Great breakdown of Game 2

[Budkin]

Very revealing with regards to the collapse. Coach Nick with another excellent one.


http://youtu.be/jYkRTilrVfo

[eDizzle20]

Nice breakdown for sure. I get the impression he felt like this was a game that the Spurs lost by their mental mistakes, Manu especially, as opposed to the Heat playing well.

[TDomination]

Awesome breakdown.

Adjustments will be made, Spurs will be making smarter decisions on those Lebron screens

[Splits]

Obviously Coach Nick is a Popsucker and Manu-hater since he didn't blame Neal enough.

[BatManu20]

:tu Spurs should watch this.

[TE]

:tu Spurs should watch this.
ESPECIALLY the Spurs perimeter players. They were out of position plenty of times...just can't do that with all of Miami's snipers.

[Budkin]

:tu Spurs should watch this.

I'm sure Pops film team can see all this stuff. They just have to implement the counters.

[elmanutres]

coach nick is such a great basketball analyst. Better than espn/abc half ass analysts. what the hell is he doing coaching high school level, he should coach professionally and start off at a college or something. If isiah thomas can get a coaching job for the knicks, then coach nick can get a coaching job.

[TheGoldStandard]

I'm sure Pops film team can see all this stuff. They just have to implement the counters.

Gary Neal locked in a closet.

[silverblackfan]

As usual, a great analysis. Manu earned the criticism, but hopefully he got all that bad motion out of his system for the rest of the playoffs.

[Seefourdc]

The Spurs mistakenly thought the Heat had a shooters slump going on. In reality the Pacers are a far, far better defense because they can man up and switch 1 to 1 on most pick and rolls due to their youth and length. Focusing on just shutting down Lebron was a terrible idea because the reason the Heat shot such bad percentages against the Pacers is the Pacers didn't rotate AT ALL for help defense until Lebron started posting up George and embarrassing him. The 3's were very defended, especially Battier due to him shooting out of the right corner as his preference. (Bad for a right handed shooter if defended properly because you have nowhere to dribble to)

The Spurs have to back out of this crashing on Lebron strategy, the only problem is the Heat already figured out a solution to not crashing with the Chalmers/Lebron PnR which was both circumventing the crashing by itself and showing that the Spurs don't really have a way to defend those two in the PnR due to the defenders the Spurs have in that situation on the weak side. You end up with Parker, Green, etc. on Lebron who bulls them to the hoop or Kawhi just ends up out of place and Chalmers shoots a 5 foot floater over an out of place Duncan/Splitter. You already saw what rotating to that side does with Lebron throwing across the court for open 3's.

So what do you do?

[spurs10]

Great analysis, thanks!

[InRareForm]

knew manu was bad that game, but this breakdown magnified it

[BillMc]

I'm a huge Manu fan, but man the breakdown really shows what a horrible game he had.

[Em-City]

is it me, or are many lebron's screens illegal screens due to the fact that he sticks his knees out so widely when he sets them??

[Seefourdc]

is it me, or are many lebron's screens illegal screens due to the fact that he sticks his knees out so widely when he sets them??

There are no rules about your legs. People are taught to do screens a certain way from early on the same way so you see pretty much all of them done the same way.

[freetiago]

The Spurs mistakenly thought the Heat had a shooters slump going on. In reality the Pacers are a far, far better defense because they can man up and switch 1 to 1 on most pick and rolls due to their youth and length. Focusing on just shutting down Lebron was a terrible idea because the reason the Heat shot such bad percentages against the Pacers is the Pacers didn't rotate AT ALL for help defense until Lebron started posting up George and embarrassing him. The 3's were very defended, especially Battier due to him shooting out of the right corner as his preference. (Bad for a right handed shooter if defended properly because you have nowhere to dribble to)

The Spurs have to back out of this crashing on Lebron strategy, the only problem is the Heat already figured out a solution to not crashing with the Chalmers/Lebron PnR which was both circumventing the crashing by itself and showing that the Spurs don't really have a way to defend those two in the PnR due to the defenders the Spurs have in that situation on the weak side. You end up with Parker, Green, etc. on Lebron who bulls them to the hoop or Kawhi just ends up out of place and Chalmers shoots a 5 foot floater over an out of place Duncan/Splitter. You already saw what rotating to that side does with Lebron throwing across the court for open 3's.

So what do you do?

If Miami is running a Chalmers/Lebron pnr it would mean that they are playing smallball with James at the 4
that means the best way to stop it is from preventing it from happening in the first place
the easiest way to do that is by NOT playing smallball aka Gary Neal
i have no idea why Diaw is playing such low minutes but he has to play the 4 and some 3 in this series and abuse the SGs who will be guarding him like Mike Miller/Ray Allen and possibly Shane Battier
Duncan/Splitter have to be in as much as possible and they have to beat their matchups in the post or in the roll
if Miami is playing Bosh/Haslem or Bosh/Birdman then there isnt any space for Lebron to run the pnr
and honestly its not that hard to defend
Spurs can give up midrange shots to Chalmers/James
theyre not that good at them to consistently beat them over a 48 minute game with it

[Seefourdc]

If Miami is running a Chalmers/Lebron pnr it would mean that they are playing smallball with James at the 4
that means the best way to stop it is from preventing it from happening in the first place
the easiest way to do that is by NOT playing smallball aka Gary Neal
i have no idea why Diaw is playing such low minutes but he has to play the 4 and some 3 in this series and abuse the SGs who will be guarding him like Mike Miller/Ray Allen and possibly Shane Battier
Duncan/Splitter have to be in as much as possible and they have to beat their matchups in the post or in the roll
if Miami is playing Bosh/Haslem or Bosh/Birdman then there isnt any space for Lebron to run the pnr
and honestly its not that hard to defend
Spurs can give up midrange shots to Chalmers/James
theyre not that good at them to consistently beat them over a 48 minute game with it

Maybe so but Pop doesn't seem to think that's viable. Maybe he doesn't think they can score with Diaw on the floor? Also considering Diaw weighs more and is shorter than James how is that going to solve that PnR situation? The problem is whoever is guarding Chalmers is going to get steamrolled by James. Playing a bigger man on James means he's going to chase Chalmers... how does that even help? The Heat need two people on the court who can both handle James size/speed and Chalmers speed at the PG. The only guy capable of that is Leonard and that's why this is such a huge mismatch situation. Diaw on Chalmers will probably be a layup without help defense and if he tries to trap it's a layup. It's a terrible weakside situation.

[freetiago]

Leonard sits back in the paint near the free throw line area and steps infront of Chalmers
he can play the passing lanes if they try to hit James and its up to the PG defending Chalmers to attempt to put some pressure on Chalmers by fighting over the screen
he could even go underneath all the screens and just basically double James and prevent the pass to him
If Miami wants to live with Chalmers launching mid range shots all day I have no problem with that
Duncan is still protecting the rim if Chalmers does beat them off the dribble or James rolls to the rim

Spurs can make a few adjustments to that and probably not ever seeing that play run is what threw them off
Leonard doesnt have much experience if any being a roll defender though ive made threads thinking he could have been earlier this year since he could defend pick and pop bigs well with his speed/length on rotations

I read that Miami had 0 points off that Chalmers/James Pnr in game 1 and like 16 in game 2
its a great play for Miami to run and now that SA has seen it they have multiple options on how to defend it

[spurspokesman]

If Diaw would just use his size and give the heat something to think about ala David West that would force the heat to make an uncomfortable adjustment. I can't imagine Tim and Manu playing this terrible again. Duncan played a soft brand of basketball as well and refused to demolish that pathetic frontline of Miami and allowed them to go small without the worry of getting abused in the paint. The spurs played to miamis strength and our perimeter players can be as intelligent as cucumbers at times costing us also,hopefully the proper adjustments will be made.

[spurspokesman]

The biggest thing we have to defend is our turnovers tbh. Less turnovers less energy spent and oppurtunities for miami to pick us apart.