lessthanjake wrote:Heej wrote:Good job, you've finally achieved level 1 in understanding how basketball works. Generating an advantage against a scheme. Yes, you're right those schemes sacrifice an advantage elsewhere on the court in order to take away a primary proficiency.
Lol, this is so didactic, and what’s funny about it is that you seem to think there’s something to be proud of in understanding *extremely* basic concepts. Like, there is no one here who doesn’t understand this stuff. Not everyone posts about X’s and O’s all the time, because there are many other interesting angles from which to discuss basketball—a lot of which are more empirical and therefore often easier to concretely discuss. But basketball is *really* not complicated, and the fact that you take great pride in understanding concepts that a 10-year-old could easily grasp just from watching a few basketball games is perhaps telling. Everyone here understands the extremely basic concepts you talk about. It would be essentially impossible to watch basketball (let alone play it!) and not understand it. You are not saying anything smart, and it is wild that you make posts dripping with a feeling of superiority seemingly caused by your pride at understanding basic things that everyone else inherently grasps. It's like if someone started talking down to people, saying how they know algebra and the people they're talking to do not. And it's like, no, everyone else knows it too, but you're the only one so proud of that that you are shouting from the rooftops with pride about it.
Now I'm gonna need you to take the next step forward in understanding what happens on a basketball court and comprehend that generated advantages now need to ultimately be extended and finished. Players with better ancillary skills like say an on-ball spec'd guy who has enough skill to relocate and get the ball on the move before a defense can load up, or is able to attack the glass and draw in another defender now is able to extend that advantage and hopefully lead to it being finished.
Lol! This is a clearly self-defeating point. You’re stating that, in order to capitalize on an advantage created by a guy on the ball, another “on-ball spec’d” guy should have the “skill to relocate and get the ball on the move before a defense can load up, or is able to attack the glass and draw in another defender.” But those are off-ball skills! If a guy excels at those things then he is excelling at some of the very kinds of off-ball qualities that I’m talking about as things that make a guy more “portable.” You’re essentially arguing that it’s just as good to have two on-ball-focused guys because one of the on-ball guys can also excel as an off-ball guy. I think this should mostly end this discussion, because your own post essentially conceded that I am right.
And your example about the on-ball and off-ball players are precisely why I say you don't really understand Xs and Os because there's a very simple coverage people use nowadays to deal with guys like that who can't create anything off the bounce... switching LMFAO. Or just keeping it simple and chasing the guy over top and having the 4 or 5 dropped in the paint.
Yeah, no. Switching doesn’t adequately deal with a player who is genuinely good off the ball, for a whole ton of reasons that I shouldn't have to explain to a tactical guru such as yourself. For now, I'll just note that players are easier to beat off the ball than on it (because the offensive player is not encumbered by having a ball to dribble), so a single defender (switched or not) is typically not going to be enough to deal with a great off-ball threat. I'll also note that it is very easy off ball to get a head of steam and be traveling with much greater speed than the person who switches onto you (and that's particularly bad for the defense if it's a big), so merely switching on an off-ball screen can often give the off-ball guy a clear advantage over his new defender. These sorts of reasons are why you don't see a player like Steph merely being defended with switches. Switching usually helps, but more attention is required than just that. And that's not even getting into the fact that if the defense switches everything because of the off-ball guy, then it becomes even easier for the offense to get the on-ball-focused guy the ball with an easy matchup. Just run off-ball screens and/or a fake DHO and, if the other team is always switching on that off-ball guy, then you can get your on-ball-focused guy whatever matchup you want. Of course, you could potentially get the favorable switch in other ways, but if you’ve got a supreme off-ball threat that the other team is always switching on then it makes it even easier, and thereby potentially makes your on-ball guy even more effective. Another example of the relationship between the two types of players being symbiotic because of their ability to extract value at the same time.
Overall, it seems clear that you have a very one-dimensional way of thinking about basketball. You do seem to understand what a defense can do to try to counter something the offense does, but then you apparently just stop thinking about it and don’t get to the second-order thoughts—which involve how what the defense is doing makes things easier for others, and how you want players that can optimally exploit what the defense is giving up (which, I’ll note, is an odd second-order thought to fail to get to in such an offensively-slanted era of basketball). Like, yes, you can blitz a great on-ball player, and you can switch on a great off-ball player. But, when you’ve got both a great on-ball and great off-ball player, doing either of those things makes it easier for the other person to immediately play to their strengths and optimally exploit the defense. This becomes a lot harder when you’ve got players with redundant strengths and weaknesses. It’s much easier to scheme against and actually force the offense into weaknesses, rather than strengths.
Of course, to be fair to you, your point in part has been that having versatility is good. And of course that’s true! Being good at everything is better than being good at less than everything! But real basketball teams aren’t just filled with 2K players with 99 in every attribute. Even really good players have relative strengths and weaknesses in their game. For some players, that weakness is really bad, while for the best players it’s usually just relatively less good. Either way, though, the defense will always try to force players onto their relative weakness. But if you have players that complement each other well by being able to simultaneously pressure the defense with their strengths, you can force the defense to have to choose to give up one of the player’s strengths, rather than being able to force the offense into a weakness. And it’s teams that can do that (and do it with really good players—since the relative strength of a mediocre player still isn't that good) that are the very best and most unstoppable offensively.
No s*** it's simple. That's why I'm telling you that you guys overthink it by saying teams are better off getting specialists that through a laborious process of mixing and matching can cover eachother's weakness rather than just understanding the obvious truth that it's easier to play basketball with guys who can do more on the floor.
And I love how you fall right into my point of going through this dialectical thinking process of either/or when it comes to on-ball and off-ball skills when in reality you're better off having a guy who can do a bit of both vs a guy who's super specialized in one and below par at another. What I'm actually arguing is that on-ball skill scales just as much as off-ball skill despite how much it hurts for the overthinkers to read that.
And it's even more telling that you don't even understand the point I'm making and tried to pawn it off by saying "your post essentially conceded I am right" while completely missing what I'm saying. There's a great quote from Game of Thrones that relates to this: "Any man who must say, 'I am the king' is no true king." If you feel flustered enough to tell people that you're right, then you're probably not right. And you're especially not right by saying teams haven't been able to effectively switch on Steph. I can count 2 Lebron series' alone ('16 and '23) where the teams employed that strategy on him.
Good switching absolutely can beat players that are only good off-ball as long as it's communicated early and the guy switching onto the screener is able to get under the screener and prevent getting pinned on their back for a rim roll, and the guy switching out is able to deny the action. But this is why I say your actual basketball knowledge beyond a spreadsheet is laughably low because I'm sure you don't even understand any of the requisite detailed fundamentals to execute any of these schemes properly.
Maybe it's easier to generate an advantage off-ball than on-ball (arguable because the pass still needs to get you on time and on target adding another variable), too bad if you're not actually versatile enough to extend that advantage once you get the ball on the move it's all for naught. And your examples of running stuff off-ball while the guy on-ball is attacking is hilarious because it clearly speaks to someone who really only looks at basketball how it's played on paper.
Let's go through your suggestions: if you're setting screens on the strongside for your primary shooter then the ballhandler needs to at least wait for it to play out otherwise you risk running your actions into eachother and causing a record scratch, seeing as how a true off-ball mover is going to be hunting for the opportunities to cut into the paint on a botched switch. If you're setting them on the weakside it's fairly easily switched with one guy coming to take the low man and the other guy staying high. Defenses are too good now and just having gravity isn't enough in most cases as those shooters can easily be run off the line, so there's no true advantage generated like that anymore.
Instead as a playoff series goes more games you'll more often see shooters getting open off roll gravity than from simple screening actions, and it's why one dimensional shooters tend to get their water shut off as a series progresses.
If you're running a DHO for the shooter, presumably it must be with the big man because if it's just between your main ballhandler and the shooter defenses can easily switch that and neuter the action. If it's with the big man they can just chase the shooter over the top and force them to create and turn them over, or more likely just record scratch and reset the offense.
The projection is laughable hear calling my view of basketball when the only thing you can talk about is what players are strong at on the court without any understanding of why the weaknesses matter even more; nor barely acknowledging the existence of said weaknesses.
Also it's hilarious that you project your inability to think through second order thoughts (these are called "progressions" in basketball btw lil guy, might wanna brush up on your bball parlance
) when the basis of this point is that guys need to shore up their ancillary skills in the modern NBA now such that they can leverage their primary ones. You don't think defenses take this into account?
The whole point is that when you have one dimensional guys you're easily able to live with the math being in your favor by sacrificing an advantage taking away one guy's strength and betting that the other players will be unable to extend or finish that advantage often enough for their team to win.
It's also hilarious how you seem so focused on forcing this idea that opposing skillsets work with eachother the best when we've seen time and time again how 2 lead ballhandlers can easily set eachother up for driving opportunities by collapsing and kicking or how 2 elite shooters like Steph and Klay are able to leverage eachothers' gravity off-ball to generate open looks. All the overthinkers just can't possibly conceive of the fact that it's more about the quality of players and their myriad skillsets that matter more than just trying to fit the perfect oddly shaped puzzle pieces together
And I disagree that if teams see 2 one-dimensional guys that they have to choose between letting one of them shine. There's 5 people on a basketball court and modern rules allow you to use any wacky combination of alignments you can think of as long as you're not in the paint for 3 seconds without guarding anyone.
I truly do understand why you think that it's just better to have opposing strengths because it looks good on paper. And I'd even go so far as to say that vs bottom feeder teams with poor attention to detail in the regular season that might be enough to generate +EV on its own. But I really only care about the playoffs and we can see a pretty recent example of this idea being flipped on its head during the Lakers-Warriors 2nd round series last season.
These were 2 evenly matched teams going into the series, despite what revisionist history would have you believe. Steve Kerr decided to throw all caution to the wind after Game 1 and spam Steph PnR, so this is about as perfect an analogue I can think of recently to the point you're trying to argue. Theoretically the Lakers should not have been able to take away both Steph's on-ball play and Klay's off-ball mastery right? That's the real pick your poison after all.
But what did we actually see happen? The Lakers were able to completely nerf Klay by top locking him on off-ball screens, and allowing the back cut funnel him into the paint. Surely this must have taken out the entire help Defense on that side for Steph to cook right? Wrong. Instead Steph was forced to try and go at a late switching AD in space and often 1v1. Steph ultimately ended up having a series marred by middling efficiency, relatively poor turnover economy, and sub-par execution down the stretch of games (likely due to to fatigue).
Whereas if that team wasn't built with so many one dimensional specialists, but rather multifaced players who can extend and finish generated advantages then maybe Steve Kerr could've played classic Warriors-ball instead of forcing Steph into hero-ball.
And I disagree with your last statement. The best teams are the ones that have the most answers to the most schemes that are literally unstoppable offensively.
LeBron's NBA Cup MVP is more valuable than either of KD's Finals MVPs. This is the word of the Lord