I don’t think I have realized how often we ball screen for KC this year. It happens a ton. We used to rarely ball screen like this. A bunch of KC’s layups at the rim were after blowing by a big man who had switched on him. How many times over the past few years have we seen other teams take advantage of our aggressive switching on D to beat bigs one on one? Bama killed us with it last year.
It’s going to be a real pick-your-poison this year for our opponents:
1. Switch ball screens and have your big man guard KC = layup
2. Switch ball screen but sag help defenders off wings to protect rim = Vescovi, Powell, ZZ, James wide open threee.
3. Hedge ball screen with big and have guards fight under screen to recover = wide open KC three
4. Hedge ball screen with big and have guards fight over screen to recover = KC lob to the rim to Fulk/ORN before big can recover. Or, if help defender protects rim from lob, KC kicks to wide open shooter for three.
Defensively I think you have to choose option #4 but that puts a ton of strain on your defensive rotations and if you don’t do it well, a couple more passes probably leads to a great look.
None of that is that complicated - it’s what NBA teams have been doing for years: Elite PGs, athletic bigs who can screen and roll, shooters on the wings. We finally have the personnel to be able to do that.
Anyway, I’ve been excited about this team to a degree but have been thinking we are a bit too soft to make a real run in March. Starting to rethink that with how difficult we are to defend and how well we are playing defensively (especially with James on the court, especially at the 4)
TL; DR = Chandler is elite, VOLS really good
It’s going to be a real pick-your-poison this year for our opponents:
1. Switch ball screens and have your big man guard KC = layup
2. Switch ball screen but sag help defenders off wings to protect rim = Vescovi, Powell, ZZ, James wide open threee.
3. Hedge ball screen with big and have guards fight under screen to recover = wide open KC three
4. Hedge ball screen with big and have guards fight over screen to recover = KC lob to the rim to Fulk/ORN before big can recover. Or, if help defender protects rim from lob, KC kicks to wide open shooter for three.
Defensively I think you have to choose option #4 but that puts a ton of strain on your defensive rotations and if you don’t do it well, a couple more passes probably leads to a great look.
None of that is that complicated - it’s what NBA teams have been doing for years: Elite PGs, athletic bigs who can screen and roll, shooters on the wings. We finally have the personnel to be able to do that.
Anyway, I’ve been excited about this team to a degree but have been thinking we are a bit too soft to make a real run in March. Starting to rethink that with how difficult we are to defend and how well we are playing defensively (especially with James on the court, especially at the 4)
TL; DR = Chandler is elite, VOLS really good
