WCQF | (4) Oklahoma City Thunder vs Utah Jazz (5) | UTA 4-2

[Pillendreher]

quinn snyder confidently remarked on our making contested jump shots in game 1 and he was absolutely correct.

For what it's worth, per stats.nba.com tracking:

Game 1: 12/32 on contested shots, 29/53 on uncontested shots
Game 2: 20/46 on contested shots, 16/44 on uncontested shots

Besides the change in distribution: I've seen this quite often as of late - they shoot better on contested than on uncontested shots. There's either something wron with the tracking, or we're simply the best at making things as hard as possible for us.

[Pillendreher]

tbh I think he played a very good game.... until the 4th quarter.

That's also when they started hunting him in pick and roll (Positive Residual has a great thread going on Twitter right now about it). Doesn't mean much on offense, but defensively it hurt badly, even with Russ and Brewer pre-switching a lot of stuff.

they were heat seeking melo whenever they could

Per stats.nba.com, Melo was assigned an offensive matchup on defense 81 times. The Jazz scored 74 points on those possessions. That's a 91.4 ORtG. Same goes for Team DRtG with him on the floor: 91.4 DRtG on the game. The defense with him in wasn't the problem. 117 DRtG with Adams in was much more problematic. As you said: Him and Russ couldn't defend the PnR, at all.

EDIT:

[Andre Roberstan]

That's also when they started hunting him in pick and roll (Positive Residual has a great thread going on Twitter right now about it). Doesn't mean much on offense, but defensively it hurt badly, even with Russ and Brewer pre-switching a lot of stuff.

they were heat seeking melo whenever they could

Per stats.nba.com, Melo was assigned an offensive matchup on defense 81 times. The Jazz scored 74 points on those possessions. That's a 91.4 ORtG. Same goes for Team DRtG with him on the floor: 91.4 DRtG on the game. The defense with him in wasn't the problem. 117 DRtG with Adams in was much more problematic. As you said: Him and Russ couldn't defend the PnR, at all.

EDIT:

They emphasized punishing the tagger on the pick and roll, which isn't on Russ or Adams. It's schematic.

[Pillendreher]

they were heat seeking melo whenever they could

Per stats.nba.com, Melo was assigned an offensive matchup on defense 81 times. The Jazz scored 74 points on those possessions. That's a 91.4 ORtG. Same goes for Team DRtG with him on the floor: 91.4 DRtG on the game. The defense with him in wasn't the problem. 117 DRtG with Adams in was much more problematic. As you said: Him and Russ couldn't defend the PnR, at all.

EDIT:

They emphasized punishing the tagger on the pick and roll, which isn't on Russ or Adams. It's schematic.

From what I saw, the main problem was that the defense was

a) Not on the same page

and

b) Not suited for the personel they were defending

Adams was too far out and Russ was not giving enough space to Rubio. He went over the screen and was lagging the play which had Adams commit too much to the ballhandler. That's how they created that space in front of the ft line. If they had just stopped trapping that, the Jazz wouldn't have gotten that many easy baskets out of it.

[slick_watts]

That's also when they started hunting him in pick and roll (Positive Residual has a great thread going on Twitter right now about it). Doesn't mean much on offense, but defensively it hurt badly, even with Russ and Brewer pre-switching a lot of stuff.

they were heat seeking melo whenever they could

Per stats.nba.com, Melo was assigned an offensive matchup on defense 81 times. The Jazz scored 74 points on those possessions. That's a 91.4 ORtG. Same goes for Team DRtG with him on the floor: 91.4 DRtG on the game. The defense with him in wasn't the problem. 117 DRtG with Adams in was much more problematic. As you said: Him and Russ couldn't defend the PnR, at all.

i agree that melo is mostly fine when he is playing with the bench, especially against other bench players. he was a serious problem in 4q and any time the jazz had favors and gobert in. you're conflating two separate things. we gave up 118pp100 with adams / westbrook / melo on the court together when the jazz had favors and gobert in the game which accounted for about half of melo's minutes. melo was abused. westbrook and adams had their own problems as well, especially westbrook leaving rubio alone so much.

[Pillendreher]

they were heat seeking melo whenever they could

Per stats.nba.com, Melo was assigned an offensive matchup on defense 81 times. The Jazz scored 74 points on those possessions. That's a 91.4 ORtG. Same goes for Team DRtG with him on the floor: 91.4 DRtG on the game. The defense with him in wasn't the problem. 117 DRtG with Adams in was much more problematic. As you said: Him and Russ couldn't defend the PnR, at all.

i agree that melo is mostly fine when he is playing with the bench, especially against other bench players. he was a serious problem in 4q and any time the jazz had favors and gobert in. you're conflating two separate things. we gave up 118pp100 with adams / westbrook / melo on the court together when the jazz had favors and gobert in the game which accounted for about half of melo's minutes. melo was abused. westbrook and adams had their own problems as well, especially westbrook leaving rubio alone so much.

Then let's look at the individual matchups. Again, per stats.nba.com:

Melo was on Favors for 48 possessions, in which the Jazz scored 48 points. Per stats.com, that's 4.4 points worse than their scoring average on the season.
When Adams was on Gobert, the Jazz scored 42 points on 34 possessions, which is 19.3 points above their scoring average on the season.

Now of course those numbers may be inaccurate. And of course you can't really say what happened on each of those possessions. But I think the difference is still big enough to consider it. If it was just Melo being exposed when Favors was on the court, those numbers should be closer to Adams', no?

Oh, and another stat I thought was interesting: So Russ-Anthony-Adams had a 118 DRtG with both Gobert and Favors on the floor in 18 minutes yesterday. If I take Adams out of that, the DRtG improves to 106 DRtG in 22 minutes.
With Gobert on the floor and Adams on the bench, the Jazz ORtG dropped to 50.9. I don't know if that's just a coincidence because a decent part of that was when we made a run in the 1st and 3rd quarters...

[Andre Roberstan]

Individual matchup tracking is, in general, not good. And it's worse over small samples.

[bondom34]

Question now is do they go to Grant or not. Its the playoffs and a team will pick at any single hole they find. That was it for Utah.

[ThunderBolt]

Royce young said that Paul George could barely put on a pair of shorts on Tuesday.

[bondom34]

Royce young said that Paul George could barely put on a pair of shorts on Tuesday.

That's reassuring.

[slick_watts]

Royce young said that Paul George could barely put on a pair of shorts on Tuesday.

and on wednesday donovan mitchell pulled them down.

[spearsy23]

Part of the reason Russ was leaving Rubio so open was because we were overplaying the perimeter and allowing a parade to the basket. George was especially bad, getting beat off the dribble simply because he was pressing 30 feet from the basket for no reason. Sometimes it's okay to try and force a tough shot instead of turnovers. Everything Donovan coaches defensively is risk/reward, and it's not working without Roberson.

[Kizz Fastfists]

Everything Donovan coaches defensively is risk/reward, and it's not working without Roberson.

Roberson has been the driving force behind OKC's defense for years. Russ is the driving force on offense. A real coach adjusts when they lose that player. Donovan just tries to plug in someone else. Roberson can't be replaced and the scheme needed to change. Imagine if they were playing switch everything with Russ, Brewer, Roberson, PG and Patterson. That would be fun to watch. Switch everything with Adams and Melo out there is never going to work because they will exploit them by getting them on guards that they can't keep up with.

Roberson has covered so much for a bad scheme and poor defense from some of his teammates that Russ just expects to be covered. Brewer, PG and Adams can't cover the way Roberson does. Brewer and PG are good wing defenders, but they are not Roberson. The real problem is that when he comes back Roberson might not be the old Roberson and he could lose enough, even at 90%, that we see a massive drop in the defense if Donovan is still the one drawing up the scheme.

[M2J]

Per stats.nba.com, Melo was assigned an offensive matchup on defense 81 times. The Jazz scored 74 points on those possessions. That's a 91.4 ORtG. Same goes for Team DRtG with him on the floor: 91.4 DRtG on the game. The defense with him in wasn't the problem. 117 DRtG with Adams in was much more problematic. As you said: Him and Russ couldn't defend the PnR, at all.

i agree that melo is mostly fine when he is playing with the bench, especially against other bench players. he was a serious problem in 4q and any time the jazz had favors and gobert in. you're conflating two separate things. we gave up 118pp100 with adams / westbrook / melo on the court together when the jazz had favors and gobert in the game which accounted for about half of melo's minutes. melo was abused. westbrook and adams had their own problems as well, especially westbrook leaving rubio alone so much.

Then let's look at the individual matchups. Again, per stats.nba.com:

Melo was on Favors for 48 possessions, in which the Jazz scored 48 points. Per stats.com, that's 4.4 points worse than their scoring average on the season.
When Adams was on Gobert, the Jazz scored 42 points on 34 possessions, which is 19.3 points above their scoring average on the season.

Now of course those numbers may be inaccurate. And of course you can't really say what happened on each of those possessions. But I think the difference is still big enough to consider it. If it was just Melo being exposed when Favors was on the court, those numbers should be closer to Adams', no?

Oh, and another stat I thought was interesting: So Russ-Anthony-Adams had a 118 DRtG with both Gobert and Favors on the floor in 18 minutes yesterday. If I take Adams out of that, the DRtG improves to 106 DRtG in 22 minutes.
With Gobert on the floor and Adams on the bench, the Jazz ORtG dropped to 50.9. I don't know if that's just a coincidence because a decent part of that was when we made a run in the 1st and 3rd quarters...

The issues tonight defensively were Russell not being sound defensively (see leaving Rubio all night, do we read the scouting report more than him?) He just simply wanted to play passing lanes and leave him open.

This Favors issue is plain and simple. If I got paid to, I could show a number of gifs where George/Brewer/Russ or other perimeter players got beaten plain and simple. Melo (or other bigs) rotates correctly to help and force a miss by altering shots. Nobody rotates to box out Favors or attack the board and Favors cleans it up (I remember the 2nd to last play of the 1st quarter, I was already tired of it where Grant or George who got beat should've hit the glass). Or in other instances, they switch and they left a mouse in the house. Again this is taken advantage of by taking a rebounder out of the paint and either driving it in allowing their big to grab a board or take a dump off pass. At least twice Rudy drove, was cut off by Melo and dropped it right off to Favors. Then Favors hit a few jumpers he had no business hitting, and had a great game.

Well this is supposed to be the strategy for OKC. Their entire starting lineup consists of slashers or guys that can get points in the paint (including Brewer and Grant off the bench). They need to get into the paint, and draw out Rudy and get some offensive boards from it and get some fouls. I get that 3s have changed the game and Russ driving off the pick and roll with Melo and George at the 3pt line is ideal, but transition buckets and getting into the paint is the key for a team that shoots too many 3s and is too inconsistent with it. If they're not falling, take less. Get quality looks and share the ball (at least 3 people touch it each possession, except with obvious advantages), get movement off ball even within iso sets, get Westbrook PnR opportunities, attack the offensive glass, get to the line, and defend hard to get into transition. When the 3s are falling like in game 1, take advantage.

[bondom34]

i agree that melo is mostly fine when he is playing with the bench, especially against other bench players. he was a serious problem in 4q and any time the jazz had favors and gobert in. you're conflating two separate things. we gave up 118pp100 with adams / westbrook / melo on the court together when the jazz had favors and gobert in the game which accounted for about half of melo's minutes. melo was abused. westbrook and adams had their own problems as well, especially westbrook leaving rubio alone so much.

Then let's look at the individual matchups. Again, per stats.nba.com:

Melo was on Favors for 48 possessions, in which the Jazz scored 48 points. Per stats.com, that's 4.4 points worse than their scoring average on the season.
When Adams was on Gobert, the Jazz scored 42 points on 34 possessions, which is 19.3 points above their scoring average on the season.

Now of course those numbers may be inaccurate. And of course you can't really say what happened on each of those possessions. But I think the difference is still big enough to consider it. If it was just Melo being exposed when Favors was on the court, those numbers should be closer to Adams', no?

Oh, and another stat I thought was interesting: So Russ-Anthony-Adams had a 118 DRtG with both Gobert and Favors on the floor in 18 minutes yesterday. If I take Adams out of that, the DRtG improves to 106 DRtG in 22 minutes.
With Gobert on the floor and Adams on the bench, the Jazz ORtG dropped to 50.9. I don't know if that's just a coincidence because a decent part of that was when we made a run in the 1st and 3rd quarters...

The issues tonight defensively were Russell not being sound defensively (see leaving Rubio all night, do we read the scouting report more than him?) He just simply wanted to play passing lanes and leave him open.

This Favors issue is plain and simple. If I got paid to, I could show a number of gifs where George/Brewer/Russ or other perimeter players got beaten plain and simple. Melo (or other bigs) rotates correctly to help and force a miss by altering shots. Nobody rotates to box out Favors or attack the board and Favors cleans it up (I remember the 2nd to last play of the 1st quarter, I was already tired of it where Grant or George who got beat should've hit the glass). Or in other instances, they switch and they left a mouse in the house. Again this is taken advantage of by taking a rebounder out of the paint and either driving it in allowing their big to grab a board or take a dump off pass. At least twice Rudy drove, was cut off by Melo and dropped it right off to Favors. Then Favors hit a few jumpers he had no business hitting, and had a great game.

Well this is supposed to be the strategy for OKC. Their entire starting lineup consists of slashers or guys that can get points in the paint (including Brewer and Grant off the bench). They need to get into the paint, and draw out Rudy and get some offensive boards from it and get some fouls. I get that 3s have changed the game and Russ driving off the pick and roll with Melo and George at the 3pt line is ideal, but transition buckets and getting into the paint is the key for a team that shoots too many 3s and is too inconsistent with it. If they're not falling, take less. Get quality looks and share the ball (at least 3 people touch it each possession, except with obvious advantages), get movement off ball even within iso sets, get Westbrook PnR opportunities, attack the offensive glass, get to the line, and defend hard to get into transition. When the 3s are falling like in game 1, take advantage.

The scouting report is literally to let Rubio shoot. This was one of the games Westbrook was fine defensively. If Rubio shoots 5-8 for 3, you live with it. You don't live with Melo being too immobile to defend basic actions.

Grant has to come in for him.

[Pillendreher]

The scouting report is literally to let Rubio shoot. This was one of the games Westbrook was fine defensively. If Rubio shoots 5-8 for 3, you live with it.

No, he wasn't fine. Far from it. He was either too far away leaving him completely uncovered or much too close giving him the opportunity to drive by him, forcing Adams to help. The way Russ defended him this game was the main reason for our defensive struggles. Going over screens when he should be going under them. Giving him room to drive when he should have forced him to shoot. Giving him too much room to shoot. This was all evident in the 2nd quarter when he was trying to get back at Ricky Martin on both ends of the floor.

You want Rubio doing things he can't do. That's what they accomplished in game 1 and failed to do in game 2.

You don't live with Melo being too immobile to defend basic actions.

Grant has to come in for him.

Melo literally had the best On/Off DRtG in this game by far.

[bondom34]

The scouting report is literally to let Rubio shoot. This was one of the games Westbrook was fine defensively. If Rubio shoots 5-8 for 3, you live with it.

No, he wasn't fine. Far from it. He was either too far away leaving him completely uncovered or much too close giving him the opportunity to drive by him, forcing Adams to help. The way Russ defended him this game was the main reason for our defensive struggles. Going over screens when he should be going under them. Giving him room to drive when he should have forced him to shoot. Giving him too much room to shoot. This was all evident in the 2nd quarter when he was trying to get back at Ricky Martin on both ends of the floor.

You don't live with Melo being too immobile to defend basic actions.

Grant has to come in for him.

Melo literally had the best On/Off DRtG in this game by far.

Melo had that rating because of who he's on court with.

And yes, that was the plan. The literal plan was to let Rubio shoot. He did in game 1 and they won because of it. He did in 2 and they lost because of it. 1 game on/off stats are meaningless. Russ had the 3rd best D on/off. So where does that put it?

[M2J]

Then let's look at the individual matchups. Again, per stats.nba.com:

Melo was on Favors for 48 possessions, in which the Jazz scored 48 points. Per stats.com, that's 4.4 points worse than their scoring average on the season.
When Adams was on Gobert, the Jazz scored 42 points on 34 possessions, which is 19.3 points above their scoring average on the season.

Now of course those numbers may be inaccurate. And of course you can't really say what happened on each of those possessions. But I think the difference is still big enough to consider it. If it was just Melo being exposed when Favors was on the court, those numbers should be closer to Adams', no?

Oh, and another stat I thought was interesting: So Russ-Anthony-Adams had a 118 DRtG with both Gobert and Favors on the floor in 18 minutes yesterday. If I take Adams out of that, the DRtG improves to 106 DRtG in 22 minutes.
With Gobert on the floor and Adams on the bench, the Jazz ORtG dropped to 50.9. I don't know if that's just a coincidence because a decent part of that was when we made a run in the 1st and 3rd quarters...

The issues tonight defensively were Russell not being sound defensively (see leaving Rubio all night, do we read the scouting report more than him?) He just simply wanted to play passing lanes and leave him open.

This Favors issue is plain and simple. If I got paid to, I could show a number of gifs where George/Brewer/Russ or other perimeter players got beaten plain and simple. Melo (or other bigs) rotates correctly to help and force a miss by altering shots. Nobody rotates to box out Favors or attack the board and Favors cleans it up (I remember the 2nd to last play of the 1st quarter, I was already tired of it where Grant or George who got beat should've hit the glass). Or in other instances, they switch and they left a mouse in the house. Again this is taken advantage of by taking a rebounder out of the paint and either driving it in allowing their big to grab a board or take a dump off pass. At least twice Rudy drove, was cut off by Melo and dropped it right off to Favors. Then Favors hit a few jumpers he had no business hitting, and had a great game.

Well this is supposed to be the strategy for OKC. Their entire starting lineup consists of slashers or guys that can get points in the paint (including Brewer and Grant off the bench). They need to get into the paint, and draw out Rudy and get some offensive boards from it and get some fouls. I get that 3s have changed the game and Russ driving off the pick and roll with Melo and George at the 3pt line is ideal, but transition buckets and getting into the paint is the key for a team that shoots too many 3s and is too inconsistent with it. If they're not falling, take less. Get quality looks and share the ball (at least 3 people touch it each possession, except with obvious advantages), get movement off ball even within iso sets, get Westbrook PnR opportunities, attack the offensive glass, get to the line, and defend hard to get into transition. When the 3s are falling like in game 1, take advantage.

The scouting report is literally to let Rubio shoot. This was one of the games Westbrook was fine defensively. If Rubio shoots 5-8 for 3, you live with it. You don't live with Melo being too immobile to defend basic actions.

Grant has to come in for him.

Rubio is an efficient spot up shooter. Forcing him to be a scorer is the report.

Even when Rubio took forever to shoot it, Russ never even attempted a close out. For what? A rebound? Get up the court and they'll push ahead to him for better transition opportunities

[Pillendreher]

The scouting report is literally to let Rubio shoot. This was one of the games Westbrook was fine defensively. If Rubio shoots 5-8 for 3, you live with it.

No, he wasn't fine. Far from it. He was either too far away leaving him completely uncovered or much too close giving him the opportunity to drive by him, forcing Adams to help. The way Russ defended him this game was the main reason for our defensive struggles. Going over screens when he should be going under them. Giving him room to drive when he should have forced him to shoot. Giving him too much room to shoot. This was all evident in the 2nd quarter when he was trying to get back at Ricky Martin on both ends of the floor.

You don't live with Melo being too immobile to defend basic actions.

Grant has to come in for him.

Melo literally had the best On/Off DRtG in this game by far.

Melo had that rating because of who he's on court with.

Oh. So when the defense was good with him on the floor, that must have meant the defense with him on the floor was a problem? Is this like the Roberson argument, only in reverse?

And yes, that was the plan. The literal plan was to let Rubio shoot. He did in game 1 and they won because of it. He did in 2 and they lost because of it. 1 game on/off stats are meaningless. Russ had the 3rd best D on/off. So where does that put it?

The plan was to make Rubio score, not to let him do whatever he wanted. The difference was plain as day between game 1 and game 2. In game 1, Rubio was shooting left leaning floaters. In game 2, he had all the time in the world to take shots he's comfortable with.

Did you actually watch the game? Or were you too emotionally disconnected to do so?

[spearsy23]

No, he wasn't fine. Far from it. He was either too far away leaving him completely uncovered or much too close giving him the opportunity to drive by him, forcing Adams to help. The way Russ defended him this game was the main reason for our defensive struggles. Going over screens when he should be going under them. Giving him room to drive when he should have forced him to shoot. Giving him too much room to shoot. This was all evident in the 2nd quarter when he was trying to get back at Ricky Martin on both ends of the floor.



Melo literally had the best On/Off DRtG in this game by far.

Melo had that rating because of who he's on court with.

Oh. So when the defense was good with him on the floor, that must have meant the defense with him on the floor was a problem? Is this like the Roberson argument, only in reverse?

Wouldn't you need to make the same argument with Westbrook if he had the third best d-rtg?