We've seen this in the last few games, when Yao posted and the opponents got around to front him, he abandoned the post and went to set a pick. I think this is a crazy way to combat the Fronting. I like the PnR with Yao, but only to start the play, not after he wasted several seconds trying to post up. It seems Yao and the coaches understand that time is wasted with that play so Yao does not try to fight the defense very hard, he gives up the post fairly quickly. Among other things, this cut down the time window to throw the ball in. If Yao only holds the post for 2, 3 seconds and our outside player has to dribble to a good place, find a good angle and try to pass the ball in thru the defenders' hands, our margin of error is way too small. We all know that Yao is bad at catching lobs but there are ways to improve it. 1) We first attempt to feed Yao from the FT line extended. When he is fronted, we sometimes pass the ball to the baseline or to the top of FT circle to get a better angle. We need to do this more. 2) Yao is bad a catching the lob because he is not mobile, he can not catch up to a lead pass. He releases too late and his stance is too low. He needs to lower his stance only if the defender plays him from behind and tries to push him out. Fronting defender does not push on you, all they want is to walk around and get in front. The moment the defender gets around him, Yao needs to gets off his heels, raises 1 arm pointing toward the basket and gets ready to move that way. 3) If we are gonna try the lob, we need to clear the weakside. We have actually done this much better this season.
I think the pick and roll is not a bad way to avoid the fronting. I think the most importent is that yao moves in the offense, so that is is hard to to front him. So i like the pick and roll, because he has a great mid range shot. Al;l your ways are also veryy good to avoid the fronting. But i think some pick and roles are very good for our offense. I watched the Raptors game today(when he scored 40 points) and i tried to look at yao alot. what i saw was that if we pass the ball around to the other wing yao can get fairly easy shots. because he is very big and when the opponent fronts him he can get the ball from the other wing, beause the opponent will have trouble getting in front of yao a second time. the lob shoudl not be one of the first options in the offense, first try to get the bal to yao from the other side.
Yao have good hands, but his feet sometime just can't keep up to catch a lob. I still think rotating against the defense still is the best way for Yao to get a pass with defender fronting him. Remember that Toronto game where Yao went off for 40 pts? He caught most of his pass by rotating inside of the paint, I don't know why he can't do that against other teams.
In the game against the Raptors, the whole team was determined to pass the ball to Yao and the ball movement on the perimeter and inside the paint was insane. Now most of the times both Yao and the team are only making a half hearted effort to get Yao the ball. As such Yao is used a a decoy most of the time if not all the time.
For all the Yao bashers look at what hes averaging and look at the big numers hes posted this season 1 40 pt. night and 3 30 pt. nights i believe not too bad for a flop eh? Tell me one other bad center that is averaging 18 and 9 and puts up big numbers every now and then I sure dont think Shawn Bradley did it. So F all the Yao bashers.
As far as I can remember, every time they try high-low or re-post, they succeeded, but they don't try it very often. JVG said he's not good at catching lob passes. But how many lob passes do we see in each game average? 0.5? or even less. I am not convinced. It's just not right, if opponents front - want to eliminate your low post threat in the big guy, and you just give in, and try something else. We have to practice more and figure out different ways. I am not a basketball guru, the only thing I can see is we are not able to beat the fronting. Yao is 310 lbs, looking at his frame and muscles, he probably can't out muscle the whole front line, but there is no way that one single defender is out muscling him single-handedly. There must be a way to beat the front, but it takes multilateral efforts, from Yao, coaching staff, teammates.
Pick n Roll is the best way to do this. It forces the defense to make a decision and commit to an offensive player. The key here is that the offensive player needs to react quickly to this and decide whether he is to shoot or to pass back. Just watch any Utah Jazz game film circa Stockton to Malone. The second best way is to quickly rotate the ball to the weak side and allow Yao to slide across the paint and regain position. This has the same problem as the pick n roll as the players have to recognize what is going on and react quickly otherwise the defense has time to set up again. JVG is little master mind at this type of stuff and it just takes the players understanding what he is teaching and good execution (which takes practice to perfect). All in good time as our teammates understand where each other wants / likes the ball and our chemistry develops further.
What in the world does this has to do with the thread????? Nobody said that Yao was not good. We talked about a way to make it easier for him and our team to get him the ball. Who is a Yao Basher??? These kind of reply's have nothing to do with the thread. So why did you post it?(i know i shoudn't reply to it, just ignore and it will go away)? But i think you will not reply in this post.
I don't see what the problem with pick-n-rolling in this situation is. We've seen far too many times them try and get Yao theball 3 or 4 different ways when being fronted only to be confronted with a shot clock with little time left. That said, they should definitely do more of the below. If Yao is fronted, quickly swing the ball along the top of the key if possible and have Yao rotate across the lane. The defender has to be on his back at this point for at least a few seconds.
JVG knows that we must be deadly from many different directions: I think our team mindset is: You wanna play normal defense against Yao? He'll burn you. You wanna front Yao? We've got a pick-n-roll that'll burn you. You wanna triple-team Yao? We've got a guy named Tracy who'll burn you from the outside. You wanna double Tracy and Yao? We've got three other guys on the floor who can sink open jumpers. But in order to have those weapons, we need Yao to be dangerous from the inside, Tracy to be dangerous from the outside, and role-players to be dangerous with open shots. AND... if we could improve our PF position and PG positions, we'd be unstoppable. -- droxford
The PnR is good. I am not arguing against it. What I said was: there is not enough time for Yao to post, then go set a pick way up high. A roll across the lane by Yao is good but it requires 2 or 3 outside players to recognize it and swing the ball to the weak side. What I originally suggested requires just Yao to learn how/ when to release and 1 passer to practice the timing of the lob with Yao.
The best way to combat the fronting is to get Yao the ball early. The offense takes way too much time to get the ball to Yao and usually never get it to him. Don't let the defense fully set up. The window of opportunity is very small for Yao, get him the ball early and he'll score almost everytime.
The PnR is just one response to fighting the fronting player. As they work in these two options and they become more successful they will add more options to yao's arsenal. I remember a lot of people demanding they run more PnR's with yao so this is what we're getting. I for one like the change in the offensive strategy as I think Yao is more effective moving around than stuck in the low post. I believe it's just taking a long time to figure out how Yao will be more effective in our offensive schemes and this is just a long process towards that road. So far it's a positive so I can be happy about that. I think it's more of trying to find a compromise between the game yao is used to playing and the game that JVG would like him to play.
The problem is you can't afford to learn on the fly. You lose any more games you shouldn't and it could mean the difference between being in or out of the playoffs. Which also means, you can't continue to give Yao all the time in the world to try and get decent post position, it puts the other players in a difficult offensive spot. Droxford was spot on...the important thing is to be dangerous in a lot of different ways. Combating the front through improved lob passing and catching techniques, to me, should be option #3 in the middle of an important strech of games.
Easier said than done. Watching the game on tv or even in person, from a somewhat higher up angle, you say to yourself, pass it now, or c'mon, you missed a wide open dude, but restricting turnovers is so important in this league (not only becuase it gives the other team an extra possesion, but often one with an easy scoring opportunity through fast break) that getting Yao the ball early is easier said than done. What you're noticing is right though. Whether it's getting him the ball earlier, or involving more pick-n-rolls, or cuts across the lane, Yao is definitely better when he is at least being active. Unlike Shaq, Yao can't just go to a spot, post up, wait to get the ball and dominate. When he is being active, offensively and defensively, he is so much more alert.
I also think the Anti-fronting method of going to a PnR is a good one; less chance of a turn-over, more motion and flow in an offense, makes the defense have to move and think instead of just watching our Gaurd try to lob to Yao. I think we are using this method because it is simple and effective. I have no doubt in my mind that they will utilize a lob to beat fronting defense in the future and it might come soon. It requires a lot of practice time to get it down, especially if someone doesn't have good timing (Yao). In order for the lob to have a high success rate it has to be automatic. Sura dribbles down the court, Yao trails shortly after Sura dribbles by the arch. Yao gets into the post while Sura swings it over to T-mac on the wing. The defender jumps in front of Yao, as soon as this happends Yao raises his arm up and leads to the basket with Tmac lobbing it right by the Rim for a dunk or easy lay in. This is how it would have to be, there cant be any standing and waiting from our gaurds with the ball gripped with two hands over their head waiting to lob it.. as soon as Yao raises the hand the gaurd must lob without hesitation. They might only be able to get away with this once or twice a game but that would equal great looks for Yao and a very high chance of a FG, not to mention give everyone confidence in Yao for the rest of the game. We should have 3 Anti-Fronting methods by the time playoffs come. 1) Run the PnR 2) the Lob 3) Yao rotates while the gaurds swing it around to the opposite side. 4) This would just be awesome, Mix in the lob with the Rotation... how beautiful would that be? All of these are possible with the team we have now and I see these methods coming in to form anytime now. The PnR is the easiest and most efficient for now but with practice the other methods should not be too far fetched to start using on a game-to-game basis when Yao is being fronted.
Against the Lakers, he was pretty good at that turn around shot from 10 feet out. No complaints here. If Yao could be a hair more consistant.....
Only problem with this method is...will defenses automatically front yao just becuase they know he will move to the PnR? If so then they need another option if this starts occurring.
If the PnR is effective, this shouldn't be a problem. It should all average out...too much fronting and getting burned by PnR, they'll go back to normal post d and see what Yao can do.
A while back, I remember Yao was being fronted and Howard had the ball at the free throw line. After seeing Yao get fronted, he immediately put up a shot that missed, Yao had perfect position for the offensive rebound and put in a layup. Now granted in this case, the play worked perfectly but what is wrong with just shooting the ball when Yao is fronted and giving him the greatest chance to get an offensive rebound?
