Game Thread GAME# 41: HORNETS @ BLAZERS - JANUARY 13, 2020 - MONDAY, 7:00 PM, NBCSNW

I thought the lineup magnified the coaching blunders not excused it. If you don't have a guy over 6'8" on the court against a team that shoots so many threes, just switch all picks and live with them shooting twos or contested 3's. When your defensive personnel sucks at least try trapping or hedging picks so maybe you force an occasional turnover. It took until late in the 4th for Tolliver to hedge picks and it looked to me like he was freelancing not doing it as part of the gameplan.

 

We actually freaking played zone on some possessions there in the early part of the third quarter. ugh. Remember a few years back when it was like ET and Plums or someone who had to beg Terry to try a trapping defense that involved the big hedging more? Why did it have to take the players to come up with that strategy and not the coach?

Hassan would have gotten destroyed even more in that coverage, but still. I just can't stand Terry these days. I know it makes no sense to fire him now, but holy hell, that third quarter drove me insane.

And that timeout at the 4min mark in the fourth when we had momentum and like an 8 pt lead that he took ONLY because he would lose one at the 3min mark. It's not some genius move to do that. Sometimes coaches actually have to read the game and make decisions on the fly, not predetermined ones just because he's always done it. CHA immediately came out of that with a 10-2 run while we ran some shit ATO plays as usual.

 

A lot of talk about how we struggled to defend Charlotte's heavy dose of Spain pnr (where a backscreen is set for the roller) in the 3rd quarter.

Extremely tough to guard with our current personnel and with a dynamic pull up guy like Graham.

Here's my favorite why to defend it which relies on the big dropping and avoiding getting screened while the other two defenders involved switch.

*2nd video



Biggest problem with it is probably the pocket that is still left for a potential pull-up 3. Relies on the guard fighting over top and even then, with a dropping big, the backscreen is often set low in the paint, causing the switch to happen late which you can see in the video above.

Finally, here's a great article on spain pnr....the different ways teams got into it and defended it--both with only the 3 players directly involved or with a tag off the weakside shooter--during the 2018 fiba qualifiers.



Link to full article:

http://team.fastmodelsports.com/2018/08/20/evolution-spain-pnr-basketball/