Complete Rose/Williams to Boozer Pick and Roll Tutorial

[alucryts]

Is it an issue of vision or an issue of trust? It was noted before that he struggled mightily to hit the wide-open roll-man during the Miami series and that surely had nothing to do with spacing affecting his vision. Might it be that he, like a LOT of really good scorers, trusts himself a lot more than his teammates? If you look at Boozer's performance last year, and even thus far this season, he's been 7-11% worse on his long jumpers (so those pop jumpers) than he'd been in Utah.

Intriguingly, he's been comparably effective when he's been able to shoot from 10-15 feet, so right around the foul line... which meshes very well with the notion advanced that allowing the ball-handler to drag his defender into the screen is a more effective option.

But I can imagine Rose watching Boozer loft brick after brick (he shot 37% FG on long 2s last year, 33% so far this season), he became much more hesistant to send it over to the open roll-man versus taking the shot himself. Jordan had the issue, Kobe had the issue... it's exceedingly common in talented perimeter scorers.

Thoughts/comments?

I don't think it was an issue of trust. What I think it was (my theory) is that Rose for the first time in his life last year became a first option on offense in his own head. Until last year, mentally he pegged himself as the deferring low option that only scored when necessary. I think he came into last season pretending to have a 1st option mentality. He emulated this by throwing as many shots as possible at the rim. Somewhere around January, he learned that you cannot be an efficient scorer if you can't draw free throws. Then, sometime around March he learned how to integrate free throws with the rest of his game, and we saw him putting up prime Lebron James type of stats. Then, the playoffs came around, he still tried being the first option on the team. However, he didn't know that it becomes much harder to be that first option on offense, and he reverted back to the beginning of the year where he thought he had to attackattackattackattack no matter what (and attack to score only; you can also attack to play make). I'll make a thread this week on essentially why Rose is the "biggest" reason we lost to the Heat. Of course people were not playing up to their standards, but I believe it began with Rose.

[tsherkin]

Memphis/Chicago PnRs...

First play of the game, Deng came from strong side to set a cross screen, then set an up screen for Rose by stepping out to the 3pt line that did absolutely nothing (Deng flared wide into the strong side pocket), and Rose swung the ball the other way. Meh. Memphis ignored Deng and doubled Rose.

Deng had a neat little play where he took a hand-off from Noah that turned into a screen and then he hesitated on the jumper and ultimately tried some lean-in nonsense in an attempt to draw a foul.

Noah runs a screen for Rose in transition up at the 3pt line. Rose didn't use it, but it stalled the defender and Derrick exploded into the lane and drew a foul.

Deng with that little cross-screen/up-screen play where he starts around the elbow and comes up to the 3pt line to screen for Rose. He popped wide, Rose hit him and Deng missed the jumper.

The Booze set an interesting screen, where he was solidly between the top of the key and the 3pt line, and his broad shoulders gave Rose space for a long 2 that he missed. I LOL'd at Brewer stealing the in-bounds pass shortly thereafter. Speaking which, I notice that Boozer and Noah set awesome screens when they bother to plant their feet. Booze is usually good about this, does Noah slip the screen often?

Also, Deng's decision-making as a roll-man was awful this game. He hesitates on wide-open jumpers so much, ugh! Forced passes for turnovers instead of wide-open looks, Luol! Bad! It seems like every time, be it PnR or ball movement swigning around, he doesn't know when to pull up and shoot instead of driving into 2 or 3 defenders because he's trying to get too close to the rim instead of taking a clean look.

There was a beautiful scenario 2 where Boozer set the screen at the 3pt line on the right wing, then rolled and pulled up for a baseline made bank shot. That was nice. Rose needs to not throw cross bounce-passes when he goes away from the screen, though, that's a dangerous play.

Nice play? Second half, inbounds play, Noah screens and Rose curls around to receive the ball, then Noah screens again for Rose, this time with a live dribble. His defender went over the screen, so Rose split Noah and the big defender for a double-clutch layup. That was beautiful.

Also, John Lucas III, lol. That's like the quickest 8 points off of the bench ever.

Nice stuff, though. All of it was Chicago bringing the screen out to the 3pt line. They used a lot of off-ball screening that was nice to see, they had some pretty sets to put cutters into motion and to shuffle around the shooters, but the on-ball stuff was exclusively high screen action. Lots and lots of midscreens, too, more than I expected.

[dafunky1]

tsherkin,allucryts,are you guys coaches or something? Because if y'all not,then it's a damn shame to see all this good knowledge wasted on just a message board.Best breakdown I have ever seen.As some said in here......This is why I keep coming in here.You are never too old to learn something,keep it up gents.

[tsherkin]

There may have been a couple of PnRs that I missed. The video that I have is sometimes... errm... loose with the play-labelling that is uses. It really focuses on the end-point result rather than the initiation. There are a lot of PnRs that turn into post-ups that get labeled one way or the other, spot-ups out of PnR drives that don't get labeled properly, etc. So to really use the tool effectively, you need to look at Every. Damned. Possession. in the entire game, which I wasn't willing to do because I'm not a fan of the way Memphis plays and really wasn't up to it even for Chicago's pretty sets.

Anyway, I'm just piggy-backing on what alu started. I found this thread and went o.O Immediately thereafter, I started diving into video and discovering that yeah, he's exactly right! Heh.

[alucryts]

tsherkin,allucryts,are you guys coaches or something? Because if y'all not,then it's a damn shame to see all this good knowledge wasted on just a message board.Best breakdown I have ever seen.As some said in here......This is why I keep coming in here.You are never too old to learn something,keep it up gents.

I just used an engineers mind set on a basketball play is all. I'm glad we could deliver a good thread for everyone to participate in.

[MICHAEL_JORDAN]

Good luck PnR'ing against the Miami Heat. They have the speed multiple guys who can cover thew switch.

[alucryts]

Good luck PnR'ing against the Miami Heat. They have the speed multiple guys who can cover thew switch.

Speed isn't a huge factor in pick and roll. intricate/precise defensive spacing and effort is the only thing you can truly do. By controlling your defensive spacing and strategy, you can increase your chances of dictating who gets the open shot. A perfect pick and roll always results in an open shot; it is up to the point guard to find it. If the defense is switching, you simply bring up a big man with a big man defender to defend and a switch results in a big man attempting to guard Rose. I really should do that Rose versus the Heat thread soon to show video.

[tsherkin]

See that's the thing; if the Heat DON'T jump out on Rose, he burns them. If they DO jump out them, then it's Bosh that's going to have to recover back to Boozer/Gibson, or Anthony who's going to have to rotate out to him. Lebron might get involved from time to time, but he'd be a late rotation defender and he's not going to jump out off of Deng (who is typically a good spot-up shooter) in order to cover C-Booze.

I think that Rose may have a quiet scoring game, but this is definitely a time where Boozer might come through and the Boozer/Noah offensive rebounding tandem is going to be important.

The PnR isn't actually a play you can completely stop if you run it properly. There's always SOME option that comes out of it, or some effect. A lot of it can be that you run it once to set something up. Any team with a post threat frequently uses the PnR to set up a low-block post up without having the big spend 8 years fighting for position. It's convenient, even Yi Jianlian can do it. The roll-man just touch screens and then zips down into the mid-post. It's usually good for a jumper or a mismatch post-up, maybe a kick-out from a double to a pocket shooter.

The Heat defense is a lot like 90s Chicago; two really athletic perimeter guys who cover a lot of ground and rotate really quickly. But the Jazz were able to successfully use their big against them. Their problem was the lack of a dynamic perimeter threat, because Stockton and Hornacek were old, unathletic guys who couldn't really attack Harper/Kerr (or Jordan, for that matter, who occasionally defended 1s, especially slow guys) with any serious aggression.

[pduh01]

I bookmark this thread, best thread ever!

I didn't read the last two pages but if someone have mention this already well uh my bad lol. The P&R with Rose & Boozer from the past couple games, or so is improving that is what I expect last season which was a disappointing when last season they can't do it right, or in term of executing. It is beautiful to watch. Hopefully that keeps the pace up it will help develop the 1-2 punch type of thing with Rose & Boozer kinda like with Deron Williams & Boozer back in Utah type of thing.

[tsherkin]

So, this is a crazy 6-month bump and if y'all are irritable, sorry. But I found an older article by former Lakers assistant coach Quin Snyder in a 2010 edition of FIBA Assist that goes over his thoughts on this very play and I thought it'd be appropriate to bring it up.

Said article appears here for free download from the official site.

Matching what he said against what alu discussed earlier makes for an interesting exercise.

Enjoy!