timvp
01-18-2012, 02:23 PM
I re-watched the collapse against the Heat to try to figure out exactly what went wrong. In the notes below, I'm highlighting the 12 minutes of action between three minutes to go in the second quarter and three minutes to go in the third quarter. During this span, the Spurs were outscored 45-19, which turned a 16-point lead into a 10-point deficit.
(In the second quarter, I'll just note the defense)
-LeBron pick-and-roll. Duncan switches, backs way off and LeBron hits a jumper. Considering LeBron was cold up until this point, Duncan played it right.
-LeBron and Bosh pick-and-roll. LeBron passes to Bosh for the dunk ... which was made possible by a late rotation by Neal. He has to be more aware in that situation.
-LeBron uses a hesitation to drive right around Leonard and he then finishes over Duncan. Leonard looks tired and didn't put up much of a fight.
-LeBron and Bosh pick-and-pop. Bosh gets the ball, pumpfakes and drives around Duncan for a layup. With four smalls on the court next to Duncan, there was no one available to rotate.
-With Blair in for Duncan and Green in for Leonard, RJ guarded LeBron for this possession. In this LeBron and Bosh pick-and-roll, Blair gave LeBron about 15 feet of space. LeBron missed the jumper but Blair then fails to grab the defensive rebound. Bosh gets it instead and scores. This is an example of Blair's inability to rebound very well on the defensive glass hurting the team.
-Another LeBron and Bosh pick-and-roll. This time with Green on LeBron. Blair is setup to force LeBron to go left, however Green at the last second goes around the screen the wrong way -- leaving the lane wide open. Green gets back into the play in time to foul LeBron as part of an And-1. When I saw this play in real-time, I thought it was a bad play by Blair. However, seeing it again, it was Green who played it wrong. The gameplan was to force LeBron left and he played the pick wrong by going to the opposite side and hung Blair out to dry.
-Neal misses a three-pointer and LeBron grabs the ball and takes off down the court. Green plays good transition defense and forces LeBron to pass it. Neal covers two men for a split second and then recovers in time to make James Jones pass up a three-pointer. Bosh gets the ball and fires a three-pointer over Blair, who does a decent job contesting. This was a good defensive possession all around. Surprisingly enough, Neal played a leading role.
-LeBron brings the ball up with about 20 seconds remaining in the half. Green stays ten feet off of him until LeBron reaches the three-point line. Green is still giving him a lot of space so LeBron rises and hits a three. In theory, making LeBron shoot a three is usually good defense. But Green has to realize there that the clock was his friend. With less than five seconds to go, the right move is to pressure LeBron and force him to pass it or at least drive it, with hopes that he'll be hurried and make a mistake. Poor clock recognition by Green.
(After halftime, I'll cover both offense and defense since this is when the offense dried up)
-To begin the second half, the Heat use a pin-down screen to get LeBron in the low block against Leonard. LeBron goes up for a hook shot but the ball slips out of his hand. Unfortunately, Duncan has the rebound go right through his grasps and Joel Anthony gets it and dunks it.
-On offense, the Spurs run their motion set. Parker gets the ball coming around a screen. He gets doubled, tries to make a pass but it's stolen. Parker complains for a foul and on replay, it does look like Bosh hit his arm when making the pass.
-Chalmers and Bosh pick-and-roll. Parker switches onto Bosh after he gets the ball. Bosh hits a leaner from 15-feet. Decent enough defense on this possession.
-Parker gets double-teamed when receiving the ball around a pick. He makes the right pass to Duncan, who also gets double-teamed. Duncan is forced to throw it out of bounds off a Heat player. Duncan gets the inbounds pass, hands off to Parker and Parker hits a difficult floater in the lane.
-RJ picks up LeBron the next time up the court. LeBron tries to slip a pass to Anthony but the ball bounces off of Anthony's notoriously horrible hands and Parker snatches it.
-Bosh picks up Parker in transition. Parker pulls the ball out and runs some offense. The ball gets swung back to Parker (who still has Bosh on him). Parker dribbles in and misses his stepback jumper. That's a shot he's been hitting lately so I don't have a problem with it.
-On the way up the court after the Heat rebound, RJ gets switched onto Bosh. RJ fronts Bosh but the Heat are still able to get it to him. Duncan comes to rotate quickly but Bosh is able to catch and score in one motion.
-The Spurs post up Duncan. He hits his patented bank from 15-feet.
-Chalmers and Bosh pick and roll. Bosh slips the pick and Chalmers passes it to him ... but Duncan makes a great rotation to force the miss and then he grabs the rebound.
-Duncan makes a good outlet pass to Parker, who hits Blair ahead of the pack. Blair misses a contested layup and then Leonard misses the follow dunk.
-The Heat set a double screen on Leonard to get LeBron an open 17-footer, which he nails. Since it was a double screen, Blair should have been aware that Leonard wasn't going to get back to LeBron in time. Leonard also didn't do a very good job of getting around the screens.
-Parker and Blair pick-and-roll. Parker gets trapped and makes the right pass to Leonard. Leonard drives in and gets blocked by Anthony. Duncan ends up with the ball and misses an open 18-footer. Blair is called for a foul on the rebound.
-Another double screen set for LeBron. Leonard sees what's happening this time and stays right with LeBron. When LeBron catches the ball, he drives and then jumps back for a 16-footer, which he makes. Solid defense by Leonard; that was just a good shot by Lebron.
-The Spurs run their motion offense and it ends up in an isolation for Duncan. When Duncan drives to the basket, he gets triple-teamed. He finds RJ. RJ misses a wide open three-pointer.
LeBron gets the ball isolated against Leonard. He takes a power dribble and then jumps back and swishes a jumper. Decent defense by Leonard but he could have applied more pressure to LeBron.
-Motion offense set by the Spurs. Parker passes it into Blair who gets blocked ... but a foul is called. Not a good call by the ref.
-Another double screen set by the Heat. Leonard sticks right to LeBron. Duncan comes over to help. Anthony awaits a pass in the lane but is instead called for a three second violation.
-Parker and Duncan pick-and-roll. Parker gets fouled on the way to the basket. Parker gets the inbounds pass and finds Neal in the corner open for three (thanks to a double screen by Blair and Duncan). Neal misses but Duncan taps out the offensive rebound. Parker and Blair run a pick and roll. Parker gets trapped. Makes the right pass to Neal, who misses another three-pointer.
-Parker picks up LeBron in transition and forces him to pass. The Heat swing it around to James Jones. Leonard is slow with the rotation and then makes things worse by fouling Jones on a three-point attempt. Jones hits all three freebies.
-Motion offense leads to a pick-and-roll between Parker and Duncan. The Heat trap Parker and then send an extra man to Duncan. Parker's pass to Leonard is deflected. Leonard gets it, eventually passes it to Blair who misses a shot. Whistle blows because shot clock shouldn't have been reset. Spurs inbounds with two second on the shot clock and Neal misses a runner in the lane.
-LeBron isolates against Leonard on top. Leonard makes a mistake and lets LeBron drive middle. Duncan comes over to help. LeBron passes it to an open Anthony who dunks it. Bad D by Leonard.
-A messy motion set leads to a Parker and Blair pick-and-roll. Parker gets trapped, tries to split the double but the ball is knocked away. Parker recovers the fumble to force a jump ball, which he wins. With the shot clock running down, Parker shoot a three-pointer. On the rebound, Blair is held by Bosh but Blair picks up the loose ball foul.
-LeBron isolates against Leonard. Even though Leonard is close to him, LeBron rises and hits a three. Not much could have been done there.
-The Spurs run motion and end up with a Parker and Blair pick-and-roll. Parker gets trapped but goes to the baseline and shoots a ten footer. It wasn't a very good shot but it was also a lazy trap and his look was decent.
-LeBron James gets a pick in semi-transition from Anthony. He steps behind the screen and hits a leaning three-pointer. Leonard was completely screened off and Blair was about 15 feet away in the paint. Bad defense by Blair because, even though Anthony isn't a threat, he has to realize that LeBron is on fire at this point and needs to be ready to switch.
-Pick-and-roll between Parker and Duncan. Parker gets trapped and passes it off. Parker gets the ball back for another pick-and-roll with Duncan. Parker passes it to Green who makes a really good pass to a cutting Leonard. Unfortunately, Leonard gets stripped as he's going up for his shot and the Heat get the ball back.
-LeBron isolated against Leonard. LeBron acts surprised when Anthony comes over to set a pick. Leonard takes advantage and steals the ball.
-Pick-and-roll between Parker and Duncan. Parker trapped and passes it to Green. Green fakes, drives in but then gets the ball stolen when trying to make a crosscourt pass. In hindsight, he should have just dropped it off to Duncan.
-Leonard hustles back to breakup a fast break between LeBron and Bosh. LeBron and Anthony pick-and-roll. Duncan and Leonard play it perfectly and force LeBron to pass. Unfortunately, Cory Joseph leaves Chalmers wide open and Chalmers hits the three. Joseph simply can't leave a shooter wide open like that, especially when he wasn't offering any help anywhere else on the court.
-Green uses a pair of Duncan picks to get open ... but he misses an open floater in the paint. Can't really complain about that look.
-LeBron gets the ball in transition, gets picked up by Joseph, rises and makes another three-pointer. Unguardable.
Conclusions:
1. LeBron James is good at basketball. In this stretch, he did most of his damage with his jumper. While the Spurs could have done better against him a few possessions, I give LeBron most of the credit. When he's hitting three-pointers like he's a Person brother, there's not much that can be done.
2. In the second half, the Heat decided they wouldn't let Tony Parker beat them. Literally every time he made any type of move toward the basket, Parker was double-teamed. And in a vast majority of the cases, Parker did what he's supposed to do when he gets trapped. To beat such a trap, it requires crisp ball movement to the weakside of the court after Parker gives it up. We saw none of that.
3. The Heat were also doubling Duncan whenever he put the ball on the court. Against a team that is doubling your two best players, the role players should be able to get open. However, that didn't happen often enough, and even when it did, the role players missed every shot in this stretch.
4. A lot of talk about Miami's comeback concentrated on the "zone defense" the Heat utilized. But in truth, Miami didn't use a zone defense. What they were doing was trapping the ball and then sending a weakside defender to the strong side to cut off one of the immediate passing lanes. Again, ball movement following the trap should have produced open shots.
5. A lot of small errors -- Green's two mistakes at the end of the first half, Blair's lack of help defense on multiple occasions, Leonard's couple miscues, Duncan (and Blair) not rebounding, Joseph leaving a three-point shooter -- added up to cost the Spurs a lot of points. Those are exactly the type of cheap points you can't give up if you are trying to win a game on the road against a good team.
6. I don't think the third quarter meltdown could have been stopped by Pop. It's not like he was calling bad plays, the players who got the ball after there was a trap simply weren't making plays against a rotating defense. In retrospect, trying Splitter instead of Blair would make sense, but after Blair played his best first half of the season, it wasn't logical to bench him quickly in the third.
7. If we want to play the hindsight game, Pop should have called a lot more 4-down plays for Duncan. While it hasn't been a very effective play so far this season, it's easier to take advantage of a double-team in the paint rather than a double-team 30 feet from the basket.
8. In this Heat run, I didn't see where "softness" played much of a role. Pop should have saved his soft card for another day.
9. Oh, how sweet it would be if the Spurs had an energy defensive big like Joel Anthony. Yeah, he sucks on offense but his ability to trap the basketball and also protect the rim is really disruptive. Malcolm Thomas should be given videos of Anthony.
10. While the Heat are probably thrilled with their win, it wasn't a style of play that translates to the playoffs. You play that trapping and overloading defense in the playoffs and the other team will learn to adjust and destroy you. On offense, they basically just used two plays over and over again. That'll work in the regular season against a bad defensive team, but not in money time.
(In the second quarter, I'll just note the defense)
-LeBron pick-and-roll. Duncan switches, backs way off and LeBron hits a jumper. Considering LeBron was cold up until this point, Duncan played it right.
-LeBron and Bosh pick-and-roll. LeBron passes to Bosh for the dunk ... which was made possible by a late rotation by Neal. He has to be more aware in that situation.
-LeBron uses a hesitation to drive right around Leonard and he then finishes over Duncan. Leonard looks tired and didn't put up much of a fight.
-LeBron and Bosh pick-and-pop. Bosh gets the ball, pumpfakes and drives around Duncan for a layup. With four smalls on the court next to Duncan, there was no one available to rotate.
-With Blair in for Duncan and Green in for Leonard, RJ guarded LeBron for this possession. In this LeBron and Bosh pick-and-roll, Blair gave LeBron about 15 feet of space. LeBron missed the jumper but Blair then fails to grab the defensive rebound. Bosh gets it instead and scores. This is an example of Blair's inability to rebound very well on the defensive glass hurting the team.
-Another LeBron and Bosh pick-and-roll. This time with Green on LeBron. Blair is setup to force LeBron to go left, however Green at the last second goes around the screen the wrong way -- leaving the lane wide open. Green gets back into the play in time to foul LeBron as part of an And-1. When I saw this play in real-time, I thought it was a bad play by Blair. However, seeing it again, it was Green who played it wrong. The gameplan was to force LeBron left and he played the pick wrong by going to the opposite side and hung Blair out to dry.
-Neal misses a three-pointer and LeBron grabs the ball and takes off down the court. Green plays good transition defense and forces LeBron to pass it. Neal covers two men for a split second and then recovers in time to make James Jones pass up a three-pointer. Bosh gets the ball and fires a three-pointer over Blair, who does a decent job contesting. This was a good defensive possession all around. Surprisingly enough, Neal played a leading role.
-LeBron brings the ball up with about 20 seconds remaining in the half. Green stays ten feet off of him until LeBron reaches the three-point line. Green is still giving him a lot of space so LeBron rises and hits a three. In theory, making LeBron shoot a three is usually good defense. But Green has to realize there that the clock was his friend. With less than five seconds to go, the right move is to pressure LeBron and force him to pass it or at least drive it, with hopes that he'll be hurried and make a mistake. Poor clock recognition by Green.
(After halftime, I'll cover both offense and defense since this is when the offense dried up)
-To begin the second half, the Heat use a pin-down screen to get LeBron in the low block against Leonard. LeBron goes up for a hook shot but the ball slips out of his hand. Unfortunately, Duncan has the rebound go right through his grasps and Joel Anthony gets it and dunks it.
-On offense, the Spurs run their motion set. Parker gets the ball coming around a screen. He gets doubled, tries to make a pass but it's stolen. Parker complains for a foul and on replay, it does look like Bosh hit his arm when making the pass.
-Chalmers and Bosh pick-and-roll. Parker switches onto Bosh after he gets the ball. Bosh hits a leaner from 15-feet. Decent enough defense on this possession.
-Parker gets double-teamed when receiving the ball around a pick. He makes the right pass to Duncan, who also gets double-teamed. Duncan is forced to throw it out of bounds off a Heat player. Duncan gets the inbounds pass, hands off to Parker and Parker hits a difficult floater in the lane.
-RJ picks up LeBron the next time up the court. LeBron tries to slip a pass to Anthony but the ball bounces off of Anthony's notoriously horrible hands and Parker snatches it.
-Bosh picks up Parker in transition. Parker pulls the ball out and runs some offense. The ball gets swung back to Parker (who still has Bosh on him). Parker dribbles in and misses his stepback jumper. That's a shot he's been hitting lately so I don't have a problem with it.
-On the way up the court after the Heat rebound, RJ gets switched onto Bosh. RJ fronts Bosh but the Heat are still able to get it to him. Duncan comes to rotate quickly but Bosh is able to catch and score in one motion.
-The Spurs post up Duncan. He hits his patented bank from 15-feet.
-Chalmers and Bosh pick and roll. Bosh slips the pick and Chalmers passes it to him ... but Duncan makes a great rotation to force the miss and then he grabs the rebound.
-Duncan makes a good outlet pass to Parker, who hits Blair ahead of the pack. Blair misses a contested layup and then Leonard misses the follow dunk.
-The Heat set a double screen on Leonard to get LeBron an open 17-footer, which he nails. Since it was a double screen, Blair should have been aware that Leonard wasn't going to get back to LeBron in time. Leonard also didn't do a very good job of getting around the screens.
-Parker and Blair pick-and-roll. Parker gets trapped and makes the right pass to Leonard. Leonard drives in and gets blocked by Anthony. Duncan ends up with the ball and misses an open 18-footer. Blair is called for a foul on the rebound.
-Another double screen set for LeBron. Leonard sees what's happening this time and stays right with LeBron. When LeBron catches the ball, he drives and then jumps back for a 16-footer, which he makes. Solid defense by Leonard; that was just a good shot by Lebron.
-The Spurs run their motion offense and it ends up in an isolation for Duncan. When Duncan drives to the basket, he gets triple-teamed. He finds RJ. RJ misses a wide open three-pointer.
LeBron gets the ball isolated against Leonard. He takes a power dribble and then jumps back and swishes a jumper. Decent defense by Leonard but he could have applied more pressure to LeBron.
-Motion offense set by the Spurs. Parker passes it into Blair who gets blocked ... but a foul is called. Not a good call by the ref.
-Another double screen set by the Heat. Leonard sticks right to LeBron. Duncan comes over to help. Anthony awaits a pass in the lane but is instead called for a three second violation.
-Parker and Duncan pick-and-roll. Parker gets fouled on the way to the basket. Parker gets the inbounds pass and finds Neal in the corner open for three (thanks to a double screen by Blair and Duncan). Neal misses but Duncan taps out the offensive rebound. Parker and Blair run a pick and roll. Parker gets trapped. Makes the right pass to Neal, who misses another three-pointer.
-Parker picks up LeBron in transition and forces him to pass. The Heat swing it around to James Jones. Leonard is slow with the rotation and then makes things worse by fouling Jones on a three-point attempt. Jones hits all three freebies.
-Motion offense leads to a pick-and-roll between Parker and Duncan. The Heat trap Parker and then send an extra man to Duncan. Parker's pass to Leonard is deflected. Leonard gets it, eventually passes it to Blair who misses a shot. Whistle blows because shot clock shouldn't have been reset. Spurs inbounds with two second on the shot clock and Neal misses a runner in the lane.
-LeBron isolates against Leonard on top. Leonard makes a mistake and lets LeBron drive middle. Duncan comes over to help. LeBron passes it to an open Anthony who dunks it. Bad D by Leonard.
-A messy motion set leads to a Parker and Blair pick-and-roll. Parker gets trapped, tries to split the double but the ball is knocked away. Parker recovers the fumble to force a jump ball, which he wins. With the shot clock running down, Parker shoot a three-pointer. On the rebound, Blair is held by Bosh but Blair picks up the loose ball foul.
-LeBron isolates against Leonard. Even though Leonard is close to him, LeBron rises and hits a three. Not much could have been done there.
-The Spurs run motion and end up with a Parker and Blair pick-and-roll. Parker gets trapped but goes to the baseline and shoots a ten footer. It wasn't a very good shot but it was also a lazy trap and his look was decent.
-LeBron James gets a pick in semi-transition from Anthony. He steps behind the screen and hits a leaning three-pointer. Leonard was completely screened off and Blair was about 15 feet away in the paint. Bad defense by Blair because, even though Anthony isn't a threat, he has to realize that LeBron is on fire at this point and needs to be ready to switch.
-Pick-and-roll between Parker and Duncan. Parker gets trapped and passes it off. Parker gets the ball back for another pick-and-roll with Duncan. Parker passes it to Green who makes a really good pass to a cutting Leonard. Unfortunately, Leonard gets stripped as he's going up for his shot and the Heat get the ball back.
-LeBron isolated against Leonard. LeBron acts surprised when Anthony comes over to set a pick. Leonard takes advantage and steals the ball.
-Pick-and-roll between Parker and Duncan. Parker trapped and passes it to Green. Green fakes, drives in but then gets the ball stolen when trying to make a crosscourt pass. In hindsight, he should have just dropped it off to Duncan.
-Leonard hustles back to breakup a fast break between LeBron and Bosh. LeBron and Anthony pick-and-roll. Duncan and Leonard play it perfectly and force LeBron to pass. Unfortunately, Cory Joseph leaves Chalmers wide open and Chalmers hits the three. Joseph simply can't leave a shooter wide open like that, especially when he wasn't offering any help anywhere else on the court.
-Green uses a pair of Duncan picks to get open ... but he misses an open floater in the paint. Can't really complain about that look.
-LeBron gets the ball in transition, gets picked up by Joseph, rises and makes another three-pointer. Unguardable.
Conclusions:
1. LeBron James is good at basketball. In this stretch, he did most of his damage with his jumper. While the Spurs could have done better against him a few possessions, I give LeBron most of the credit. When he's hitting three-pointers like he's a Person brother, there's not much that can be done.
2. In the second half, the Heat decided they wouldn't let Tony Parker beat them. Literally every time he made any type of move toward the basket, Parker was double-teamed. And in a vast majority of the cases, Parker did what he's supposed to do when he gets trapped. To beat such a trap, it requires crisp ball movement to the weakside of the court after Parker gives it up. We saw none of that.
3. The Heat were also doubling Duncan whenever he put the ball on the court. Against a team that is doubling your two best players, the role players should be able to get open. However, that didn't happen often enough, and even when it did, the role players missed every shot in this stretch.
4. A lot of talk about Miami's comeback concentrated on the "zone defense" the Heat utilized. But in truth, Miami didn't use a zone defense. What they were doing was trapping the ball and then sending a weakside defender to the strong side to cut off one of the immediate passing lanes. Again, ball movement following the trap should have produced open shots.
5. A lot of small errors -- Green's two mistakes at the end of the first half, Blair's lack of help defense on multiple occasions, Leonard's couple miscues, Duncan (and Blair) not rebounding, Joseph leaving a three-point shooter -- added up to cost the Spurs a lot of points. Those are exactly the type of cheap points you can't give up if you are trying to win a game on the road against a good team.
6. I don't think the third quarter meltdown could have been stopped by Pop. It's not like he was calling bad plays, the players who got the ball after there was a trap simply weren't making plays against a rotating defense. In retrospect, trying Splitter instead of Blair would make sense, but after Blair played his best first half of the season, it wasn't logical to bench him quickly in the third.
7. If we want to play the hindsight game, Pop should have called a lot more 4-down plays for Duncan. While it hasn't been a very effective play so far this season, it's easier to take advantage of a double-team in the paint rather than a double-team 30 feet from the basket.
8. In this Heat run, I didn't see where "softness" played much of a role. Pop should have saved his soft card for another day.
9. Oh, how sweet it would be if the Spurs had an energy defensive big like Joel Anthony. Yeah, he sucks on offense but his ability to trap the basketball and also protect the rim is really disruptive. Malcolm Thomas should be given videos of Anthony.
10. While the Heat are probably thrilled with their win, it wasn't a style of play that translates to the playoffs. You play that trapping and overloading defense in the playoffs and the other team will learn to adjust and destroy you. On offense, they basically just used two plays over and over again. That'll work in the regular season against a bad defensive team, but not in money time.