Again, I'd much rather let Boozer take J's all day than get buckets in the paint. Plus, if he's out there, there's a much less probability of him getting the offensive rebound. Last time we played the Jazz, Rafer played some pretty good D on Deron. He helped hold DW to 5-15FG. I'm not worried about him as much as I'm worried about the PnR.
On occasion, we have used a basic zone. Regardless, JVG's whole defensive philosophy relies on alot of zone principles.
I wouldn't for obvious reasons. Besides, we can't pack Yao into the paint anyway. Its illegal. I am. Deron is a pretty good shooter.
That's not who we are?? Earlier in the year we had some success mixing in some zone sparingly. I'm not sure why we stopped running zone defense. I have a feeling JVG's got some zone plays under his sleeves against Utah...he's a great game to game adjuster in the playoffs, that definitely will happen if we can't slow down Utah's P&R.
I like the idea. But as mentioned, they could use whoever Yao is guarding to set the pick. So who will Yao be guarding that has the worst outside shooting? Boozer, Okur, Harpring...well, all of them have pretty decent shooting. It is going to be tough. SI
Huh? So you'd rather have Boozer taking Hayes to the hole or easily shooting over him? With Hayes guarding him, you'd want Okur taking Yao out to the perimeter and hitting shots over him? C'mon you know what I mean. Yao can stay near Boozer but not stay in the actual painted area the whole time. You know how Yao was blocking Boozer a lot in the last game? It was because Okur wasn't taking him out to the perimeter. Yao was in the paint! Again, that "good shooter" went 5-15 against us in the last game. Today, he went 1-9 against the Suns with Nash guarding him LOL. OK, I don't know for sure if Nash was guarding him. I'm guessing. Anybody care to tell me who was guarding Deron today?
Team work. Other teammates must help. Force the opponents to make more passes and force the ball rotated to someone we can afford leaving open. As for Utah, I don't mind if the ball end in AK behind the arc. When T-Mac and Yao PnR, the opponents usually double team T-Mac to make it hard for him to penetrate or pass, and leave Yao to other players. We can learn from it. It takes 5 to make good D.
Look at the teams we've played recently that use PnR. Did we use zone at all? Seriously, I don't know. I'm a loser UT student who's stuck in Austin and can't watch any games now that MMS links are gone. Are we playing zone? If not, what makes you think we'll do something like that in the playoffs? You could argue that a pack the paint defense is technically a zone defense concentrated in the paint. There, you got me.
The Tmac and Yao PnR kills me everytime, because two players will just keep doubling Tmac and ignore Yao. And Tmac has to circle around at least 1 player to initiate something, why can't Yao hit a midrange jumper, just like his FT?
The fact is if the player Yao guards can shoot the jumper and/or is very mobile and the dribbler is very quick and/or can shoot the jumper, we will have a tough time defending the PnR. That's just the way it's gonna be. Deron Williams and Carlos Boozer will have success against us unless they lose their shooting touches. So will Nash and Amare. Like Codell said, help defense and rotating are key for us because Yao will not be able to keep up after making the switch. Yao can help us a lot though when he "shows" by being very active and doing his best to prevent a direct pass to the paint. The Hornets usually broke us down by using an extra pass to feed the paint for wide open shots. On other occasions, Chris Paul waited until Yao finished "showing" and when Yao turned his back Paul went like a bullet to the bucket for a layup or dish-off. Fortunately not all PGs are as quick as Paul. Neither Nash nor Deron Williams can do that so easily. The ideal way to stopping a PnR is when the defender "shows", he must create enough havoc that the dribbler cannot take immediate advantage of being guarded by a bigger player on the perimeter. He's got to keep his hands up and waving and do all possible to keep the dribbler in front of him for as long as possible, forcing the dribbler to make a pass to someone else on the perimeter. However, if the dribbler has great court vision, he could find a cutter and you are dead. Even if the dribbler passes to the perimeter, the "show-er" must hustle back to the paint to prevent his man from getting an easy pass from someone else. Hope this makes sense. I'm too tired to proofread it.
Use a zone defense. Nobody does the PnR against a zone defense, there's no point. But the zone has it's own weaknesses and we're not very good at it anyway. The PnR is just a play we're going to have trouble with in the playoffs. Remember Battier's great 1 on 1 defense against Kobe in the last game against the lakers? Well at the end, the lakers just used a bunch of picks to set Kobe free and Yao couldn't step out enough. You can't blame Yao, there's no big man in the league that'll challenge a guy on the perimeter like Battier can. Nash, Deron, and Terry will use those picks to death. We need to double the ball handler and have a third guy rotate to cut off the screen setter. That'll leave another guy wide open, but at least we'll make them work that much harder. We can also switch after the pick like the mavericks do, but I don't think it's in our advantage to have Yao switch. And he'll likely be involved in all the picks we see in the postseason.
nice description, i couldn't figure out what teams were exploiting with yao's P&R defense. you put it best.
Many people have said before that Shaq stayed under the basket all the time during the Lakers championship years and didn't show up to defend the perimeter at all. So how did the Lakers defend the P&Rs?
They didn't. It burned them all the time. Mike Bibby was absolutely fantastic shooting off those screens in the WCF because Shaq wouldn't show. But no one could stop the lakers on the other end. Ever.