How to combat switches on the pick and roll?

[ViceCity86]

Parker manning up and blowing by that scrub Thabo.

[wut]

not going to happen without help, as mentioned earlier Spurs need to do a double pick-n-roll to get Parker started....again once Parker has his confidence of burning his man he remains aggressive the rest of the game, so you only need to run a couple double pick-n-rolls to confuse the defense enough to get Parker going.

[Proxy]

Take advantage down low. Tim, Tiago, Boris, Blair... all need to take advantage of the mismatch and make the right pass if the defense collapses. Spurs will make them pay tonight.

[z0sa]

Simply punish the mismatches. It means a different dynamic than simply abusing a screen, but it is actually a gimmicky strategy IMHO that will not work for more than this last game... provided the Spurs take advantage of course.

[MannyIsGod]

On paper it SHOULDN'T work.

Ginobili SHOULD be able to take Ibaka/Perkins whenever they switch to him. He negates this advantage if he takes a pull up 3 every time this happens (see:last night).

Our bigs SHOULD be able to score on Fisher/Durant/Harden down low. They negate this advantage by getting weak position and weak ass offensive foul calls. Also, Firecrotch being in the game becomes a disadvantage if they can switch off his picks freely and stick WNBA players on him.

Exactly.

If Perkins is on the floor, he should be involved in every PnR. Manu can't let Perkins block him at the 3 point line. Likewise, Tiago has to go straight to the basket and not try to post up on Fisher on the wing.

If the switch was some magical way to defend the PnR then the PnR would not be the best play in basketball history. When a switch occurs, you get mismatches. Its up the Spurs not to play stupid and to take advantage of those mismatches and to move the ball and make sagging defenders pay.

[MannyIsGod]

1. Take the ball out of Tony's hands, and have him run the baseline, a la Ray Allen. RUN THABO'S ING LEGS OFF trying to keep up. He's a MUCH better on the ball defender than off the ball, and the bonus is tired legs lead to short shots.

2, When they go small, IMMEDIATELY move Tim to the high post and post up Diaw on Durant. Diaw can score in the paint, or be the spoke of the wheel, finding cutters and spot up shooters. Back him down, Make him use his legs to hold post position. Tired legs lead to short shots. Playing Diaw on the perimeter against KD plays to KD's strengths. Playing Diaw in the post plays to KD's weaknesses. He's not strong at all, and Diaw has that big ol' butt to keep banging into him and backing him down.

I actually like #1 a lot. The problem is the lack of ball handlers on this team. You can do that when Manu is in the game but I'm not sure you can do it many other times.

[MannyIsGod]

The Spurs need to play faster also. And I'm not talking more possessions (although they need to do that too), I'm talking about getting down and start screening with 18-20 seconds on the shot clock and not with 12-14. The Spurs will likely need to run multiple screens and move the ball around a good deal in order to get an open shot off the OKC rotations and that simply can't be done as efficiently if you're starting too late in the shot clock.