Dynamix wrote:Loved the ball movement at 01:26.
great find. for anyone who thinks lue can't coach, i'd say watch this sequence that you brought up. you just cannot have this level of precision without attention to detail in practices and in film.
kawhi/pg create some diversionary tactics to begin the set (for anything other than just to disguise? if so, still value) before pg gives the ball up to kawhi, who passes it off to zu in the high post. there's a particular bit of nuance in zu's move because he kinda almost dives to the basket but comes up for air (at the high post where he grabs the ball), and because zu's guy is right on him, all the bodies create the possibility for kawhi's man to get tangled up (as kawhi himself is making a move to right elbow and then right corner), which would create a huge opening for kawhi to do basically a million things (run out to corner for an easy 3, go right at or around zu's guy on right block, pass to harden who's still at right elbow if harden's man rotates to defend kawhi, alley oop to zu if zu's guy rotates, etc.)
kawhi's defender makes it through the screens anyway, and kawhi then initiates his move to the right elbow and eventually right corner, but along the way he kinda clogs the space of the guy chasing harden, and now harden's man has two bodies to fight through, and is now very far behind on defense. harden turns the corner, zu's guy now has to rotate and zu gets free for the easy dunk.
but the value of the play imo doesn't even remotely end there, because as this was happening pg was camped out on the left elbow and mann was camped out in the left corner. both their defenders were close enough to harden that if either decided to rotate and help, despite the weird backwards angle pass that harden would have had to make to PG, or the weirdly angled pass he'd have had to make kinda around mann's guy, harden's one of the like 3 or 4 guys in this league who could actually pull that off. but it still doesn't end there, i think. from a big picture perspective you want your best players on the court to have the most impact possible, and that means giving them the most agency. while PG doesn't impact this set all that much, it's very clear that if kawhi's guy got stuck he'd be given access to all his best options while indy's defense was recovering. as it turned out, it was harden who was able to access his agency in what he wanted to do.
even against what might be an elite and smart defensive team, a play like that is the kind that creates TONS of opportunities and value, and this is the kind of dimension i think ty lue (and the FO) were praying they could add when pursuing james harden. the days of iso-you-to-death have taken a backseat to harden's self-anointed system. and i can't say i hate it at all.
max headroom mentioned it in an earlier post because i feel the same way. never been a fan of harden because of all his antics that imo, aren't really in the spirit of the game, and certainly are not things i ever cared to watch. but he doesn't seem to be doing any of that now and we are benefiting from what looks to be all his positives, and not many of the negatives.
