They are doubling the ball off the screens and they are supposed to have another player rotate out to Aldridge, and the guy helping on the ball is supposed to rotate down to guard the open man. Aldridge is open all those times because the person who is supposed to be rotating out on Aldridge is not doing his job. That's why Jones looks like he's saying "wtf" to Dwight in one of those screen caps. Jones was helping on the ball, and Dwight was supposed to rotate over on Aldridge... but he stayed home and let him shoot.
The pick and roll defense is atrocious. When Aldridge sets a high pick, Beverly sometimes have a hard time knowing to go under or over the pick and Howard comes out way too high (e.g. the first and second screen shot). When this happens, the other 3 defenders don't know how to read and react. Jones or whoever's at the 4 could slide over for help defense and contain Aldridge but LaMarcus could very well dump it down to Lopez for an easy dunk. Based on the screen caps, the next best option is to have the defender at the top of the paint become the help defender, leaving his man (Matthews and Batum in the shots) open. Sure you don't want to leave an open three point shooter but the odds that the three point shooter will still be open at that spot isn't that high considering the ball has to move from Aldridge cross court over to Batum/Matthews and, hopefully by then, Beverly can read/react and switch over to the open shooter. Unfortunately, the player/defender at the top of the paint in these shots include Harden, ballwatching. If Harden and Parsons are going to sag off of their assignments so much (as seen in the screencaps) then they need to commit in moving over to Aldridge and not get caught in no man's land.
That's what I am trying to say. If it is just one single play, I'd call Howard out for missing his assignment. But it is a consistent problem in the whole game, the coaches should be held responsible. It is their job to straighten Howard out to make sure he would play the defense correctly.
That was the adjustment they made. They were purposely hedging high on the ball to prevent the pick and pop. This of course leaves the roll man open. The player playing down low is supposed to rotate to Aldridge. And yes, this leaves Lopez open. So Jones or whoever was hedging has to hustle back to deny a possible pass to Lopez or whoever Dwight is leaving open. That was an adjustment the Rockets made for game 2... the players just were not executing.
It's like against the Thunder this season, Derek Fisher would drive into the paint, and the whole Rockets team would collapse, leaving Durant or some other shooter wide open.
I made mention of this in the game thread. If you go back and look, the first several pages after the game had started were full of people just absolutely killing Terrence Jones page after page because Aldridge was scoring. I pointed out that Jones wasn't even the person assigned to guard him on a lot of those shots and somebody told me, "Well, you can't expect Howard to score all the points and guard the other team's best player too." I didn't even respond because I was thinking to myself, I sure can when he is making 20 million dollars. Dream did it. I'm tired of that excuse for Harden and I'm sure not going to accept that in Howard's case. We need to play better defense. Write it down, if we play better defense it will lead to easy buckets on offense and the problems will be resolved. Harden led the league in transition points this year and you get those by making defensive stops. He needs more open court opportunities to get himself going and then the jumpshots will start falling. Order will be restored. First though...play some sound defense and get the rebound.
This is why it's hard to assess how good a particular player is on defense... because defense really is a team effort. A player will be switching and rotating every possession so a good part of the time you aren't even guarding your own man.
And you're right vator... getting stops leads to Rockets points. More than other teams because they are so good at running the floor. Getting stops = getting buckets. But they know this. I've heard them mention it several times during the year in interviews, so I know it's something the coaches talk about a lot. It just comes down to execution.
There ain't anything you can do. You have to pick between these. Give them mid-range shots (LMA), 3 pts (their PG, SG, SF), baskets shots (Lillard rolling), POST (LMA). Of those, still make the most sense to give up the mid-range. You just got to outscore them. Up to Harden.
Another thing that really bothers me looking at these still shots is how we don't run enough pick and roll with Dwight. Look at the kind of mismatch/crossmatch issues this causes when you do it. Stockton and Malone made a living off of this one simple play and yet supposedly Dwight doesn't like this play because he thinks he should be in the post. Simplist play in basketball and yet still one of the most devestating when you have 2 guys that can execute it. There is no reason we shouldn't be pick and rolling teams to death with Howard/Harden, Howard/Parsons, and Howard/Lin.
You can't run the PnR with Dwight the same way Stockton and Malone ran it for the simple reason Dwight has zero game 5 feet away from the basket. The best option if you're going to run the PnR with Dwight is to use him the same way Chris Paul used Tyson Chandler in New Orleans and DeAndre in LA and I don't think we have the exact personnel (e.g. a point guard that can make that pass) on our team. That being said, there's absolutely no reason not to use Asik/Jones/whoeversatthe4 in a PnR for Harden/Lin/Beverly. It serves three purposes: one, it actually keeps Howard down low to control the boards and to get putbacks; two, it forces Aldridge to help on defense thereby opening up a shot for Jones/Garcia/Dmo/whoeveryouwantto throw out there; three, it makes us the aggressor and puts us at the free throw line.
I agree with you 100% on the "not executing" part. This is where a 3 and D player can help out tremendously but sadly we don't have a 3 and D guy on the team.
What to do in these situations: *clapclap* "Guys, we've got to play some defense!" *clapclap* "Oh, and move the ball!"
