Interesting stat from John Hollinger: The Game One last night wasn't quite as defensively dominated as the low score makes it seem, the teams were just playing really slowly. The Cavs had 79 possessions. During the regular season, Detroit was the slowest team and averaged 88.2 possessions per game. Last night's average possession took slightly over 18 seconds.
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Go Slow
08 Jun 2007 11:35 am
Comments (19)
which once again leads us to a point that was much debated here a few months ago (especially by bob mcmanus): tempo makes an enormous difference to the number of points.
now, san antonio did play good defense last night, but we can judge that by other factors than total points.
i'm reminded of the time that elgin baylor scored 61 (wasn't it?) in a playoff game and the rest of the celts congratulated satch sanders for his excellent defense (and not ironically, either). the celtic consensus was that the way baylor was playing, he could have scored 100 if satch hadn't been so effective....
Between this miserable series and the Astros sucking more than a thousand Hoovers, I may be sports-free for the next three months.
And I was also pleased to see Simmons highlight Mike Brown's sheer idiocy in not giving Boobie and Sideshow Bob more minutes.
Seriously, how foggy do your glasses have to be to not realize the Cavs are more competitive with them on the floor?
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And also, is this entire playoffs going to be an object lesson in "Don't double Tim Duncan. Just don't do it."?
This really ain't rocket science. Duncan will hurt you if you single-cover him, but the Spurs will absolutely destroy you if you double him.
(You can double Duncan a bit after he starts to make his move, as Utah did a bit with Derek Fisher. But even that is a bit fancy. Keep things simple. Let Duncan get his points, and don't let the rest of the Spurs play 4 on 3. They're really constructed specifically to destroy you if you do.)
The most impressive thing the Spurs defense did last night was to take away LeBron's skip pass.
One of the things LeBron does unusually well is the skip pass. If you double him on the left side of the floor, he has an uncanny ability to throw a pass above the defense all the way to the right side of the floor, skipping the intermediate pass to the middle of the floor.
LeBron does this better than anyone else in the association currently. It was one of his main weapons in the Detroit series.
And somehow San Antonio was able to take that away in game 1 and force LBJ into turnovers on the skip pass. Dunno if LeBron was having an off day, or if the Spurs had prepped just for the skip pass, but I'd bet on the latter.
Re: "...Boobie and Sideshow Bob".
Great nicknames. I hope the Cavs win.
As usual, I haven't followed the NBA all year, and am only catching the finals. The big difference between the teams so far is Tony Parker. He was awesome. The Cavs don't seem to have any guards worth mentioning (I didn't see Boobie's trash-time minutes).
I bet one of the reasons there were so few possessions is the Spurs went into the NBA equivilent of a prevent defense. They were eating clock on offense, and trying to force the Cavs to do the same.
Can't long possession times indicate a lack of open shots, therefore stingy defense?
"Can't long possession times indicate a lack of open shots, therefore stingy defense?"
Yes.
Nice catch by Hollinger. It really did seem as though every possession went down to the 24 second buzzer. Part of the problem for the Cavs is that LBJ often gets the ball and just stops for 5 seconds to evaluate. Move! Pass! Do something!
Yeah, exactly, Lebron's long, meditative pauses to reflect on the defense while dribbling aimlessly 30 feet from the hoop are a real problem. He was more prone to that in previous years, but I saw a number of old bad habits reemerge for him in that game. One of the biggest problems in the Cavs offense is that it's not set up for Lebron to move without the ball, and he doesn't always make the greatest decisions with the ball.
But the biggest issue really is that the Cavs have such a hard time making you pay for double or triple teaming Lebron. There are very few people on that team who can consistently make an open jump shot. Drew Gooden and Daniel Gibson are the most consistent ones.
Also, Lebron has to *force* refs to call fouls by attacking the basket again and again until they do. The Spurs were really hacking him last night, but he wasn't being aggressive enough to highlight it.
Perhaps because of his size, Lebron does *not* get the superstar foul calls, at all. It's pretty striking, and a huge disadvantage for him compared to other major stars going back to Jordan. If he got calls like Wade got calls last year, then the Cavs would be competitive with anybody, including the Spurs. But I guess the little skinny perimeter players call out the protective instincts in the refs.
consciously slow tempo is always a defensive move in that it limits total possessions and keeps the game closer (the greatest slow tempo team ever, of course, was red holzman's knicks, who also played exceptional team defense).
but a limited number of shots can also indicate good defense, and i'd say (as i already said and petey went into greater detail on) that san antonio played very good defense last night, just not legendary defense.
Sigh
"the celtic consensus was that the way baylor was playing, he could have scored 100 if satch hadn't been so effective...."
And without team defense, maybe the other players could have scored another 100.
See mikern & Petey at 12 above. Controlling the tempo is a strategy, going back to the 4-corners in college ball, and the ability to do it well indicates defensive skill. You can also try to speed the game up, as in Showtime, and a team that does so is seeking a tempo that will highlight its offensive advantages.
In the usual descriptions, we do not call football teams that win 55-42 or hockey/soccer teams that win 15-11 great defensive teams, although they may make some great defensive plays.
Perhaps because of his size, Lebron does *not* get the superstar foul calls, at all.
You really think so? I thought the Detroit and (especially) New Jersey series were very unfairly officiated.
bob, i have no desire to reenact the same banal arguments (apparently you believe that cleveland played world-class defense last night and apparently you believe that a fast-break team by definition cannot play great team defense, which would come as a major surprise to the showtime lakers or the russell celtics), but seriously, what does your initial set of remarks mean concerning baylor, the lakers, and the celts? i don't understand what you're saying in the slightest.
PS. you really have to work on your analgies. last year (i just spent an irreplaceable 60 seconds of my life on this!), the average NFL team allowed 21 points per game, so sure, no one would say that allowing twice as many points as the league average was great defense. similarly, last year in the english premier league (typically the highest scoring of the major soccer leagues), the average team allowed 1.18 goals per game, and so no one would say that allowing 10 times the league average was a good defensive performance.
but we're not talking about that, are we? because it was the quickest thing i could put my hands on, i'll say that the 2005-2006 nba average was to allow 97.2 per game. as soon as some allows 194.4 in a game (not to mention 972 in a game) i'll accept your analogy.
but if the league average is 97.2 and someone plays at a high tempo that allows for more possessions and gives up 110 points a game, that would, in football terms, amount to allowing 24 points in a game, and yes, you could play excellent defense and still allow 24 points; in soccer terms, that would mean allowing 1.33 goals a game, and that could still be an excellent performance. (to extend the point, man u, which plays at the highest tempo in the premier league, allowed 27 goals, while scoring 83; chelsea, which is the best defensive team in the premier league and which operates at a very controlled, italian-style tempo, allowed 24, while scoring 64. these were by far the two most dominant teams in the league, and indeed, when they payed each other, they had a 1-1 match and a 0-0 match.)
so talking about 55-42 or 15-11 games isn't really very useful here. the question is whether a football game that ended up 27-24 could be said to have had great defense played (and it could have) and if a soccer match ends up 3-2 could it be said that great defense was played (and yes it could; my favorite memory on that score was a champion's league match between man u and real madrid a few years back where man u won the match 5-4, and yet had real, and in particular, its keeper, iker casillas, not played exceptionally well on defense, they would have lost 8-4 and been out of the tournament, whereas 5-4 kept them alive and bounced man u. now it would be a rare 5-4 match where you would say great defense was played, but this was one of them, mainly because both clubs were fast-break soccer teams)
PPS. you seem not to have noticed, but i don't disagree that slow-down tempo-control basketball is a defensive strategy; where i disagree is that the mike fratello hawks were not a great defensive team.
pps. i also meant to mention that you could allow 19 points in a game and play poor defense; if you take a look at the buffalo-giants super bowl, that's exactly what happened. the giants gave up enormous chuncks of yardage, buffalo chewed them up and down. luckily (as a giants fan) i can say that thanks to ball control, the giants didn't let buffalo have enough possessions to take advantage of how much they were dominating the giants defense. yet you read a 20-19 score and you would think that top-flight defense was played....
Gotta go with Howard the football analogy really doesn't hold up becasue the games are so different.
In Basketball simply holding the ball on offense and cutting down the number of possesions can keep the score down, but what still matters is how easy is it for the other team to score on the possesions they get. So what if you lose 80-79 you didn't necessarily play better D than a team that won 110-102. When he coached the Sonics Nate McMillan was always most interetsed in points per possesion not total points. If you give up 80 points in 80 possesions you are much more likely to lose than a team that gives up 102 points in 120 possesions.
I didn't want to rehash this either, but I was invited.
(Longer comment deleted)
Comments closed June 22, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
I was pleased to see Henry Abbot highlight what I thought was the prettiest play of the game.
Posted by Petey | June 8, 2007 11:49 AM