Ok, I am sick of one play in the Blazer playbook, and I think it should never be run again. It’s the play where CJ comes curling toward the top of the key, gets a pass from Lillard, gives it right back to him, then keeps curling around to the other side of the court where he gets the pass from Lillard again for a jump shot or a drive. It’s a stupid play for several reasons: 1. Lillard has to toss the ball a long way to CJ on the move, and in order to get it there quickly enough he has to throw the ball fairly low. This pass has been intercepted several times this year, and it was intercepted once in Game 1 by Anthony Davis. 2. The play can be seen coming a mile away. 3. It’s unnecessarily complicated. I hold my breath every time the Blazers run it, because the chances of it going wrong are quite high. 4. No other team in the NBA runs this play, for all the reasons I cite above.
You must not have a clue of what a flare screen is nor how effective it can be. And you must be holding your breath all game because that's simply our basic flow offense.
This is actually one of our best plays. Quick hitter, sometimes gets CJ an open 3, and if not it puts CJ in a position where he's catching the ball facing the basket with a defender coming at him, which is easy to attack. Dame tosses to CJ and gets it back so he has his dribble if he doesn't make the flare pass.
1. It's a fairly simple pass. It's a basic flair. It's on the passer to elect when to pass the ball or not. Dame still has his dribble so of he doesn't pass it, he's still in a good spot. 2. Flare screens can be hard to defend, even when you know their coming. 3. How's it complicated? Dame gets his dribble reset then CJ runs off the flare screen. That's extremely simple. 4. You're saying that no teams run flare screens, or no teams have the pass and pitch back before the flare screen?
The problem with it is we run it way too much. It can be an effective tool, but should be mixed in with a variety of other looks. We basically have: The Flare (basic) The P/R (basic) The Drive/Kick, or don't (basic) Sprinkle in a bunch of ISO, and a handful of post-ups, and that's our offense.
I agree with this. We don't have enough diversity.. everything seems to be "flow". There's not enough cuts to the rim or enough curls.
You're not disagreeing with him. Flare screens, basic off ball/on ball screens is all we have. We don't have a set that relies on ball movement warping the defense to a point where it's susceptible to screen freeing a player on a rim cut. We rarely work with double screens with different off ball movement off of it. We don't know how to freelance in terms of screen setting offwnsively. Our offense is solid, but rudimentary.
And i can name at least 4 other teams that run this same type of Flair Screen.............. That are currently in the playoffs. FOR THE WESTERN CONFERENCE!
They run it when it works. If it keeps working they keep running it. The point is to get open looks for uncontested shots. When teams adjust to the flair screen then they are opening up another option. That option is usually the PnR in the middle around the second player involved in scrambling the flair screen (usually the center). Would you like me to describe some more options? There is also the back door ooop to a cutter (usually Pat or Harkless). Then there is the second form of two man game between Dame and CJ drive and dish.
We have a rule in our offense for our youth teams. No matter what offense we're in, if the defense goes into deny or overplays, back cut them to death.
I would LOVE if we ran back cuts! It's like Harkless is the only one familiar with the concept. Basically, I'd be a fan of ANY play that results in motion towards the rim - nearly every pass and cut is on an East/West trajectory, rather than North/South.
That play is called fist motion flip. Here is a good video that shows all the different sets we run off of flare screens, back screens, and the action they create. We’ve added a bit to these as well with the addition of Nurk.
But if the defense stays solid you need more than backcuts to get something going to the rim.. Not sure Stotts realizes that.
