<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">Friday's win over the Los Angeles Clippers represented a milestone in Nelson's 2,000-plus-game NBA coaching career; it was the first time he'd used a zone defense for 48 minutes. While the 2-3 alignment allowed the Warriors to use three of their smallest guards -- Ellis, Wagner, Anthony Roberson and Keith McLeod -- at the same time without having them get posted up and abused defensively, don't expect to see an increase above the planned 20 percent zone when the regular season starts. It didn't hurt that the Clippers were without most of their top rotation, including Elton Brand, Chris Kaman, Sam Cassell, Cuttino Mobley and Shaun Livingston. "They'd have carved that up if they'd have had a good team in there," Nelson said. "They had openings anyway and didn't make them. They attacked it pretty well. I wouldn't have been able to stay in it that long (against the starters)." Nelson also said the move was made more out of desperation than anything else; with starters Richardson, Baron Davis and Troy Murphy on the bench, he had no choice but to use "three midgets," as he put it. "When I have my bigger players out and have to go with tiny guards, they would have gotten posted every time," Nelson said. "There wasn't a whole lot I could have done differently."</div> Source
I'd have to see how effective this defense actually was. What is a zone defense? For the noobs of basketball, the zone defense is designed for players to cover a certain area of the floor and guard anyone entering it. Teammates also provide help on a ballhandler to stop dribble penetration. This is used primarily when man-to-man coverage is ineffective or teams just want to force the other team to shoot outside shots instead of getting inside to the hoop. However, this kind of play always leaves a man open since nobody is actively guarding an individual player like in man-to-man defense. The ball can cycle around the arc and hit some shooter within an area where a defender is too slow to cover it. Depending on the variant of zone defense where certain areas are more heavily guarded (examples: 2-3/3-2/1-3-1), it can leave a shooter pretty darn wide open. Also, it can't stop fast dribble penetrators that can regularly attack a zone with ease since no help defenders are fast enough to cover the areas the dribbler is getting into. If Chris Paul/Speedy Claxton or Sebastian Telfair attacked our 2/3 zone, this is like trying to cover the Germans in World War Two at the Battle of Bastogne. They might get in through the perimeter pretty easily, so you better have some good interior shotblockers to save the day and beat them back. There are also spots/pockets in any zone defense where a shooter can step in and shoot it without being challenged too much by a defender. Off the ball movement can tear a zone apart as long as the floor spacing is wide enough to enter. If the defense packs in the paint and crowds it, a team is forced to shoot. Oh yeah, most likely a fastbreaking team like ours is going to use 3-2 instead of 2-3 zone alignment because the 3 perimeter defenders are in the quickest to transition for an easy basket. But.... those guys have to make a defensive stop... which is probably why Nelson went 2-3 with our crappy defenders. 2-3 is more defensive and is catered towards slow guys as it puts more guys around the painted area near the basket. However, this allows guys to drain it from 3-point land quite easily. Maybe the Blazers in preseason burned us in the 1rst quarter this way and maybe it's also what saved the day in the 3rd and 4th quarters, along with extra scoring punch from Baron Davis and Roberson. Why do I hate zone? It's lazy. Guys move within an area, but they don't actively chase guys that use screens that go outside of that area. Plus, if nobody communicates or guys are too slow to help, it's like having an internet connection disconnect or go slow all of a sudden. Also, a good zone requires excellent help defenders. If there's too much sagging or too much late help, a good shooting team or a fast dribble penetrating team with good off-ball movement can rip it apart, especially teams with slow moving perimeter defenders and weak interior defenders.
Also, one more thing: Zone defense doesn't allow much positioning for defensive rebounding since big men have to move as well. They cannot seal off their assignment or box them out as easily. In Montgomery's defense, this failed pretty much most of the time, but also because some guys were not actively boxing out anyway or helping out defensively. This was apparent when we wouldn't even box out on missed free throws by the other team. Also, we know that Murphy and other guys like him are terrible help defenders. They just do not help. We had on liability on defense, and another on offense, and neither of our other 3 players are that solid both defensively and offensively or else we would be making more stops, limiting the other team's fg%, and we'd be making more free throws and higher % of wide open shots.
