supaflash wrote:part of Nash's struggle was by design though, notice how the bigs never set a hard screen. Some of that is D'antoni's fault. At some point you have to set some hard screens in the back court to discourage the press and at some point you have to change how you attack the hard hedging, I really didn't see much of an adjustment.
But it is a little disturbing and frustrating that Nash isn't fast enough anymore to really be able to attack that defense more effectively.
The suns team set slip screens galore though for Nash, its how Amare ate.
There is a noticeable difference between when someone sets a pick for Kobe with Nash off the floor with Morris/Duhon and when Nash calls for one. Pau, Jamison, or Deight hit the guy for Kobe. Even Kobe slips the picks he sets for Nash when they do the 2/1 pnr sequence Kobe and Fish ran vs Boston. Porter tried implementing hard screens and post play with Shaq on Nash team, as did Dantoni, and it didnt click.
We have to figure out a middle ground of Nash being Nash and Nash being Fish/Kerr vs certain teams. The teams we need to post up, Kobe should have the ball because he is better at feeding post up bigs and maintaining a low possession game because he has a familiarity with feeding Shaq/Pau/Drew as the primary playmaker on 7 finals, 5 title teams. Nash should be allowed to be Nash vs teams who can be exploited by his ssol approach but there are certain teams he can't play well against when it comes to running that O, the Clippers this year are one as we were horrid when Kobe sat and until that fourth when Kobe went ISO and controlled the pace, the Nuggets who we have only beat without him as he has tried to outrun them the two times and Lawson has laughed at him for it, and the Heat tonight have been those teams