Zones can be effective with the right personnel and the right implementation. We have neither. We are utilizing it with 2 slow footed bigs. The 2 bigs lineup is the problem. The last 2 games have made it clear. Last night should have made it clear to even Ime. Every time we played with a normal basketball team we won the minutes. Every time we played 2 bigs we lost. The SA game was even worse. 56 second chance points mostly produced by smallish forwards with clear lanes on most every occasion when we were in zone. I think we can maybe get better at zone when DFS gets back and we don’t have Sengun and Adams or Capella playing double bigs. Zones are always acceptable to poor defensive rebounding, so I hope we limit their use.
This is factually inaccurate. The Rockets were + in the game with double bigs, and only lost 2 of the 6 stints (2 of the 4 with just Adams and Sengun as the Capela double big lineups were very small samples). Over the last 2 games, the Sengun-Adams lineup is +/- 0 (+1 with the Capela double bigs which I don't typically count).
If you winning without 2 bigs why is it not a problem to lose 2 of the 4? It is trending the wrong way and the zone is giving up way too many offensive rebounds. Adams can’t guard anyone outside of the lane and he isn’t really that great inside of the lane. It’s nice to get offensive rebounds and they we uber important when we chuckers like FVV and Jalen on the perimeter. Not so much with currently the best 3 pt shooting in the league. Amen and Jabari will start hitting those middies sooner rather than later and the offensive rebounding stats will become that much less important.
It’s an interesting experiment and clearly the team thinks that there’s some combination of personnel and skills that make this our best option. But it’s super annoying to watch and just because it is working mediocre well right now does not mean that it will work in crunch time against good teams. Now, if we’re actually good in the zone defense, I wouldn’t complain as much. it’s great to have all the guys on the same page and be able to throw a zone defense at certain teams in certain situations but I don’t know if it’s just me but every time we run a zone defense I think we look stupid.
Exactly, Zones work well when all the players have speed. Double Bigs and zone should always be situational things but Ime is stubborn as hell. They could even do something like a matchup zone to where the big switches on whoever drives and the wing guards his man on the perimeter. No one chases their man to the paint just guard the perimeter. We have too many wings on the roster to be playing two non shooting big men at the same time. And lastly this team overall needs to shoot more threes.
We look stupid because we have the personnel to be a great man to man defensive team. Why limit your best defensive player to guard one area on the floor? If I’m the other team I’ll just put my best player in the free throw line area and let him create. 2-3 zone is so ****ing easy to beat! OKC understands it because Shai and Chet feasted from that area of the zone. Zone only work against confused high school/college teams that don’t pass well. Ime need to wake tf up because he probably loss us a couple games because of it.
I think part of the equation is Ime probably has orders from the GM saying he has to play Reed 20 minutes a night. He may have decided that since Reed gets exploited man to man so he’s going to have to play zone. But he’s also playing a lot of zone when Reed is not in the game. Who knows, hopefully they just get better at the zone and save it for certain situations.
Is there a more precise number for PPP with zone? It looks like it's slightly below 1.1 in the chart. If that's it, then it's not too bad.
