Ironic that you just posted that as I posted the same thing in a response to Mathloom haha. I grew up playing the PG position so I'm very aware of how that action's supposed to run. I'm nowhere near the level of player a pro player or even a high-level college player is, but that means fundamentals become even more important, if you don't create that mismatch often you don't even have a chance at scoring at all at the level I played.
Nope I want as many attempt as he can take if he’s shooting 40% . Harden took more at a less efficient rate
I just think our whole offense sucks. I know there's no stat for this but if you could somehow come up with an "easy bucket" percentage, I think the rockets would be really low. This would include transition, wide open catch&shoot 3s, uncontested rim shots via cuts, lobs/dunks, etc. All easy shots that you can set up from effective offensive actions. Tally that all up and make it a percentage of your overall offense, how many of them are easy shots, that's a number I want to see. I think our "easy bucket %", we can call this advanced analytic EB%, seems really really low compared to the rest of the league. Ime doesn't seem like the guy to fix this unfortunately. During his time in Boston the celtics thrived on tough shot making because of their personnel. But even still, with Udoka as their coach they were the #7 offense in the league. With Joe Maz, they've been 2nd, 1st, and 1st over the past 3 years.
There's just fundamental flaws in how we execute most of our actions, and that means we don't actually create the easy buckets very often. We only run very few actions tbh anyway and we only run the first step of most of them with no real back up plan but I'll use the PnR as the example: Rockets style PnR Action 1 - Sengun sets a pick for Jalen/Fred, which he actually does well, that part of the action's fine. The issue is that they barely move laterally off the screen, it's either 2 steps and chuck or they push forward directly behind Sengun who then rolls in a fairly straight line beside them towards the basket. The issue with this step is that Alpi's original defender just has to (and always does) step backwards 2 feet and he can now easily guard either Alpi or Jalen/Fred because they're both right in front of him regardless of whether they drive themselves or dump it straight back to Alpi. How we SHOULD be running it. Action 1 - Runs the same in the first initial move, the difference comes in Jalen/Fred coming more laterally off the screen, 5-6ft instead of 2ft. Now, if their original defender wants to keep up they have to fight over the screen and they actually shouldn't be able to get a hand anywhere near the 3pt shot instead of being right on it if Jalen/Fred shoot. It's less of a chuck because they get an extra second to set the shot. Alternatively, the drive is now several feet away from Sengun's roll path. Action 2 - Alpi's original defender now has a choice to make when the ballhandler retains the ball and moves forwards, he either moves across to contest them, at which point Alpi has a wide open path to the basket (with Jalen/Fred;s defender who is much smaller chasing him from behind ie BBQ chicken) OR he stays guarding Alpi at which point Jalen/Fred have a clear path to the basket themselves. Action 3 - If Alpi's defender moved to guard Jalen/Fred then the ball got passed back to Alpi and the wing defender (Jabari's man) has a choice, he either moves in and helps at which point Alpi passes to Bari for the corner 3 wide open, or he doesn't and Alpi walks in the gimme bucket. If Alpi's defender stayed on Alpi then Brooks' defender in the other corner has to make the same decision on the other side. We only do Action 1, and because the ballhandler doesn't move sideways enough on the screen we never actually create the advantages that lead to the later choices because the big man defender can just take 2 steps backwards and guard both sides of the action. Watch tonight and you'll see I'm not just pulling this out of my ass haha. I can do the same for the other 2 actions we run (ie the DHO and the Sengun post up.) We're playing a super primitive and under-executed offense, and you're right, we'd be very low in "EB%" as a result.
we might not be very bad on catch and shoot but definitely horrible on easy layup/dunks that you get by moving the ball, making cuts and setting off ball screens. I was very high on udoka but I am starting to think that his offensive coaching is very weak. And his Boston stint was in the significantly weaker east conference. not just is he limited in the offensive end, he seems to be not bothered by our problems on offense.
Offensively, I have a hard time blaming JG and Alperen right now. I wish we had Adelman running the show on O. Such a lack of creativity. JG and Al are both fantastic in DHOs and all we see is guards dribbling into threes. I don’t understand. We are going to rely on deflections and turnovers all damn season? It is a war crime that we haven’t seen Amen set an on-ball screen for Alperen. Why the hell isn’t JG running Fox/Sabonis or Murray/Jokic DHOs for easy looks? It is not a talent issue. IMO, it is a schematic issue with Udoka, who needs a better offensive AC.
Not just the East, but he had Brown and Tatum. Both of those guys are elite at generating good shots for themselves and their teammates. You don't need to run a lot of offensive sets when you have those two guys on your team. It's the same thing with Harden, he's just so ****ing good at taking advantages and has a very high basketball IQ offensively. The problem between those 3 guys is Harden doesn't really care about winning at the same level the Boston guys do.
It feels like when we had Tracy and Yao under JVG and everything on offense f’ing sucked, and then we got Adelman and everything opened up.
Yeah agreed. And tbh the small things that the players are doing wrong (ie the angles/distance off screens, the timing of actions etc) are things the coach should be easily fixing with 10 minutes in practise. You can't expect a player to make those corrections instinctively in the flow of the game, they don't have the separation from the action to see them, it's literally what the coaching staff are there for. Anybody claiming Udoka's coaching properly on the offensive end never played the game, they can't have done because this **** is absolute basic stuff. We have to work WAY too hard to get buckets, we should have a lot more easy ones and the defense should have to expend a lot more energy than they do stopping us. It's definitely not a talent issue - look at how many monster games Green has in his career with both high numbers AND high efficiency, we're talking historical numbers there. Alpi's a bonafide all-star player consistently. This is 100% down to the coach having zero chops on that side of the ball. People were slamming JJ Redick's hiring, but has anybody actually SEEN how pretty his offense is? That dude's scheming so well that it doesn't matter that the Lakers can barely hit a 3pt shot in a 3pt shooting league.
The amount of times that Fred/JG/Alperen have to invent up some BS on the fly makes them way less efficient than they could be. Even DB has to go full ISO 3 times a game because the offensive synergy is ass. We look great when we turn the other team over, but what about when that doesn’t happen and execution is at a playoff level? Gotta have a more creative offensive coordinator.
He's also not maximising the talent we have at all, the on-the-fly stuff is part a lack of scheming/plays (because most plays when you learn them have several backup options you go to when the first couple of actions fail) and part not putting people in the right spots on the offense. Why are Fred and Jalen stood next to each other at the top of the arc when they're running their actions when they're 2 of our best volume distance shooters? One of them guys should be in the bail-out spot on the wing for the (supposed) easy 3 when the defense collapses - that's never achieved by passing backwards in the direction you just came from. Why is the Sengun post up always against his actual regular defender? What advantage did we create there? It should actually be Sengun running a high post screen for either Jabari, Jalen (or even better, REED) as they come to the perimeter and if his defender closes on the shooter, he's now got a much smaller guy defending him in the post which is either easy buckets or he gets doubled and there's an easy kick out either to the open 3 or the extra pass to the open 3. This is basic **** that causes a defense to rotate/chase and expend energy, and we do NONE of it. We don't gas our opponents out of the game, we just hustle and hustle on our defense and make it easy for theirs.
Grant Williams is a tough defender, in the PJ Tucker/Chuck Hayes mold. He is a game breaker for a predictable offense. If you don’t have a creative way to get him moving, he is going to always be a pain in the ass tree stump against anyone. See GSW against 2018 Rox with Tucker/Gordon and KD postups. We invited that ****. Anything to stop the ball and player movement. Adelman was so good at moving the ball side to side out of the high post with the bigs, forcing those tree stumps to move their fat feet. Udoka decides to post up Alperen 25 feet away from the basket against the opposing team’s best tree stump. Ditto for JG against the opposing team’s best perimeter stump. That ain’t it.
Another thing I am still conflicted on regarding the PNR is these quick trigger off the dribble threes. Are these actually good shots? Like if we run a high screen and roll, Sengun sets a good pick, Jalen/FVV comes off the screen while his defender is still back there behind Sengun, and the other teams big is dropped back in the paint waiting for Sengun...how good of a shot is that rushed three off the dribble? Can our guys hit that at a high rate? We all know off the dribble threes are harder than catch and shoot, it is technically "open" but it's also rushed because that defender is back there chasing you, you're moving and a bit off balance, so I dunno how to feel about that shot. It would be really nice if we had good enough shooters that we are really happy with that shot, it's certainly not a bad shot, but I don't know how good it is. Here's two examples of what I'm talking about - https://thehighlow.io/video/ids?ids=25dKFR https://thehighlow.io/video/ids?ids=258ZPh Are we really happy taking 20 or 30 of these a game? Is that good offense? How good are these shots?
Would it not be better to make these DHOs? Just for the team synergy of including some passing in the play, and changing a dribble three to a catch and shoot three? Generally, is it good for an offense when 1 player touches the ball and launches a 30 footer? Steph is the best shooter ever and you don’t see GSW run these like we do. Not a fan.
They're bad shots because again, they're too close to the screener. The screen isn't buying them much time tbh and it's partially the angle and partially the distance. If they came more sideways and less side and back and moved an extra 4 ft across then either their defender can't get close enough to contest at all (giving them an extra second to set the shot) or Alpi's defender has to slide, at which point the quick pass back to Alpi actually becomes viable because his defender is now out of position. Then it's up to the help defender in the corner or Jalen/Fred's man to try and block Alpi on a chase down. Like I say, poor execution that's easily corrected with 10 mins in practise.
Just dropping in to say this dialogue was fantastic … and just about the last thread I would have expected to find it in given the “quality” of the discussion to date.
Harden shot 44 percent overall..........if Green can do that them we will all be happy That was the game plan as well. Just put up any threes and Harden put up harder threes. People just look at the percentage and not the degree of difficulty in the shots.
Do you have anything of value to say, or just throwaway low-intelligence comments to try and make yourself feel clever without actually saying anything at all? This is a Rockets forum or I'd show you clip after clip of good offense, reads and second and third actions in a play that show you don't know what you're talking about.
