D’Angelo Russell declares for NBA Draft
April 23, 2015Drawing Tribe Town’s Perimeter
April 23, 2015In Game 2, Boston coach Brad Stevens used a much different strategy than in Game 1 to defend the Cleveland Cavaliers, and particularly LeBron James. We’re going to continue our game-by-game series film breakdown with a snippet of what Stevens and the Celtics deployed early in the game and how James and the Cavs ultimately overcame it.
At a high level, the Celtics chose to bring their center to double James any time that he wasn’t in the middle of the floor. Whether James was on the wing starting to drive baseline, in the corner, or down in the post, Stevens had the extra man helping over. Oddly enough, this affected James’ ability share the basketball more than it did his ability to get his own shot. In this series, one in which James is trying to let Irving and Love get their feet firmly established in the playoff feel, that’s particularly annoying for LeBron.
On the first set, LeBron is posting up Evan Turner on the right block. When the ball gets passed into James, Tyler Zeller rotates over low to double him. Before Zeller can close in, however, James does the right thing and gives the ball up.
What James doesn’t see is the miscommunication on the backside of the Boston defense. Timofey Mozgov slides right in behind Zeller, wide open for a dunk if LeBron sees him. This is because Marcus Smart mistakenly stays pinned to J.R. Smith in the opposite corner. James passes it to Kyrie Irving on the left wing, and he’s wide open to take the shot.
Instead, Irving passes it to Smith in the left corner. Sure, J.R. is also open, but he’s much less open than Irving was as Turner is forced to pinch down on Mozgov and is late getting back. Smith misses the shot, but James played this one right. My only complaint is the Cavs’ best three-point shooter not taking a tremendously wide-open left wing three.
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Flip the sides of the court, and now we have James in the left post against Turner. As James turns baseline and the double comes, LeBron attacks it and turns to a skip pass intended for Irving on the right wing.
This time, though, Avery Bradley is able to snag the pass and go the other way with it. LeBron likely saw on film after the game that in this case, Smith at the top of the key, not Irving on the wing, was the open man. Ideally, Mozgov would’ve bit down into the post from his screen setup more quickly to draw Smart in and force Bradley to choose between Irving or Smith on the opposite side. James doesn’t help his cause by throwing a bit of a lazy pass.
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Later in the quarter, James looks to attack early in the shot clock going left. Turner is on him once again, and Zeller shows the double then recovers, only to return when LeBron gets stagnant. Mozgov and Tristan Thompson are not spaced well when this play unfolds, so Thompson flashes ball side in the post. This opens up Mozgov in the right corner. James passes it to him, which forces Avery Bradley to help onto him. Mozgov makes the right call and quickly hits Smith on the wing for the shot.
Smith takes and misses the right wing trey, but Marcus Smart leaves Irving completely to desperately challenge Smith’s jumper. One extra pass in this case would have setup Irving for a top of the key wide-open three-point shot. The Cavs are too good of a three-point shooting backcourt between Irving and Smith to get too critical about this. However, watching film and knowing the Boston strategy now (which will undoubtedly have a new wrinkle in Game 3), Irving and Smith can take those wide-open threes and know that there’s a wide-open three waiting for a teammate if they’re not open.
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How did the Cavaliers ultimately overcome the change in strategy for the Boston defense? Well, Kyrie Irving helping James score in the fourth quarter was undeniably crucial. But James saw that attacking early — and attacking the middle of the floor — made it nearly impossible for the Celtics to bring the double team.
Jae Crowder gets caught with his pants down a little bit as he’s looking over to the bench and expecting a Thompson screen on his right. James doesn’t wait for the screen and instead takes advantage of Crowder’s flat feet. From there, it’s beating Zeller on an angle to the bucket and sneaking it in the hoop. All Kelly Olynyk (who is guarding Love on the right wing) can do is swipe down as James goes by him. Thompson rolls to the middle of the paint, and he is in great shape to grab an offensive board if James had missed.
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Finally, while it didn’t work on this possession, the wine and gold also tried to isolate James on one side of the floor and make the double team that much more difficult. Due to the NBA’s defensive three-second rule,1 it’s a tap dance for big men helping on the opposite side of the floor to get in and out of the lane.
Isaiah Thomas does a nice job of baiting James into the skip pass to Iman Shumpert in the opposite corner. Again, James leaves A LOT to be desired with a lazy pass. The Cavaliers’ spacing is a little out of sorts as Thompson doesn’t know quite where to be — whether he should flash, hide in the short corner, or completely clear out. With the overload, the play here needs to be James attacking quickly 1-on-1 before the double can solidify. If it’s not there, the big man (Thompson) should be able to slide in behind the flashing double team candidate.
We’ll probably see some wrinkles in Game 3 from an impressive young coach in Stevens. But, the Cavaliers will look to improve upon their Game 2 three-point shooting (just 7-of-29) by keeping the floor properly spaced regardless of how many defenders they throw at James and where. As always, the success of the Cavaliers will largely be determined by the decision making of James and Irving.
- Per NBA.com: “Any defensive player, who is positioned in the 16-foot lane or the area extending 4 feet past the lane endline, must be actively guarding an opponent within three seconds. Actively guarding means being within arm’s length of an offensive player and in a guarding position.” [↩]
2 Comments
Good breakdown.
Related aside: I wish the NBA’s player tracker would let you simply ‘watch’ the game as a whole instead of just play by play. It would be a great way to show some of these breakdowns even more clearly than the video can sometimes give you.
Great great stuff, Kirk.
Seems to me that J.R. starting to hit some of his wide opens will make a lot of this moot.
Also, I know Zeller looks like a middle-schooler when guarding Timo, but in your first clip how is facing Mozgov and shoving him in the chest away from the basket with two extended arms a permissible way to obtain rebounding position?
Also also, Timo needs to stop falling on the floor every other possession. Starting to wonder if there’s an inner ear thing going on with him.