Do you all think Howard comes way too far up on the pick and roll. When he hedges LMA gets like 15 feet away from him leaving him wide open. We need to come up with better rotation on defense because when he doesn't Lillard just blows by for a layup or an uncontested Batum or Mathews uncontested three. Thoughts?
Howard/Asik needs to show sooner and help trap with the man guarding the PNR player. Scola was bad defensively at times, but he was a fantastic PNR defender. Let the help defense take away the pass to Aldridge and let the big recover.
Dwight almost never hedged in the regular season. I believe it was one of the reasons our perimeter defense was so bad. Lakers had the same perimeter problem last year with Dwight. Any defender will get caught by good picks. The big (Dwight) needs to hedge high, give his teammate time to recover, and get back to his man for defense while the weak side defender keep a close watch on the roll man. Dwight always iced PnR's and often ended up guarding the smaller guard for mismatch. Smart guards would either slowly dribble out (by faking for a midrang shot) and take Dwight out of paint area or drive by Dwight if he iced to high. Or the guard would expose the mismatch where our perimeter defender was guarding their center. Our defense sucked the regular season. We never had a true defensive system. Asik and Dmo hedged PnR's but Dwight and Jones iced. It led me to believe we just let our bigs played the way THEY preferred. Dwight was comfortable ice? Let him ice. Asik and DMo liked to hedge? Let them hedge. Imagine the confusion it did to the perimeter defenders? Remember in the regular season Lin/Brooks often ended up guarding Dirk? That was the price to pay for Dwight icing PnR's. Miami has one of the worst paint protection but they have one of the best perimeter defense in the league. They don't become this good by playing passive on PnR defense; they hedge and sometimes trap on every single PnR they encounter. Miami didn't win their championship on icing PnR's; they attack them aggressively. I was quite surprised to see Dwight hedged in the 4th quarter last night, even though he isn't very skilled at it. Maybe someone from the coaching staff has been reading my post. (j/k) It's beyond me why hadn't the coaching staff done this earlier in the regular season. Give Dwight time to adjust to hedging for the playoffs. I just hope it's not too late.
