I see a few reasons why the Wizards aren't very good at s/r.
1) The bigs don't set physical screens. No amount of coaching is going to persuade a guy who wants to avoid getting hit to stand in there and get hit. The Wizards bigs want to play slip-screen and shoot the ball -- they don't want to help a teammate get free.
2) Wall does a crappy of using screens. He doesn't dribble close enough to the screener to use it effectively.
3) Wall is a bad jump shooter. Opposing defenses can ALWAYS play under the screen, which means that even in the rare event that a big sets a solid screen and Wall uses it properly, he still probably won't get free because the defender will just be standing there waiting for him. With the guard playing under, the big doesn't even have to show -- he can just stay with the Wizards' screener.
4) The Wizards' bigs pretty much suck. Yi can play pick & pop, but all he's going to do is flare out for a long two, which opposing defenses are happy to concede. Blatche can theoretically play pick & pop or true s/r, but he's not a physical screener, he's not disciplined enough to hold his position, and once he gets the ball the odds of him scoring aren't all that great. McGee isn't skilled enough to do anything but roll to the basket and catch a lob. Booker and Seraphin aren't even
that skilled.
nate33 wrote:Why is it that Luke freaking Ridnoir can pick-and-roll us to death with Milicic in the 4th quarter but John Wall can't run a pick-and-roll with Yi or Lewis? Why couldn't we stop Beno freaking Udrih and Fransisco Garcia? Gerald Hendrson? DJ Augustin? Willie Green? Surely, those guys aren't any better offensively than Young, Lewis, Hinrich and Wall. I'm not asking us to outperform Wade, Kobe and Durant down the stretch, but maybe we should be able to beat some of these crappy teams every now and then.
I agree on guys like Henderson, Milicic and Green, but Ridnour, Udrih, Garcia, and Augustin are all good offensive players. Wall turns the ball over too much and can't shoot. Yi is awful. Blatche is terribly inefficient -- his game seems to be a collection of "look what I can do, Mom" stuff. Hinrich can shoot and pass, but he's little, slow and can't jump. Young appears to be good at catch & shoot and little else. Lewis is a spot-up shooter at this point in his career.
I suppose they could run s/r with Lewis as the screener. But, until Wall learns how to use screens and shoot the ball, the offense would still be at a disadvantage. Young can't be the ball handler because he's not a guy who can make on-court decisions with any kind of complexity. Shoot/don't shoot seems about his limit. So, I guess you could put the ball in Hinrich's hands, except that Kadeem isn't much of a threat to penetrate. Plus, then Wall would be standing around while someone else ran the team, which (just guessing here) is not something that anyone associated with the team wants.
