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December 17, 2014The pick and roll is one of the most important elements of modern NBA offenses. Depending on who you talk to, the NBA has or has not been “a pick and roll league” over various stretches. But, like something as simple and commonplace as the play-action in football, it’s an elemental part of offense that virtually every team incorporates to some degree. The pick and roll is akin to the projectile move in a fighting arcade game: relatively simple, an easy and cheap way to score, effective, reliable, and if you are unable to stop it your opponent will relentlessly exploit it like your a-hole friend who incessantly used Sub-Zero’s Ice Blast move in Mortal Kombat.1
Early in the season, the Cleveland Cavaliers have been defending the pick and roll in a most curious fashion. In the pick and roll, the screener (the man picking and subsequently rolling) sets a “pick” on the ball handler’s defender by orienting his body in such a way to prevent him from staying in front of the ball handler. He basically becomes a human obstacle, a six-foot plus moving traffic cone. The screener then “rolls” to the basket by running directly to the hoop upon completion of the pick. The basic idea is that upon preventing the ball handler’s defender from mirroring his movements, the defense will become disrupted in an attempt to stop the ball handler and the screener will have an easy layup as he rolls to the hoop. To forget about defending the pick and roll for a moment, below is a clip of Anderson Varejao executing an excellent pick and roll with Kyrie Irving, a welcome sight that should be warm and familiar to Cavs fans.
So far, the Cavs have been defending the pick and roll by hedging at an elevated rate. “Hedging” is when the screener’s defender jumps out on the opposite side of the pick to slow the ball handler, then recovers by following after the screener as he rolls to the hoop. Hedging stands in contrast to “switching,” where, as its name implies, the two defenders will trade targets, and “sagging,” where the screener’s defender will basically watch the action unfold from a distance and react to defend the hoop.
As of two weeks ago,2 the Cavs were hedging on over 40 percent of the pick and rolls they faced according to Vantage Sports and as alluded to by Scott. This was a higher hedge percentage than any other team in the NBA by a wide margin, other than the Miami Heat (who were hedging nearly as much as the Cavs).
This is bad. Not bad, per se, but bad because hedging can lead to disastrous results; and hedging that often most certainly does. After all, there is a reason the league average hedge percentage is less than twenty percent. Hedging is an aggressive way to defend the pick and roll, creating high risk/reward scenarios. The hedging man (hopefully) impedes a ball handler’s drive toward the hoop or eliminates an open shot, but because there is no switching the team is effectively defending the ball handler with two people, if only briefly. This means that the screener who streaks toward the hoop is going to be undefended. This creates two scenarios: 1. The hedging defender has to haul big ass to get back on his man, and if he does not have enough time the rolling screener will be open for a layup; or 2. A weak-side defender needs to come help on the screener, potentially giving his own guy a wide open look.
At this point, one may wonder, “Well, why on earth bothering to put your defense in such a predicament, when there are much more conservative ways to play the pick and roll?” Good question. The hope with hedging is that an aggressive strategy will pay dividends by preventing open shots for the ball handler, and creating oodles of turnovers that will lead to outlet passes and cool dunks and points and gnarly YouTube clips.
Hedging can also slow point guards who are fast, or great going downhill. It can stifle the strong side of the offense, and force opponents to counter with good ball movement to the weak side. But it only does these things when proficiently executed. When hedging doesn’t work, a team may have two confused guys guard no one. When hedging doesn’t work, it creates frantic scampering as defenders runs around arms akimbo and panicked like frightened muppets as they attempt to cover their ass. It’s like double-teaming a guy armed with a rubber chicken so that his friend can come whack you over the back of the head with a baseball bat.
In the early going of the season, it hasn’t been working for the Cavaliers. The Cavs defense has crept up to thirteenth in the league at 99.4 points per game allowed, but is twenty-first in defensive rating at 105.0 points per hundred possessions, despite gradual improvement.3 But partly because their pick and roll defense is giving other teams a bounty of layups, the Cavs are allowing 56.4 percent shooting at the rim, fourth worst in the league.4 They’re only contesting 57 percent of their opponents’ shots, the fourth lowest percentage in the NBA.5 When Vantage Sports revealed that the Cavs are the league leaders in hedge percentage, Grantland’s Zach Lowe tweeted that the Cavs should reconsider their hedge-tastic strategy.
Cavs need to reconsider being at the left extreme of the first graph here: http://t.co/NtN8osxF4d
— Zach Lowe (@ZachLowe_NBA) November 26, 2014
An example of the hedge backfiring on the pick and roll for the Cavs is below, from last Tuesday’s victory over the Toronto Raptors. The Raptors’ Patrick Patterson, the screener, comes to set a pick on Kyrie Irving, who’s fronting ball handler Kyle Lowry. James Jones hedges hard on Lowry as Kyrie recovers from Patterson’s pick. Patterson breaks for the basket, pursued by a distant James Jones. Jones doesn’t have a prayer of catching Patterson, who hits a bunny hop four footer after Lowry fires a pass out of the reach of the thoroughly-screwed Jones.
Another example from the same game is below. This one shows how hedging can cause a chain reaction that breaks down the defense. Kevin Love hedges on Raptors point guard Lowry, who he effectively traps with LeBron James in the corner. Anderson Varejao comes from the weak side to defend Amir Johnson, who Love left in order to hedge. Jonas Valanciunas, who Varejao had to abandon,6 cuts to the hoop for a dunk. LeBron is pissed.
Contrast these two disasters with the most crucial possession of the game. With the Raptors trailing 99-102, Amir Johnson goes to set a pick on LeBron James. Instead of staying on Kyle Lowry, LeBron allows Tristan Thompson to switch with him and guard Lowry one-on-one, while LeBron switches onto Johnson. Thompson plays phenomenal defense on Lowry, forcing an eventual missed jumper.
Thompson’s ability to defend guards as a power forward/center is uncanny, and one of the rare unique defensive assets the Cavs have.7 Instead of hedging with Thompson, throwing the defense into disarray when Amir Johnson rolled toward the hoop, Thompson and LeBron seamlessly switch off the pick, setting up the defensive stop that sealed the game.
It will be interesting to see how the Cavs continue to play the pick and roll throughout the remainder of the season. Thus far, Cavs head coach David Blatt has allowed the big men to make the decision when their man screens a guard on the ball. The catch, obviously, is that all of the Cavalier big men are not created equal.
The defense could benefit from some more conservative pick and roll defense, especially if Tristan Thompson can switch onto another teams’ point guards and lock them down situationally. I can only speculate as to why David Blatt continues to allow the team to hedge as often as it has, or whether he will continue to do so. Maybe Blatt wants to set an aggressive mentality, and will be more conservative later. Maybe he wants the team to practice this set, and thinks it will be destructive and a turnover machine if they continue to improve upon it. Maybe he wants the Cavs to close off the strong side, forcing opponents to execute good passes to set up shots (which they are doing with ease right now). Maybe he wants the team to run a lot now, and for players to develop a habit of maximizing effort to recover. Maybe Blatt thinks letting his team get annihilated on the pick and roll builds character.
In any event, how the Cavs defend the pick and roll will be a significant factor in determining how far they go in the playoffs, so hopefully whatever strategy they employ helps them defend against a weapon that every team has in its holster. After FOX Sports Ohio broadcasters Austin Carr and Fred McLeod lamented that the Pelicans were abusing the Cavs with their high pick and roll last Friday, the Cavaliers pick and roll defense was slightly better in a 97-88 over the Charlotte Hornets Monday night. Some counterexamples from Monday night in which the Cavs’ hedging was somewhat successful are here and here. In both examples, it was the Cavs persistence and effort to help and recover that led to stops8 With the tough Atlanta Hawks visiting Cleveland Wednesday night, the Cavs need to continue that effort to concentrate on one of their early season weaknesses: their pick and roll defense.
- Everyone had this friend, and he or she was invariably a jerk. [↩]
- It’s hard to find good pick and roll data, as such data isn’t included in the NBA’s SportVU Team Tracking data. It’s hard to find good free pick and roll data, anyway. [↩]
- Via NBA.com. [↩]
- Via NBA.com’s team defense tracking. [↩]
- Via Vantage Sports. [↩]
- Or, if not “abandon” then “try and defend at the same time as Johnson.” [↩]
- One that hasn’t gone unnoticed by Zach Lowe. [↩]
- As well as the Hornets’ poor execution. [↩]
6 Comments
Nice article Kyle, thank you. The beauty of the pick and roll is that it can create problems for a defense regardless of how they defend it. If you switch, you can get a fast guard on a slow big, or you can post the big up on the smaller guard and get him the ball down low. If you sag, you leave the 3-pointer open. If you hedge, you risk leaving the screener open. However, it certainly seems like the option the Cavs are choosing 40% of the time is a bad option for them… time to rethink this one, David.
Personally, I’m with you Kyle. I wouldn’t mind seeing more switching because we have quick bigs who change direction pretty well and will at least make the guard work for a bucket.
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I agree. The Cavs have some athletic bigs who can stay with the smaller guards, which makes me think a switch is the best strategy.
That being said, it’s really the high pick and roll that’s killing those guys. I don’t see any need to hedge 25 feet from the hoop. And they seem to be getting better at rotations. I have a feeling that whole system is based on those rotations, and the guys over here move the ball a lot faster than the guys across the pond.
By the way, Kyle, how does a player go “downhill?” I thought the nba court was flat?
Hedging actually makes the most theoretical sense since they have quick bigs and no rim protection. The problem with Cavs’ hedges are twofold: 1) the big man doesn’t step out enough to trap the ball handler, which negates the whole purpose of hedging, and 2) the weak side defense doesn’t rotate enough to cover the roll man. When you hedge, you are trying to make the offense make that difficult long pass to the weak side. The defense is flawed schematically when you give up weak side 3’s, but wide open layups are just a result of poor execution by the Cavs.