On a couple of occasions today, including one time when Lillard drove on Harden and got to the basket, JVG commented that the nearest perimeter defender (Lin in the case of the Lillard/Harden play) should have stepped in to cut off the driving lane even at the cost of possibly giving up an 3 point shot. Now, some here all season have talked about how it's a mistake to "help one pass away" and "Coach Nick" from bballbreakdown.com keeps harping on how it's a mistake to "help one pass away." So, thoughts on this? Is it wrong to help one pass away? I think it's depends on the situation: how good a shooter are you guarding, how good is the man with the ball at penetrating the paint, do you have a rim protector in the paint. Today, the decisions were pretty hard since there are no good options. Portland had 5 guys on the court who could make at least 20 footers, including Aldridge who was drawing Howard away from the paint and 4 guys who can shoot 3s efficiently. The season-long stats probably says to have Howard leave Aldridge to protect the paint in that situation, but that **** didn't work the first two games.
Hindsight is always 20/20. If he had left Williams (or was it Mathews) and Lillard passed for the open 3, Lin would've been crucified regardless. JVG doesn't think sometimes, way too emotional. Razorblade? Seriously?
it's situation specific, and the only way to know when and when not to help is from years of experience as a veteran player
Lots of different philosophies of defense. "Never help from one pass away" is not the consensus among all coaches. JVG is in the "stunt and recover" school. Play the dribbling lane with help, stunt so the dribble stops, recover to your man. Which is probably the most popular among high school coaches.
It's a tough call and I don't know the right answer as to helping when the Rockets go small and LA draws Dwight away from the rim. Zone defense, however, IS THE RIGHT ANSWER when they go small.
CH, the hardest thing for young players to do is give up their man. The really good defensive teams do it without a 2nd thought because they trust the rotations.
If you have a team that's accustomed to giving full all-out effort on defense, you can help/rotate/retract back to your guy in order to employ this sort of penetration-denying defense. This team just doesn't have that sort of defensive mindset. They're actually not a bad bunch of individual defenders (besides Harden)... but there's a lot of effort issues, and no team concept/focus to get stops.
I think if your guarding a guy who just scored something like 7 points in 2 minutes off of jump shots, it's probably not a terrible idea to stay home somewhat but show slightly on the drive or p&r help. On that play, maybe Lin could have helped a bit more, but I don't know if you just leave Mo Williams to help on the Lillard drive. I dunno, it's pretty much a toss up in that situation.
In that case it shouldn't be Lin helping off of a perimeter player then. It should be Harden funneling Lillard into the paint and having Howard/Jones/Asik rotate over and have a perimeter player on the weakside temporarily cover the interior pass.
With Lin guarding an unpredictably hot Mo Williams, I think it's a fifty-fifty call on whether or not he did the right thing by not committing to the drive. Guarding a player that is even slightly less hot? CLOG THE LANE AND STOP THE DRIVE!
I think it depends on the proximity. Lin was close enough to hedge on Lillard and stop the ball and he wouldn't have had to cover too much ground for a hard close out on his man. This likely would have led to a drive by from a much less efficient finisher or passing (ultimately leading to a reset of the offense). If you watch the top defensive teams in the league they all help and recover. The problem with a team like the rockets is that they get blown by too often and to add insult to injury they don't hustle back to recover (with the exception of Beverley). If the rockets want to take that next step, they simply can't get blown by from average penetrators like Batum or Mathews. Ultimately, you want to force a low percentage shot attempt. You can't do that if every peremeter player on the opposing team can get the ball all the way to the rim.
For that particular play, we all know Lin would have been called for a foul on Lillard (aka 2 made FTs) if he swiped at the ball. Doesn't matter if he got a clean dislodge. Lillard is getting Harden star calls now.
Who else could help in that situation? Assuming you have Batum cutting from the weak side for the kick out three if the rim is protected, would you want Lin to help on the drive and have whoever was guarding Batum drop to the corner? The problem is, with the talent in the NBA, the ball-handler can usually make the right play either to Batum for the wing three. I'm more in agreement with the "stunt and recover" philosophy from my experience playing. Like on offense, sometimes all it takes is to fool the opponent into thinking you're going to do something you're not. What makes a great player is knowing what to actually do; knowing when you've outplayed your opponent in that one possession.
What you do is come off the weakest 3 point shooter like dorell or batum and if they have good 3 point guys like mo williams then you switch harden on mo williams and mouse in the house him in the paint so it at least makes them think twice about the line up, however thats so far down the list of our terrible defense its not even funny, I can't even list everything cuz I dont feel like talking typing that much.
The problem with this is we never come over so their team knows EXACTLY what were going to do every time on the pick and roll so we are always a step behind, McHale/our coaching is the worst I've ever seen of any nba team in the playoffs, that's not an exaggeration... the worst ever.
