Coach Spins' Clipboard: Defending CP3, Tunnel Vision Saddiq, & Chicago's Indecisive PNR Defense
Plus Walker Kessler's dominance, Alex Caruso, and some Mike Brown wizardry
Happy Friday! Let’s talk basketball…
Specifically, let’s talk pick-and-roll defense. Two teams — the Chicago Bulls and Phoenix Suns — have felt their way through some different coverages this past week. The Suns are seeing Chris Paul get honed in on now that Devin Booker is out, and a specific ball screen coverage is giving them some issues. As for the Bulls, they’re trying to play ball screens one way, then changing course by the time the second half arrives. It makes me scratch my head a bit.
We’ll hone in on some tidbits from around the league that caught our eye over the past week. Most of it is positive, though some of it points to areas of growth for individuals and teams that are key to their success.
Foiling the Chris Paul pick-and-roll
With Devin Booker out of the lineup, the Phoenix Suns are a wildly different team and drastically easier to guard. The Suns have countered by putting the ball in Mikal Bridges’ hands a lot more than usual (and he’s responded well), but the lion’s share of the creation burden falls upon the shoulders of Chris Paul.
Paul is a mid-range killer who picks apart Drop coverage with his pull-up and slices aggressive defenses with his cerebral passing. He’s been a nightmare for almost 20 years in that regard. He and Bridges are part of the reason the Suns have won six of their last eight. But that doesn’t mean it’s been easy…
Teams are starting to throw a specific type of matchup to CP3 because, let’s face it, the Suns don’t really have any size or strength at the 4. The idea in a vacuum is really smart: put more length on Paul. Maybe you can get a piece of his pull-up from behind. But nobody else is a threat to take a smaller player into the mid-post for a mismatch, so cross-matching against the Suns has no penalty.
From there, the defense will go over-the-top of the ball screen and sit back in Drop with DeAndre Ayton’s man. If Paul is cerebral enough to force a switch, Ayton’s new defender has enough size and length to hold up on an Ayton mismatch post attempt and keep him off the glass to prevent second-chance points.
We saw it last weekend with the San Antonio Spurs when Jeremy Sochan went off for 30 points. He was also guarding CP3 at the point of attack, contesting from behind or switching onto Ayton to keep the big man off the glass. Paul made nearly every mid-range pull-up he took (he went 11-16 from two) and Ayton did have one righty hook over the top of Sochan. Phoenix scored on the shots they took against San Antonio’s coverage.
Two days later against the Toronto Raptors, the Suns saw that coverage once again. This time, Paul wasn’t as automatic. Toronto’s length was much harder to overcome, as they’d rotate Scottie Barnes and Precious Achiuwa onto Paul and Ayton regularly. CP3 was off his game here, not canning everything in the mid-range. The result was a game with the Raptors down to the wire.
By playing Paul more aggressively than San Antonio did with ball pressure and length, the Raptors forced someone else to try and beat them off the bounce. Against this banged-up roster, it was a strategy that mostly worked.
The Raptors also swarmed any post entry to Ayton, trying to make him a passer and clog the lane so that he couldn’t score easily. It’s a pretty good blueprint for when he’s in, though there are no worries on that front when Bismack Biyombo is on the floor.
Paul can try to compensate by controlling everything on the offensive end playing the puppeteer. But he’ll break down over the course of a long season if he has to do it every night. He’s a good scorer around the elbows in rhythm. If he has to attack bigger, younger guys one-on-one in isolation or space just go generate offense, he’s going to wear down.
Monty Williams and the Suns started to counter these switches and coverages well as a means of saving Paul’s energy. They added a third offensive piece to the screening action, either to force the weakest defender on Paul into the action, or by using vertical handoffs in the middle-third of the floor. Against the Spurs, Spain pick-and-rolls caught them in a deep drop and generated open pull-ups for Paul. Late against the Raptors, they went to a version of the zoom action in the lane, and Mikal Bridges was able to feast a bit on the poor defense of Fred VanVleet.
The Suns need a bigger 4-man to prevent this from happening, someone who can punish teams in the playoffs who ride with this strategy. Paul has been really good for them to keep the Suns alive during this stretch, but we’ve seen his star begin to burn out in May before. Phoenix is 1-8 in games he’s failed to score 15 points since his return from injury in December. They need Booker back, but another scoring option in addition to him would be valuable.
Saddiq’s Tunnel Vision
A lot has been made of Detroit Pistons third-year wing Saddiq Bey potentially being available at the trade deadline. On its face, it makes sense: he’s a big wing who can shoot it that’s on a cheap contract and could be useful for a contending team. But Bey has his fair share of struggles with decision-making on offense that would give me a lot of pause in acquiring him if I were a contending team.
Coming out of college, Bey checked many boxes that I value. He was a former point guard who hit a growth spurt, came from a Villanova system where he played on-ball and off-ball with fundamentals consistently, and had decent passing vision. His time in Detroit hasn’t seen the same grasping of team-centric basketball, and that came to a head on Monday night against the Dallas Mavericks.
Down two with the ball and only 90 seconds left, a scrambled possession found Bey open on the wing where he could drive to the rim. As he drove, he forced the rim-protecting Luka Doncic to step up to him and take away the layup. As Luka left big man Jalen Duren on the opposite block, no Mavs defender was in position to rotate down. Duren was the epitome of wide open, standing at the basket.
Bey, two feet away and able to hit him with a shovel pass or bounce drop-off, didn’t throw it to the rookie for the tie, instead trying to power an off-hand finish over or around Luka:
Plays like these are really frustrating because they’re an error in the process (not in execution) when the right process is pretty blatantly apparent. Bey has been disappointing this year for the Pistons, whether it’s with the shots he takes, the 3-pointers that aren’t falling, or now the decision-making in a game that would be a huge get for the team.
Walker, Utah Ranger
In the 16 games that Kessler has started during his rookie campaign, he’s averaging a double-double (10.9 points, 10.0 rebounds) and 2.4 blocks per game. He’s started the last ten games for the Jazz, averaging 11.9 points and 10.9 rebounds, shooting 70.7% from the field and swatting 2.8 shots per night. Most importantly, the Jazz are 7-3 in those games and clinging onto a playoff spot.
Kessler has been balling out on the defensive end, impacting their starts in games in a positive way. Take Wednesday against the Raptors, where Kessler logged six blocks in the first quarter and was dominant around the glass. He eats up space, but he also can come out of nowhere to swat guys on the interior just when you think he’s out of a play. Second and even third efforts aren’t successful when he’s in the game because he’s got an innate ability to quickly position his arms between the ball and the rim:
Kessler has been a legitimate steal for Utah, but he feels like he should be a starter the rest of the way. He’s playing 27 minutes a night since January 10th, and he’s earned every one of them. What a boon for the Jazz.
The Short Roll Hammer
Over the last decade or so, hammer actions have become a staple of NBA after timeout (ATO) playcalling lore. The idea is a tad complex but works against man-to-man help rotations without fail. As a drive occurs on one side of the floor, the lowest man on the opposite side’s defender will rotate to the rim to take away a layup. His man sets a back screen for the next closest defender, and a corner 3-pointer is open as a result.
Mike Brown’s use of smart offensive concepts with the Sacramento Kings has helped result in their stellar offense and ascent in the Western Conference. One such play — a Hammer screen off a short roll — particularly caught my eye. Seeing that the San Antonio Spurs were starting to trap De’Aaron Fox in the Fox-Domantas Sabonis pick-and-roll, the Kings drew up this nifty set so that, once Sabonis caught the pass from Fox, he could just flick a pass overtop to the opposite corner.
In essence, the play functioned like a Hammer action. Mike Brown is very good at this whole coaching thing, and every piece of what he brings to the table has been clicking this year in Sacramento.
Nikola Vucevic, at the level of the screen
After watching the last three Chicago Bulls games, I found an interesting trend with their ball screen defense. When Nikola Vucevic is involved in the ball screen in the first half, the Bulls would play a little more aggressively by putting Vooch at the level of the ball. By the second half, they change their strategy and more consistently go toward drop coverage — especially if they’re down in games.