to have Ilyasova screening a lot, because the Hawks don’t switch when the screener isn’t a good jump-shooter. Use screen the screener and double screens plays liberally.
3. Defend the transition. A team that allows 11 ppg during the reg. season can't suddenly allow the double in the playoffs.
OKC Thunder
A team executing well and losing close games that would be large wins if it wasn’t for their large rebounding/paint disadvantage.
1. Sefolosha must guard Kobe. To win the game, OKC needs to defend and use that to overwhelm the Lakers with their transition game.
2. Durant is falling into Artest strengths by playing off-the-bounce+mid-range game. Must play off-the-ball, force Artest to chase him around, sell the contact to the refs if Artest is being too physical (which he is and the refs tend to be especially complacent towards him since he joined the Lakers). Artest has no chance of staying with Durant off-the-ball.
Dallas Mavericks
A team facing an opponent which is overall a better team but over whom they have some serious favourable matchups that should tip the series in their favour.
1. Force San Antonio role-players to score on you, at least as long as Hill is out of form. The Spurs Big 3 are scoring 1.3 pp poss; the other guys half of that. Those guys need to be forced to up their usage leading to a decline in their their efficiency (they’re combining for 0.92 per shot).
2. Besides Dirk, Caron Butler at the off-guard can be the individual matchup that most favours the Mavs. Ginobili has no hope of defending him in the post; everytime Caron took Manu down low in the past 4 seasons good things happened. Carlisle should go big in the backcourt to force that matchup; Caron should play smart, going for the post up, instead of playing dumb, trying to break Manu off the dribble or shoot over him, as he often did last game (the 2 times he went to the blocks vs. Manu he earned a foul).
3. When Dirk is out, the Mavs should go for a quick transition + defensive lineup - Marion at the four alongside a quick-footed shot blocker like Haywood at the five and Terry (absent Beaubois) at the 1. Barea if strictly necessary and if the Spurs don’t have Parker+Ginobili on the floor at the same time. The Spurs settle for jumpers when faced with this line-up + struggle to defend the transition. OTOH, don’t play Barea+Terry+Dirk+Butler+Dampier at the same time. That’s pretty much inviting the other team to score on you at will.
Denver Nuggets
This is a good defensive team – with Martin in the line-up - that isn’t defending. Not much else to say.
1. Focus on defense. Denver was 8th in defensive efficiency + 5th in defensive eFG% last season. For most of this year they were slightly worse than that; but now they’re ranked 16th and 14th in those respective categories ... despite only one/two changes to their first choice rotation (Dahntay Jones to Arron Afflalo + Lawson taking most of Anthony Carter's playing time). In fact, they should be a better defensive team than last season, not worse.
There is no good reason for that type of decline now that Martin is back. There’s a bad, ugly reason though: this squad is coasting mentally and playing poor defence on too many possessions due to that. Half-assed runs to close-out. Confused transition D, with 2 guys attacking the outlet passer and no one getting back to their own goal to force the jumper and prevent the lay-up. The guy guarding Korver leaving Someone needs to step and make this team understand that they run the risk of being embarrassed if they don’t start dedicating themselves to the defensive end as they did last season and for part of this one.
2. Post up Carmelo Anthony. Not only he’s a top-3 post player among wings (with only Joe Johnson being better), the Jazz have nobody who has the slightest hope of stopping him there and once they double their rotations are generally pretty bad.
Phoenix Suns
A team with clear positives and negatives that in this series basically needs to make easy shots.
1. Defend Miller with Hill, force the ball out of his hands + double LMA hard. Should suffice, it was more than enough in the last game. McMillan seems to have an endless array of tricks this season, so we’ll need to see his counter-move, but at some point he must run out of them. Pay attention to the movements the Blazers do running the baseline to cut through the lane after curling off a mid-post screen from their post player.
2. Consider moving Collins out of the starting unit. This can allow the Blazers to get in a defensive rhythm in the first minutes of the halves. Amundson could start.
3. Defend Bayless with a bigger player like Dudley. Pressure him from the ¾ of the court. Sag off of him, give him 4 ft of space and invite him to shoot.
Chicago Bulls
A team short on talent to beat their opponent.
1. Pick’n’roll them to death. Let LeBron isolate, dominate the ball, score on you 1x1 - help the Cavs to develop their own bad habits. Run every opportunity you have. Run some clearouts for Deng, otherwise he'll just settle for long 2s. This is a good enough team to steal a couple of games by merely doing this. Maybe.
Charlotte Bobcats
A team whose lack of scoring talent it's a big liability when they're matched with a good defensive team with explosive scoring.
1. Why all the trouble with the Nelson+Carter 2-man game? Just switch on them; if Carter wants to shoot over Nelson or DJ let it be, he'll rarely post them. Now, the Gortat/Carter pick'n'roll, that's tougher to deal with. Need speed on the floor to help and live with the potential open 3s.
2. It's nice to attack Howard from the pick'n'roll and take the ball to the rack. But if he's just going to be there, he'll win that battler more often than not. Move the ball a little first; set up some mid-range jumpers for Nazr; some baseline cuts for Chandler; swing the ball around a bit. And if this isn't enough, going with Diaw at the 5 must be considered.
3. Not running on made shots it's acceptable, but not running on turnovers is pathetic. No chance of winning this series if they keep playing at such a slow pace. Not sure on how to fix this without removing the head-coach.
As long as they follow my advice. Here's the remedy that teams down in the series can use to turn things around and progress to the 2nd round. For the purpose of this post, I considered teams that lost HCA as losing teams:
Miami Heat:
A team struggling to find a reliable scorer besides their best player.
1. Put Arroyo on the bench, play Wade as the point-guard and insert Dorrell Wright in the starting line-up using him to guard Rondo. Easy, elegant, solution that by itself would change the complexion of the game on the floor.
2. Crash the offensive glass. To defend Boston in the transition, the key is to disrupt the outlet to Rondo. If that isn’t successful, the key is having the safety back ready to foul him. 3 guys should be enough to do that, 2 players should go for the board every shot.
3. Without one of the frontcourt players getting it gear, it’d be tough to score enough to beat Boston. So, find a way of doing it. Beasley has a tremendous face-up game, let him isolate and go to work. It’s risky due to his high level of dumbness, but there isn’t any other chance.
Milwaukee Bucks
They’re so undermanned and Skiles have already tried so many different things that I’m not sure there’s much to do. They basically need their players to raise up their game and execute really well. Tough for them, facing a clearly superior opponent and missing the foundation of their defence+offence. It’s not only about Bogut being a very good player; just as important is how pretty much everything – the over-aggressive defence + the half-court offence [1 – inside-out game; 2 – high-post distributor; 3 – multiple backdown screens on the ball] – is built around his presence. So:
1. Need to stop the Bucks frontcourt. There’s no point in keeping Joe Johnson under control if Smith and Horford are going to kill you every game. Horford combination of mobility and size makes his mid-range game pretty tough to stop 1x1 by guys like Thomas or Gadzuric – he needs to be bumped before getting the ball. Smith will cool down at some point.
Both Smith and Horford have been on the court for 65:10 of the 96 minutes. The Hawks have outscored the Bucks 144-105 in that time. Neither Smith nor Horford have been on the court for 15:08 of the 96 minutes. The Bucks have outscored the Hawks 36-24 in that time. Smith but not Horford has been on the court for 6:32 of the 96 minutes. The Bucks have outscored the Hawks 23-11 in that time. Next game, Horford must be a non-factor offensively. Make him work, tire him out, deny him the ball.
2. Need to take advantage of Atlanta’s switching defense. To take advantage of that, you need to have Ilyasova screening a lot, because the Hawks don’t switch when the screener isn’t a good jump-shooter. Use screen the screener and double screens plays liberally.
3. Defend the transition. A team that allows 11 ppg during the reg. season can't suddenly allow the double in the playoffs.
OKC Thunder
A team executing well and losing close games that would be large wins if it wasn’t for their large rebounding/paint disadvantage.
1. Sefolosha must guard Kobe. To win the game, OKC needs to defend and use that to overwhelm the Lakers with their transition game.
2. Durant is falling into Artest strengths by playing off-the-bounce+mid-range game. Must play off-the-ball, force Artest to chase him around, sell the contact to the refs if Artest is being too physical (which he is and the refs tend to be especially complacent towards him since he joined the Lakers). Artest has no chance of staying with Durant off-the-ball.
Dallas Mavericks
A team facing an opponent which is overall a better team but over whom they have some serious favourable matchups that should tip the series in their favour.
1. Force San Antonio role-players to score on you, at least as long as Hill is out of form. The Spurs Big 3 are scoring 1.3 pp poss; the other guys half of that. Those guys need to be forced to up their usage leading to a decline in their their efficiency (they’re combining for 0.92 per shot).
2. Besides Dirk, Caron Butler at the off-guard can be the individual matchup that most favours the Mavs. Ginobili has no hope of defending him in the post; everytime Caron took Manu down low in the past 4 seasons good things happened. Carlisle should go big in the backcourt to force that matchup; Caron should play smart, going for the post up, instead of playing dumb, trying to break Manu off the dribble or shoot over him, as he often did last game (the 2 times he went to the blocks vs. Manu he earned a foul).
3. When Dirk is out, the Mavs should go for a quick transition + defensive lineup - Marion at the four alongside a quick-footed shot blocker like Haywood at the five and Terry (absent Beaubois) at the 1. Barea if strictly necessary and if the Spurs don’t have Parker+Ginobili on the floor at the same time. The Spurs settle for jumpers when faced with this line-up + struggle to defend the transition. OTOH, don’t play Barea+Terry+Dirk+Butler+Dampier at the same time. That’s pretty much inviting the other team to score on you at will.
Denver Nuggets
This is a good defensive team – with Martin in the line-up - that isn’t defending. Not much else to say.
1. Focus on defense. Denver was 8th in defensive efficiency + 5th in defensive eFG% last season. For most of this year they were slightly worse than that; but now they’re ranked 16th and 14th in those respective categories ... despite only one/two changes to their first choice rotation (Dahntay Jones to Arron Afflalo + Lawson taking most of Anthony Carter's playing time). In fact, they should be a better defensive team than last season, not worse.
There is no good reason for that type of decline now that Martin is back. There’s a bad, ugly reason though: this squad is coasting mentally and playing poor defence on too many possessions due to that. Half-assed runs to close-out. Confused transition D, with 2 guys attacking the outlet passer and no one getting back to their own goal to force the jumper and prevent the lay-up. The guy guarding Korver leaving Someone needs to step and make this team understand that they run the risk of being embarrassed if they don’t start dedicating themselves to the defensive end as they did last season and for part of this one.
2. Post up Carmelo Anthony. Not only he’s a top-3 post player among wings (with only Joe Johnson being better), the Jazz have nobody who has the slightest hope of stopping him there and once they double their rotations are generally pretty bad.
Phoenix Suns
A team with clear positives and negatives that in this series basically needs to make easy shots.
1. Defend Miller with Hill, force the ball out of his hands + double LMA hard. Should suffice, it was more than enough in the last game. McMillan seems to have an endless array of tricks this season, so we’ll need to see his counter-move, but at some point he must run out of them. Pay attention to the movements the Blazers do running the baseline to cut through the lane after curling off a mid-post screen from their post player.
2. Consider moving Collins out of the starting unit. This can allow the Blazers to get in a defensive rhythm in the first minutes of the halves. Amundson could start.
3. Defend Bayless with a bigger player like Dudley. Pressure him from the ¾ of the court. Sag off of him, give him 4 ft of space and invite him to shoot.
Chicago Bulls
A team short on talent to beat their opponent.
1. Pick’n’roll them to death. Let LeBron isolate, dominate the ball, score on you 1x1 - help the Cavs to develop their own bad habits. Run every opportunity you have. Run some clearouts for Deng, otherwise he'll just settle for long 2s. This is a good enough team to steal a couple of games by merely doing this. Maybe.
Charlotte Bobcats
A team whose lack of scoring talent it's a big liability when they're matched with a good defensive team with explosive scoring.
1. Why all the trouble with the Nelson+Carter 2-man game? Just switch on them; if Carter wants to shoot over Nelson or DJ let it be, he'll rarely post them. Now, the Gortat/Carter pick'n'roll, that's tougher to deal with. Need speed on the floor to help and live with the potential open 3s.
2. It's nice to attack Howard from the pick'n'roll and take the ball to the rack. But if he's just going to be there, he'll win that battler more often than not. Move the ball a little first; set up some mid-range jumpers for Nazr; some baseline cuts for Chandler; swing the ball around a bit. And if this isn't enough, going with Diaw at the 5 must be considered.
3. Not running on made shots it's acceptable, but not running on turnovers is pathetic. No chance of winning this series if they keep playing at such a slow pace. Not sure on how to fix this without removing the head-coach.