Jim Cleamons on the Lakers' offense in Game 1

I found this from a LA media guy's blog, which has an interview with Cleamons on LA's play in Game One, after their practice on Tuesday, thought it's interesting.

Jim Cleamons on the Lakers' offense in Game 1
Tuesday in El Segundo, as players were clearing out a few of us media types stopped to speak with Lakers assistant coach Jim Cleamons. Generally, these quieter moments with members of the coaching staff can reveal a little more detail about what's going on, where (in this case) the Lakers went wrong, and the approach in terms of fixing it for tonight's Game 2.

No surprise, patience and execution are dominant themes.
Jim Cleamons: Often times we'll tell our guys to "line 'em up." And what (that) means is to get to your positions on the floor and then let the ball work for you. You see the defense, you recognize what the defense is trying to do, and now you let the ball do its work. And that's the purpose of running the offense. It's not to get so-and-so a shot. Those are specific plays. But within the framework of the offense, it's to get everyone involved. So there's no sense in rushing to take shots, especially early in the ballgame because you need to see how the defense is configured and what the defensive scheme is, so that you can play with a sense of poise and understanding.

"Okay, this is their game plan for the night."

Now you let the ball move and you let our play selection now identify who is going to get shots and the rhythm those shots are going to come. But if you hurry up to do it, then you never establish a flow or rhythm to the game. So all night long, like (Monday) night, I thought we were just out of rhythm. And that's one of the reasons that we didn't shoot the ball well, particularly in the first half, and I think as the game wore on, it hurt us because we didn't establish anything that we needed to do at the offensive end of the floor.

Q: If you see a team that comes out flat like you did, or at least not at the same level as Houston, how can you adjust to that during a game? As opposed to at practice the day after. Is there something you can say? Actions you can take as a coaching staff?

Cleamons: I thought in the third quarter that we played a little better. Early on, Kobe (Bryant) missed some shots that you would normally think he would make, and that he will make. Third quarter, I thought we found a little bit of the rhythm, but in the fourth quarter I thought once again we fell back into the trap of trying to do things too quickly, and that kind of got us totally out of sync. And our defense let us down in the sense that we fouled too often and too early and too much.
Their parade to the foul line in the fourth quarter actually contributed more to us losing the game than anything that we did during the course of the game.

(Note: It seemed like Cleamons was on his way to answering the question, but got a little sidetracked along the way. Still, I think his note about fouling late is a good one. Against a team like Houston that doesn't pile up points on their own, it's important to keep them off the line and not make things easier.)

Q: Against a team like Houston who is strong and disciplined defensively, do you have to be more proactive offensively? Not so much a physical toughness, but a mental toughness to keep going through options if the first one doesn't present itself, and so on?

Cleamons: That's why you run a continuity offense. I'll reference it to what little I know about football, in the sense that the quarterback in a passing situation, he drops back and he has progressions he works himself through. And every time each one of our players touches the basketball, he has four people he can pass the ball to. I thought we were really impatient in making our decisions as to "Is he open?" "Is this the best choice?" Our philosophy is that you hit the first open man. If he's open, then you're supposed to hit him. Quite naturally, we trust certain people more than others, but at the same point in time, those choices have to be made indiscriminately in order for the ball to flow and move.

When you get to this stage of the season and as well as teams play defense in this league- they're all watching film, too- the ball has to change sides of the floor. Anytime the ball gets locked in on one side, their defense now becomes more like a zone. Now you don't have ball movement, you don't have player movement, so that zone doesn't shift. It's sitting in there, and you've got five pair of eyes locked on to one person who has the basketball, and he's trying to literally beat five guys by himself.

Until that ball starts to move. When it does, zones start to get stretched, and when zones get stretched there's now room and opportunity and spacing for drives, drives and kicks, and open jump shots.

 

That should be expected from the other team's coach.

But if you step back, think about the game 1 again, those FTs were the difference, whatever the reason behind it.