I really like Scola and this really isn't to rail on him because what you get out of him for his salary is plus plus plus. But his lack of atheleticism was exposed tonight against powell. Powell had a career night (for his standards) on put backs and scores close to the basket. Scola wasn't quick enough to stay in front of him or keep off the boards. Scola's great on the offensive end but against athletic front lines, adelman has to consider playing landry more imo. you are already giving up athletecism with yao. or as in the second quarter, try to put landry and scola on the floor together more often.
Scola does ok against athletic 4s....but when he is rotating to cover up for Yao it exposes the weak side....for the put back.....which happened a lot last night. Mostly it is because Yao is so slow he can't guard a guy with a 15 foot jumper... DD
I agree he defended Gasol better than Powell, i actually think for next game, putting Scola on gasol is better than puting Yao who is easily taken out of the paint. A bit of a gamble, but if Scola can hold his own on Gasol (he usually can) we have a great shot by having Yao protecting the paint without having to move.
Landry is athletic but in terms of speed, Scola is the superior of the two, so Landry probably wouldn't have been able to keep up with Powell. Although putting both on the court at the same time might be a better solution considering how out hustled, Yao was being last night.
Yao was defending Gasol 90%, what part of the video did you watch? All the offensive put backs was on Scola and Landry.
Last night is probably a bad example. For whatever reason nobody seemed to read their scouting reports on Josh Powell and as others have already mentioned plenty of Powell's offensive boards and garbage points came whenever Scola technically wasn't his man.
The offensive putbacks are 3 on this video, 4 if you consider the one where yao lost the rebound off his hands.. remember that one? The first one is on Yao, by Powell the 0.59 mark, that is clearly Yao´s rebound, watch it. The second one is again from Powell, he is covered by artest, Kobe shoots, Yao is on Gasol but goes to the rim for the rebound, and Powell dunks it between him and Artest, mainly artest fault. This is at the 1.20 mark. Third one, Ball goes out for Powell, Scola is covering him, Powell shoots the contested JS and Ariza (covered by Artest) tips it in. (Yao was on Gasol, no fault on him). this is at the 1.35 mark. Fourth one is great, i remember the play, after a pick n roll Scola gets fisher to go to the left, he shoots form near the 3 pt line and misses, Yao gets the rebound, but the ball has butter on it, so Powell catches the ball and dunks it. Amazing play at 1.40 mark, we were up by 4.
I'm glad you brought this up. For all the good Scola does, his defense is yet to be desired. The Lakers didn't need Odom b/c Powell was scoring at will, and it's not just this game. A lot of times Scola just roams around on defense and he loses his man alot, then he tries to recover when it is too late. It's really frustrating.
put Hayes in. He might get a lot of rebounds from their scrub PF. Adelman made a big mistake by playing Yao in the 3rd quarter after seeing Lakers got all the rebounds.
Watch the video, Powell had only 3 offensive boards on the game, and you can see them all, none of them was on Scola. Sometimes is better to check the thread before writing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehR3lfhPqEo In my last post you have the minutes of each putback. Scola lost powell once for a dunk, closing the dribler in a pick n roll where a good pass from fisher led to powell being one on one with Yao, it ended up in a dunk, Yao said "it was a great dunk, i got to saw it very well from where i was"
Agreed last night's game is a bad example. Now, if you want to bring up Scola's performances against other athletic fours i'll listen but I don't see anybody doing that. BTW, that was Ariza following his own miss at the .59 mark.
To say the truth i would say that Scola always holds his own against athletic foours, maybe he gives up a rebound or two, but he gets his share of offensive rebounds as well on the other side. Lately i remember Scola guarding West very well. Maybe you can tell me certain player you think is a problem so i can check my vids or stats at least if i have no video samples. I think he had problems with this in the past, but now he holds his own quite well, and that´s why he is starting instead of hayes.
People will start to follow my lead when I said a while back scolandry doesn't compliment yao at all. Neither can really makeup for what he can't do. That's not to say they're not productive, but they play well and struggle vs the same type of player.
Sorry, just to clear some things up. Going off your times... #1 - This isn't Powell, this is Ariza, who is the shooter and rebounds his own miss, while absolutely no one blocks him out. Four defenders have a chance to block him out or grab the boards. The first two at blame are Landry and Wafer, who fail to block the guy out 20 feet from the basket. Then there's Yao and Lowry, who are closest rebounders. Still, Yao has never and will never be good at grabbing those types of boards. And, in this particular situation, I think Ariza tips it in if it's Dwight Howard down there, though Howard is certainly more likely to get the board than Yao would be. #2 - No, this is Scola's fault, and probably an example of why the thread was started. Artest wasn't guarding Powell, he was guarding the guy drifting back in the far corner for a potential three. Scola was guarding Powell, for some reason decided to completely leave him and come across the lane, then got confused, couldn't find Powell for the box out, and he tip-dunked it home over Scola, Yao and Artest. #3 - yep. #4 - yep. Horrible rebound by Yao. All that said, Yao has games where he rebounds horribly. This was one of them. But let's not say Scola was outplayed because he was covering for Yao's mistakes. It's just not true. Scola had some pretty boneheaded plays, and as the video shows NOBODY rebounded well. Even the laughable butterfinger play # 4. What's the one thing you notice that you didn't describe. Hint: it involves Aaron Brooks and once again, Trevor Ariza. Yao still should have gotten that rebound, but in actuality, Aaron's attempted boxout of Trevor is even more laughable than Yao's butterfingers. Short of being completely and outright dominant in the category (Rodman, Howard, KG, Moses) rebounding is a team sport as much as anything. That said, Yao had some very oafish moments last night.
