RealGM

It's on almost every locker-room whiteboard, and it's shorthand slang among NBA players and coaches. But one of the wonkiest phrases in the league has yet to penetrate public discourse about the NBA: "to 2.9."

Zach Lowe is by far my favorite basketball writer and he recently wrote an article about the evolving defenses in the NBA.

Coaches want players away from the ball "to 2.9" on defense, and the meaning is simple: Stay in the paint for as long as possible without committing a defensive three-second violation. It's a tenet that has swept across the league during the last few seasons in the form of ultra-aggressive help defense, a sea change that has inspired a slower but perhaps more important evolution in the way NBA teams approach offense.

So teams are getting better at protecting the rim. And while there hasn't been a ton of talk about this in the media, most teams around the league have already noticed and changed their offenses accordingly.

It's no longer accurate to reduce NBA offense to truisms like "Everybody runs the same stuff" and "The NBA is a pick-and-roll league." Offenses are more complex now than they were even at the start of last season. The NBA may still be a pick-and-roll league, but the pick-and-roll a team really wants to run might come after several different "fake" actions designed to confuse defenders or get their momentum moving in the wrong direction. Predictable offenses just aren't good enough anymore against elite competition

The article then goes on to say that this evolution in defense and offense effects how teams will evaluate players. BBIQ, versatility (defensively), shooting and passing will all become more important. It's a fantastic article that everybody should read.

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9149381/packing-paint-nba-defensive-strategy-forcing-coaches-rethink-their-offense


My thoughts:

- The C's run a lot of this misdirection / fake action stuff on offense.
- teams flooding the ball side and the misdirection plays are what allows Bradley to make those cuts to the basket
- the people complaining about Rondo pounding the ball at the top of the 3 point line are totally missing that the other 4 guys were running a play and they just didn't execute it. I will say it's very slow developing when we run the misdirection stuff although we do get a lot of wide open looks out of it. Still don't see how that's Rondo's fault
- Pretty awesome that the 08 C's are what started this evolution, but I wish Thibs was still here

I saw this, too, thought it was a good read. Makes the Celtics lack of rim protection without KG on the floor really a glaring deficiency.

Wonder what Thibs thought of watching Asik walk? I thought the Bulls made a mistake there, they had one of the few dominant front lines. He's just what they were talking about, long, mobile, good at protecting the hoop.