NBA Playbook's analysis of the meltdown; Bad defense

[DefenseWins]

http://nbaplaybook.com/2011/06/03/the-p ... -comeback/

lol @ LeBron

But Dallas did things they weren't doing in the first game. All Heat can do is adjust.

But that play by Chandler was good lol...

[salqaddoumi]

Just came on here to post this, was a great read.

[DWadeno3]

While I'm more than willing to give Carlisle credit for his creativity on this play, it's far from unguardable. We simply had mental breakdowns and were not paying attention to what they were doing. A bunch of chickes is probably the best way to describe our guys in those minutes. You could see they weren't thinking and they weren't communicating. It frustrates me when simple stuff causes you to lose a game.

[mopper8]

While I'm more than willing to give Carlisle credit for his creativity on this play, it's far from unguardable. We simply had mental breakdowns and were not paying attention to what they were doing. A bunch of chickes is probably the best way to describe our guys in those minutes. You could see they weren't thinking and they weren't communicating. It frustrates me when simple stuff causes you to lose a game.

Well, they were confused the first time Dallas ran it, and that confusion resulted in an open shot.

They changed up the way they defended it on try 2, but Dirk read it and beat the new defense.

They actually snuffed it out the 3rd time, clogging the passing lane and preventing Terry from getting the ball to Dirk on the flare (shutting down those passing lanes are key to stopping that play)

They went back to their original way of defending it on try 4, but without the confusion, and Dallas just beat them with it anyway by executing really well.

Basically, sh*t happens. Its not like our coaches sat there with their thumbs up their asses with no answers.

[DWadeno3]

While I'm more than willing to give Carlisle credit for his creativity on this play, it's far from unguardable. We simply had mental breakdowns and were not paying attention to what they were doing. A bunch of chickes is probably the best way to describe our guys in those minutes. You could see they weren't thinking and they weren't communicating. It frustrates me when simple stuff causes you to lose a game.

Well, they were confused the first time Dallas ran it, and that confusion resulted in an open shot.

They changed up the way they defended it on try 2, but Dirk read it and beat the new defense.

They actually snuffed it out the 3rd time, clogging the passing lane and preventing Terry from getting the ball to Dirk on the flare (shutting down those passing lanes are key to stopping that play)

They went back to their original way of defending it on try 4, but without the confusion, and Dallas just beat them with it anyway by executing really well.

Basically, sh*t happens. Its not like our coaches sat there with their thumbs up their asses with no answers.

The fact that we were unable to defend the first time is evidence for us not being in the game anymore mentally. While Dallas may not have ran it before, the play in general is nothing they haven't seen multiple times in their respective careers already. The fact that both Bosh and Haslem closed out in the first scenario is a clear case of misunderstanding and not paying attention. When one guy sprints out, the other one needs to realize it's stupid to close out as well. One guy closing out is enough. If the shot still falls, then so be it.

It's always a case of unnecessary overhelping at some point which is simply stupid basketball. While I don't believe in Doug Collins' philosophy of helping as little as possible, you need to understand who needs to be in what place at what time. What's the point of trapping Terry so far out in the second scenario? Why does UD come up as well and leave his man an open lane to the basket. It's that kind of silly stuff that pisses me off.

[GreenHat]

I wouldn't say our coaches had their thumbs up their ass, but I wouldn't necessarily chalk it up to **** happens either.

They got easy shots for their best players when they needed to, running the same play 4 times. Even the time we stopped them Dirk was open again (I don't recall this specific play just going by the info in the link and your post).

On the other side of the court, we who have better offensive players and going against worse defensive players couldn't get those easy shots. Our one basket happened on what appeared to be a breakdown for them defensively, not because of our ingenuity, that left Chalmers wide open on an inbounds play.

Where were our plays that confused them down the stretch when we needed just one basket to win it?

Our offense is basically hope for fast breaks otherwise Lebron/Wade/Bosh just be better than the other guys. Our offense overall is good because those guys are so good, but it should be a lot better. Not just saying this after a loss, because I've complained about it after several wins and been met with "we won, stop complaining", "2-0", etc but our offense should be so much better. I said even back then we rely too much on our guys being able to hit a long shot with the shot clock winding down and down the stretch Lebron missed those shots this game but we shouldn't have to be relying on that in the first place.

For an offense ranked so high, we are the most inconsistent. You can just blame the times we are bad on just **** happening but when we get a lucky shot to drop with 2 seconds on the shot clock, thats just **** happening too.

We have a high variance offense even though its good overall, and what would you attribute that to? When we are in one of the low points of that offense and the other team runs something that works on us we give up these big runs. Not just talking about Dallas, we gave up big runs to a lot of teams this season even in games we won and a lot more it seems than other elite teams (7+SRS) of all time.

So if we have the same talent advantage that allows us to be so good overall, what are our inconsistencies caused by?

(Sorry for the offensive tangent and the question is not just directed at mopper)

[mopper8]

I'll take a stab at it. I hope this doesn't come off as argumentative cause its not, I'm just laying out the way I see it...

I wouldn't say our coaches had their thumbs up their ass, but I wouldn't necessarily chalk it up to **** happens either.

They got easy shots for their best players when they needed to, running the same play 4 times. Even the time we stopped them Dirk was open again (I don't recall this specific play just going by the info in the link and your post).

We've left Dirk on PnRs all through the (still short) series thus far. It's been our MO on the PnR for the playoffs, especially with ball-handlers like Terry, to trap aggressively. In the first 5:30 of the 4th quarter, that trapped caused a slew of turnovers as the ball-handlers were unable to get the ball to the open men (with our backside defense rotating to the immediate threats). Dirk is only technically "open" if (a) nobody is on him AND (b) they have a passing angle to get the ball to him. They didn't have (b), which is by design. We use length and athleticism to clog the passing lanes when we trap, preventing the ball-handler from taking advantage of the rotating D.

On the other side of the court, we who have better offensive players and going against worse defensive players couldn't get those easy shots. Our one basket happened on what appeared to be a breakdown for them defensively, not because of our ingenuity, that left Chalmers wide open on an inbounds play.

Well, its worth saying that the same thing can be said of their first basket in that series of 3 baskets in 4 tries for the staggered screen. Running a staggered screen is nothing new in the league, heck Miami runs staggered screens all the time. We use them to get Wade and James (but especially Wade) free going to the rim, Dallas used it to get Dirk flaring to the 3-point line. I'm sure if Bosh could shoot the 3 like Dirk we'd incorporate that option into our staggered-screen package as well; as is, he does get some 20-footers out of that set. They pulled out a play they hadn't used previously, but that doesn't make it any more ingenious than the stuff we ran on that out-of-bounds play. It wasn't groundbreaking stuff, and I don't see how our defensive breakdown on the first staggered screen was qualitatively different from theirs on the out-of-bounds play.

Where were our plays that confused them down the stretch when we needed just one basket to win it?

See above. We were only "confused" on one play out of 4; after that, the problem wasn't confusion, it was execution.

Our offense is basically hope for fast breaks otherwise Lebron/Wade/Bosh just be better than the other guys. Our offense overall is good because those guys are so good, but it should be a lot better.

Perhaps it should be better, but I don't think that's true about us simply relying on our guys being better than their counterparts, or at least, I don't think that's any more or less true than it is for any other team. Like I said above, the play Dallas used is not anything spectacularly different than plays we run, difference being that Dirk is a bigger threat as a screener than Bosh, which makes it trickier to defend.

Not just saying this after a loss, because I've complained about it after several wins and been met with "we won, stop complaining", "2-0", etc but our offense should be so much better. I said even back then we rely too much on our guys being able to hit a long shot with the shot clock winding down and down the stretch Lebron missed those shots this game but we shouldn't have to be relying on that in the first place.

I agree that when we have Lebron or Wade taking long (and especially contested) jumpers late in the clock, those aren't ideal shots and if that's what we're getting then we're not executing

For an offense ranked so high, we are the most inconsistent.

I don't think this is true. Look at the Mavs just as a counter-example. They steam-rolled through the playoffs offensively. They are supposedly the paragon of team play and crisp ball-movement, and their offensive ingenuity is being praised in your very post. And yet, they scored only 2 points over a ~5:30 stretch to start the 4th, and then scored 22 in the next 6:30. They didn't prove to be any more consistent than we did there. As bad as we looked taking awful shots at the end and not being able to get through our sets, they looked just as bad turning the ball over and taking bad shots to start the 4th quarter.

You can just blame the times we are bad on just **** happening but when we get a lucky shot to drop with 2 seconds on the shot clock, thats just **** happening too.

Yes, but that's not what I mean when I said **** happens. Look at the 4th time they executed that stagger screen, for example, which resulted in a Dirk 3. We defended the initial action on it just fine. The problem was that Haslem was unable to fight over Chandler's screen. There wasn't a defensive breakdown, there wasn't confusion, everyone was doing what they were supposed to be doing. If Haslem gets around Chandler, he maybe runs Dirk off that shot, maybe the contest makes Dirk miss, or maybe Dirk hits it anyway. But that didn't happen. We can say that Haslem should have been able to fight through the screen, but if any of our bigs is equipped to do that, its UD, who's our most laterally-quick big. He was the right guy to have out there to get around Chandler's screen, and he just didn't. That, to me, is the definition of "**** happens." Sometimes, they set a good screen and it frees a guy up even when you know what they're doing and you're defending it properly. That's also the challenge of guarding Dirk, btw: bigs are much less accustomed to fighting over screens. Maybe if we had Lebron on him LBJ could've fought over that screen, maybe not. But that's just MMQB stuff. We had good personnel on the floor to defend that play, we had a good scheme to defend it, and if Haslem gets over the screen, we've basically shut it down.

We have a high variance offense even though its good overall, and what would you attribute that to?

I don't think its a given that we have a high-variance offense, at least not of late, and not in comparison to any other teams. Like I said about the Mavs earlier in this post. I think when we watch one team 90+ times in a season and see other teams only a handful of times its easy to draw incorrect (or at least poorly-supported) conclusions. Mavs were just as up-and-down with their offense as we were in that game.

When we are in one of the low points of that offense and the other team runs something that works on us we give up these big runs. Not just talking about Dallas, we gave up big runs to a lot of teams this season even in games we won and a lot more it seems than other elite teams (7+SRS) of all time.

Maybe or maybe not. Again, you're talking about a subjective evaluation. I'd also argue that things we did in Nov, Dec, and even into Jan and Feb have less bearing on what we are doing now. IMO its pretty obvious that half-court execution has improved as the season wore on, last night's melt-down notwithstanding. edit: and the Bulls were a +7 SRS team and had an offense much more prone to lulls than ours by my subjective eyes

So if we have the same talent advantage that allows us to be so good overall, what are our inconsistencies caused by?

Basketball is still a game of probabilities. That's why guys talk about high-percentage shots vs low-percentage shots. But the thing is, over small sample sizes, things don't go strictly by percentages. Bibby goes 0-4 from 3 one game 4-7 another. He was "cold" in game 1 and "hot" in game 2 and that's considered inconsistent, and yet, over 2 games he's shooting 4-11, or 36%. That's a pretty normal number for someone like him, a spot-up specialist, and if he shoots 36% for the series people would be disappointed that he didn't shoot in the mid-40s like he did for us in the regular season, but it'd still be basically normal production. He shoots 38% on 3s for his career.

All offenses go into lulls, because even the highest percentage shots, the 66% rate of a Wade or Lebron finishing at the rim, still misses 1 out of 3 times, and only smooths out to the average over larger runs.

(Sorry for the offensive tangent and the question is not just directed at mopper)

Heh, no problem. I don't know that you'll be satisfied with my answers at all, but that's my POV at least.

[DefenseWins]

Some guy's video of the breakdown

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHH795Ps ... r_embedded

It looks like what was going on 3 months ago lol.

And yes, Carlisle deserves credit. He was running new plays, Heat had no idea what to do.

But they would double Dirk when they were up, and you could see they would leave Jason Kidd for a wide open 3 and no one rotated.

They played iso ball too. They can change this by just moving the damn ball or drawing fouls.

They would also double TERRY of all people. It seems like they think he's Derrick Rose from the last series because there is no reason to double Terry lol.

[GreenHat]

I'll take a stab at it. I hope this doesn't come off as argumentative cause its not, I'm just laying out the way I see it...

Not at all, I'd rather respond to a thought out post of a different viewpoint rather than just a simple "you're a hater" or a "my join date is before yours". The game isn't as fresh in my head now, so apologies if I mis remember a specific part of a specific play.

I wouldn't say our coaches had their thumbs up their ass, but I wouldn't necessarily chalk it up to **** happens either.

They got easy shots for their best players when they needed to, running the same play 4 times. Even the time we stopped them Dirk was open again (I don't recall this specific play just going by the info in the link and your post).

We've left Dirk on PnRs all through the (still short) series thus far. It's been our MO on the PnR for the playoffs, especially with ball-handlers like Terry, to trap aggressively. In the first 5:30 of the 4th quarter, that trapped caused a slew of turnovers as the ball-handlers were unable to get the ball to the open men (with our backside defense rotating to the immediate threats). Dirk is only technically "open" if (a) nobody is on him AND (b) they have a passing angle to get the ball to him. They didn't have (b), which is by design. We use length and athleticism to clog the passing lanes when we trap, preventing the ball-handler from taking advantage of the rotating D.

Me and you have had disagreements on how aggressively we play the pick and roll before. Like I have said before I don't have a problem in playing it aggressively most of the time and taking advantage of our athleticism (especially when chalmers is in there with wade and lebron) but I think that against some groupings we play it too aggressively and trap when we don't need to trap. I also think that trapping the pnr works even better when there is at least some element of surprise. If you trap almost every time you lose that element.

For a hypothetical example (not referencing any specific play) lets say Kidd ran a pick with Dirk really high up. I think that we would trap that too often and let Dirk pop out open while Kidd knows that two guys are gonna come out hard on him and he's gonna have an open Dirk (agreed he still has to make the pass). Or if Lebron is guarding Terry and Dirk comes to set the pick and Lebron goes through it easily and doesn't need any help, I'd rather that guy read that Lebron has him and stay on Dirk. I think if a few times we mixed that in we'd get a few steals because Terry would be expecting both guys to come after him.

My main problem is that we become too predictable which I think led to the staggered screen working so well for them at the end because they knew how we were gonna defend it. I'm not saying we always trap aggressively but most of the time we do and I would prefer more of a mix, thats all. We're the most equipped to trap it and play the passing lanes but I think if we mixed it up even more we could be even better.

On the other side of the court, we who have better offensive players and going against worse defensive players couldn't get those easy shots. Our one basket happened on what appeared to be a breakdown for them defensively, not because of our ingenuity, that left Chalmers wide open on an inbounds play.

Well, its worth saying that the same thing can be said of their first basket in that series of 3 baskets in 4 tries for the staggered screen. Running a staggered screen is nothing new in the league, heck Miami runs staggered screens all the time. We use them to get Wade and James (but especially Wade) free going to the rim, Dallas used it to get Dirk flaring to the 3-point line. I'm sure if Bosh could shoot the 3 like Dirk we'd incorporate that option into our staggered-screen package as well; as is, he does get some 20-footers out of that set. They pulled out a play they hadn't used previously, but that doesn't make it any more ingenious than the stuff we ran on that out-of-bounds play. It wasn't groundbreaking stuff, and I don't see how our defensive breakdown on the first staggered screen was qualitatively different from theirs on the out-of-bounds play.

The difference was that our "play" wasn't even meant to do that. From my vantage point the play wasn't going to chalmers, he just flared out and terry (I belive, could have been someone else) just was watching the ball. Lebron saw chalmers wide open on the other side of the court and whipped it out there. To me thats just Terry (a bad defender) falling asleep on D for no reason on a guy who was just providing spacing.

Thats different than them running a specific play 4 times in a row on us and it working exactly as designed on three good to amazing defenders. I never implied the staggered screen was some kind of new invention. Thats part of my point that it is only a step up from a fundamental set that everyone runs all the time yet we defended it very poorly. It seems like if the game had gone into overtime they would have been able to keep running it on us over and over again.

Where were our plays that confused them down the stretch when we needed just one basket to win it?

See above. We were only "confused" on one play out of 4; after that, the problem wasn't confusion, it was execution.

Confused was the wrong word to use. I should have said where were our plays that got us easy shots. I agree that we were only really confused on the first one but they were still getting good shots after that, while we weren't at all. And again thats with us having better players on offense and on defense.

Also see my above on why I think there is a distinction between chalmers getting open on that inbound and them running the staggered screen on us.

Our offense is basically hope for fast breaks otherwise Lebron/Wade/Bosh just be better than the other guys. Our offense overall is good because those guys are so good, but it should be a lot better.

Perhaps it should be better, but I don't think that's true about us simply relying on our guys being better than their counterparts, or at least, I don't think that's any more or less true than it is for any other team. Like I said above, the play Dallas used is not anything spectacularly different than plays we run, difference being that Dirk is a bigger threat as a screener than Bosh, which makes it trickier to defend.

Well the difference is that we have three elite offensive guys and even more elite defensive players to cover the other team's one or two. You accept that other teams rely on their guys just being better than their opposition too, but my point is we have those opportunities so much more than any other team. It seems like we have to rely on Wade/Lebron/Bosh hitting a "bad" shot more than other teams do. I'm not just talking about a difficult shot, I'm talking about expecting Lebron to hit a threes with 2 seconds on the shot clock with a guy on him, or wade to hit a tough fadeaway, or bosh to hit a long two point jumper with the shot clock running down.

My point is that we have the best offensive talent in the league so our offense should be better than it is. Its still very good, but I am giving most of that credit to having Lebron/Bosh/Wade instead of to having our offense.

So to me the easiest way for us to improve is for us to improve our offensive sets because improving our offensive talent is very hard to do when you are this high up.

And I agree that Dirk is bigger threat as a screener than Bosh at shooting a three but Bosh and Lebron are just as big of a threat as a sceener, especially when the guy running it is either Wade or Lebron.

Not just saying this after a loss, because I've complained about it after several wins and been met with "we won, stop complaining", "2-0", etc but our offense should be so much better. I said even back then we rely too much on our guys being able to hit a long shot with the shot clock winding down and down the stretch Lebron missed those shots this game but we shouldn't have to be relying on that in the first place.

I agree that when we have Lebron or Wade taking long (and especially contested) jumpers late in the clock, those aren't ideal shots and if that's what we're getting then we're not executing

I guess this is the crux of our differing viewpoints. We both agree that those aren't the shots we want but I put more of (of course, not all of though) that blame on our offense instead of the players. To me we do as well as we do on offense because of our players and not because of the playbook (not saying that its the worst, just that our offensive schemes have more room for improvement than our players)

To me its not even just the sets we run or don't run, its also that we take so long just to even initiate the offense. How often are we just starting the play in the second half of the shot clock? We might need to start rolling the ball up the court on every play just to save the clock lol. As an aside I hate that play we run where we throw it to Joel a little higher than the elbow with his back to the basket and he takes forever to pass it to someone to initiate the offense. The defense knows they don't have to cover him there at all.

For an offense ranked so high, we are the most inconsistent.

I don't think this is true. Look at the Mavs just as a counter-example. They steam-rolled through the playoffs offensively. They are supposedly the paragon of team play and crisp ball-movement, and their offensive ingenuity is being praised in your very post. And yet, they scored only 2 points over a ~5:30 stretch to start the 4th, and then scored 22 in the next 6:30. They didn't prove to be any more consistent than we did there. As bad as we looked taking awful shots at the end and not being able to get through our sets, they looked just as bad turning the ball over and taking bad shots to start the 4th quarter.

They did look as bad as us for stretches, but the point that you are missing is that our offense is better than theirs and so is our defense.

Thats my problem. All teams go through bad stretches, it happens. But we have a lot of these stretches even though our offense is better and the defenses we are going up against are worse.

Dallas has a worse offense than us and is going up against a better defense. Thats why we shouldn't be looking as bad as them.

Also I'm not one of those who likes "pretty offense". I'm one of those people who has no problem running ISO ball every single play if thats your best offense. Again I just think that an offense with Lebron/Wade/Bosh should be better than it is and I think it can get better with some scheme changes.

You can just blame the times we are bad on just **** happening but when we get a lucky shot to drop with 2 seconds on the shot clock, thats just **** happening too.

Yes, but that's not what I mean when I said **** happens. Look at the 4th time they executed that stagger screen, for example, which resulted in a Dirk 3. We defended the initial action on it just fine. The problem was that Haslem was unable to fight over Chandler's screen. There wasn't a defensive breakdown, there wasn't confusion, everyone was doing what they were supposed to be doing. If Haslem gets around Chandler, he maybe runs Dirk off that shot, maybe the contest makes Dirk miss, or maybe Dirk hits it anyway. But that didn't happen. We can say that Haslem should have been able to fight through the screen, but if any of our bigs is equipped to do that, its UD, who's our most laterally-quick big. He was the right guy to have out there to get around Chandler's screen, and he just didn't. That, to me, is the definition of "**** happens." Sometimes, they set a good screen and it frees a guy up even when you know what they're doing and you're defending it properly. That's also the challenge of guarding Dirk, btw: bigs are much less accustomed to fighting over screens. Maybe if we had Lebron on him LBJ could've fought over that screen, maybe not. But that's just MMQB stuff. We had good personnel on the floor to defend that play, we had a good scheme to defend it, and if Haslem gets over the screen, we've basically shut it down.

I do want Lebron to guard Dirk at the end of games (specifically on that last play). For all we know it might not work, but I'd put Lebron on the other team's best offensive player at the end of all games (not just saying that as a MMQB, if Dirk hits a game winner against Lebron, I'll still stick by that).

I disagree with your analysis of the play though. If you notice they ran a different variation that last time, and it did seem to catch us off guard. The original play is for Terry to give it to Kidd on the other side but because they knew how we were going to cover it, Terry faked like he was going to go give Kidd the ball and turned and gave it to Dirk while Chandler pinned Haslem down.

That is an adjustment that they noticed and implemented, again not just **** happening. If they hadn't run it with Terry giving it to Kidd on the other side before that, then maybe Lebron can jump off of Terry and contest it but he froze because they had run it differently before.

Again nothing groundbreaking, but it was an adjustment that got them a great shot.

We have a high variance offense even though its good overall, and what would you attribute that to?

I don't think its a given that we have a high-variance offense, at least not of late, and not in comparison to any other teams. Like I said about the Mavs earlier in this post. I think when we watch one team 90+ times in a season and see other teams only a handful of times its easy to draw incorrect (or at least poorly-supported) conclusions. Mavs were just as up-and-down with their offense as we were in that game.

Again if the Mavs were just as up and down than thats a negative mark against us because our offense is better and they are going up against a better defense. We shouldn't be as up and down as them.

I see your point about the 90 times and I am aware of it in my analysis. However I would like to point out that I haven't felt this way in any other year about either offense or defense.

I agree that I don't have any stats to prove that we are a high variance offense (just like you don't have any that we aren't) but I will submit that we have stretches where we look like we can be an all time great offense and times where we look like absolute ****. I don't think every team in the league has as many really high highs as we do or as many really low lows (those low lows are relative to our averages). And once again, the teams we play against are always going against an elite defense, most of the time we are going against an average one.

I don't know how I can prove that (not sure if anyone tracks like 5 min interval scoring efficiency standard deviations lol) but it does seem that way. And I am saying that as someone who absolutely hates people who says things like "it seems that way", but thats mostly when their is a stat that directly contradicts them. If anyone has some kind of stat like that, I will concede the point though as it is mostly just based on my observations and I don't have any solid proof.

When we are in one of the low points of that offense and the other team runs something that works on us we give up these big runs. Not just talking about Dallas, we gave up big runs to a lot of teams this season even in games we won and a lot more it seems than other elite teams (7+SRS) of all time.

Maybe or maybe not. Again, you're talking about a subjective evaluation. I'd also argue that things we did in Nov, Dec, and even into Jan and Feb have less bearing on what we are doing now. IMO its pretty obvious that half-court execution has improved as the season wore on, last night's melt-down notwithstanding. edit: and the Bulls were a +7 SRS team and had an offense much more prone to lulls than ours by my subjective eyes

The Bulls offense is more prone to lulls than ours, my point is they are a lot worse than us on offense so thats supposed to happen more often to them.

My point is about consistency. The Bulls are consistently meh on offense, while we are sometimes really good and sometimes really bad. We are better overall, but we appear to be more inconsistent thats what I'm trying to say.

Like if Joel and Dirk got into a series of three point contests, obviously Dirk is going to have the higher average no matter what. But Joel could be the more consistent one. Like if Joel went 3/20 every single time and Dirk fluctuated here and there, Joel would be more consistent while still being a lot worse.

These teams like Dallas and Chicago have worse offensive averages than us, my contention (based only on observations) is that we are less consistent around our higher average.

So if we have the same talent advantage that allows us to be so good overall, what are our inconsistencies caused by?

Basketball is still a game of probabilities. That's why guys talk about high-percentage shots vs low-percentage shots. But the thing is, over small sample sizes, things don't go strictly by percentages. Bibby goes 0-4 from 3 one game 4-7 another. He was "cold" in game 1 and "hot" in game 2 and that's considered inconsistent, and yet, over 2 games he's shooting 4-11, or 36%. That's a pretty normal number for someone like him, a spot-up specialist, and if he shoots 36% for the series people would be disappointed that he didn't shoot in the mid-40s like he did for us in the regular season, but it'd still be basically normal production. He shoots 38% on 3s for his career.

All offenses go into lulls, because even the highest percentage shots, the 66% rate of a Wade or Lebron finishing at the rim, still misses 1 out of 3 times, and only smooths out to the average over larger runs.

Yeah I understand small sample sizes. Thats why I don't make too much of stats for even a handful of games.

What I'm saying is that based on our talent advantage against every team, we are taking harder shots than we could be taking. I'm not basing that on one game, or even ten.

Things do go by percentages over the long run unless something changes (injury, change in ability, change in strategy, etc). Using the same Bibby example I would say something has changed. Now I'm not saying something changed in between 0/4 and 4/7, that would be dumb. I'm saying something most likely changed between 40/88 and 12/53. Not huge sample sizes and it could just be random variation, but it seems like there could be a reason for it (injury perphaps?).

And that goes to my overriding point. For there to be a real long term positive improvement in our offense, something needs to get better. Its going to be hard to get significantly better players so our avenue to get better in my opinion is the scheme/strategy/tactics. I think we both would agree that we have all time great offensive talent, can we say the same for our offensive strategy?

What is holding us back from being an all time great offense then? Our execution could get better but to me the plan that we are trying to execute can get much better.

Not that either of us will make much of one game, but now watch we're gonna score like 130 points tonight, all in the halfcourt and I'm gonna look like an idiot lol (at least I hope so)

(Sorry for the offensive tangent and the question is not just directed at mopper)

Heh, no problem. I don't know that you'll be satisfied with my answers at all, but that's my POV at least.

[/quote]

Yeah ditto on my reply lol