How can we defend the Pick & Roll Better?

Leor_77 · Post #1 » by **Leor_77** » Wed Apr 6, 2011 7:03 pm

I've noticed that a lot of our defensive problems have to do with the opposing team running P&R. Now, I'm not delusional, and recognize that P&R is a very effective offensive tool that is used by many teams successfully, BUT I think that it's one of our biggest issues. From my (admittedly) limited basketball knowledge, I believe that you are supposed to go over the screen as much as possible, but when you can't, to have the second defender "hedge" the guy with the ball, while someone is supposed to be rotating and helping the player that the "hedger" was defending.

Not sure why P&R is such an issue with us, but maybe it's because we are so big upfront (and that makes us slow), although I suspect that some of it has to do with our effort.

LApwnd · Post #2 » by **LApwnd** » Wed Apr 6, 2011 8:10 pm

quicker PG/G and or faster/more aggressive bigs....for all the flack Bosh gets about being bad defender he is quite a good PnR defender because he shows more agressive and forces the PG further out from the 3pt line dispruting their drive, same with KG and Varjao as well, only Odom is capable of this on our team but he doesnt always get aggressive on the switch and gives the PG space to penetrate or enough space to shoot.

Leor_77 · Post #3 » by **Leor_77** » Wed Apr 6, 2011 9:26 pm

^^Yeah, good point. It seems like when Phoenix was doing it when we played them last (and even last year in the playoffs), they got us to switch on the screens, and created huge mismatches at will (Frye-Fisher, Nash-Gasol, etc). I really think you have to be aggressive and give a hard trap to the ball handler, while at the same time have the other players stay in front of the rest of the players...In other words, try to force a turnover.

Now that I think of it more, I believe that laziness is the main culprit.

BEazy · Post #4 » by **BEazy** » Wed Apr 6, 2011 11:18 pm

We are fine. Just getting some last minute confusion out of the way before the playoffs!

Edrees · Post #5 » by **Edrees** » Thu Apr 7, 2011 1:05 am

We had trouble defending the Pick and Roll even in the Shaq-kobe era, particularly during the 3rd year of the threepeat and the year we lost it. Something about Phil jackon's laker teams.