In yesterday's article, we mainly talked about the winners and losers of the G3 Lakers - that is, the defensive alignment adjustment and the Davis receiving method adjustment.
But actually, although the Lakers won yesterday, their progress was far from perfect, and at one point they trailed the Warriors by 11 points in the second quarter, which was their second consecutive game, and they were crushed by the Warriors to fall behind in double digits in the transition period (the transition period between the starting lineup and the bench).
Next, let's analyze what happened on the field at this stage of yesterday's game, the rotation thinking of the two sides, and how the next inferior side can adjust.
Let's turn back the clock to the end of the first quarter.
First of all, a clear sign in the first quarter was that Reeves seemed to have a rapid physical problem after chasing Curry - just 5 minutes into the first quarter, there was an empty three-point situation.
Considering Reeves' physical fitness, the Lakers changed their rotation this time, allowing Reeves and Curry to be on the same top and bottom - the previous Lakers' rotation method was Curry down, and Reeves will stay on the court for a while to help the Lakers complete the transition of James' rest phase.
And today's change to Reeves and Curry the same above and down meaning is also obvious - Reeves, you just need to put all your energy into the opposite position with Curry, Curry will also get off the court, hurry up and rest.
After Reeves left the court, another change in the rotation was that the Lakers were no longer on Traily Brown, but on Lonnie Walker.
TBJ was replaced by Lonnie Walker, and there were some "downgrades" in size and defensive ability, so the Lakers changed the alignment - because Schroder and Walker also can't interfere with Klay's shooting in size, so they simply start from the defensive catch, so that the defensive catch is better Schroder against Klay, and Lonnie Walker goes to the more straight Poole.
In the first round of this connection, Schroder executed a typical "D Top Lock" defense against Thompson - as shown in the figure, this defense is from the general defender standing between the offensive player and the basket, to the defender standing above the offensive player, and going in advance to block the offensive player's upward movement through the position, thereby disrupting the opponent's tactic of cutting out from the inside to cover the shot.
There is nothing wrong with this choice of defensive strategy - but the choice of strategy is fine, it does not mean that you can prevent the opponent.
The "D Top Lock" defense is actually a defense with trade-offs - although it can block the offensive player's outside cut and cover route through the position, if the offensive player changes to a reverse run directly inside like this, it is easy to get the opportunity to catch and shoot.
This round, Thompson defeated Schroeder's defense through a clever inner cut - and after Klay received the ball, in front of him, Schroeder was obviously too short.
Moreover, this lineup is relatively lacking in flexibility to change defenses, and it is easy to be punished by the opponent if it is slightly misaligned in the conversion offense:
This round, Clay did not go to Schroeder's side, but turned to the other side to launch a counterattack, Schroeder directed Hachimura to defend Klay, but Clay used a high cover and easily got rid of Hachimura Base's three-point shot.
It's very difficult to deal with - look at the Lakers' right defenders, Lonnie Walker and Hachimura against Poole and Klay, how to defend is not very suitable, the solution is only Schroder and Klay running from the left to the right together, or Davis coming out to strong delay.
But apparently the Lakers are not willing to do that today - then only gamble on Klay's feel.
So then Klay and Poole, each taking advantage of Davis' sinking, each hit a shot.
From a 3-point lead to a 4-point trail – it all happened in the 2 minutes of the fire.
Defensively, it is clear that this lineup is not performing satisfactorily. Then let's sort out the offensive logic of this lineup.
First, what is Lonnie Walker's logic instead of Troy Brown:
Obviously, on the defensive end, if Davis decides to execute the sink, then TBJ's ability to chase Klay and change resilience are better than Lonnie Walker - on the defensive end, TBJ wins.
On the offensive end, Walker and TBJ have the attributes of point-of-point shooters, and Brown shot terribly from three-point range in the first round of the playoffs, but scored three points in the first game against the Warriors; Although Walker's overall shooting performance in the playoffs looks better than Brown, most of his shots are in garbage time, and G2 shoots 1 of 4 from three-point range - shooter attributes, Walker wins smallly, and may be mainly better than daring to shoot.
In addition to the shooter attributes, Lonnie Walker's most obvious advantage over Brown is that he has a certain ability to carry the ball and has a stronger ability to switch offense - he is the difference between a secondary attacker and a targeted shooter on the field compared to Brown.
So I think the Lakers' tuning logic is this:
Sacrificing some defensive intensity and sinking to test the Warriors' shooting percentage (maybe they don't believe Klay is in three straight games?). ）；
In the case of reducing Reeves as a secondary attacker, replacing it with another player with the attributes of a secondary attacker, on the one hand, can continue the [secondary attacker attacks the Warriors' outside weak ring] strategy in the previous games, on the other hand, if Klay does not feel good, Lonnie Walker will also become a big killer on the counterattack.
The idea is beautiful, but unfortunately the warriors do not cooperate.
In addition to Klay and Poole's accurate shooting of almost every ball, in the positional attack, the Lakers' side of the ball has never reached Lonnie Walker's hands:
During this period of the Lakers, the main focus is still the ball carrier and Davis' blocking cooperation, and with Russell and Schroder on the floor, this job naturally does not fall on Walker's head.
However, at this stage, DiVincenzo showed excellent defense against Russell - Russell did not play him as smoothly as Curry, which has lasted for three games.
(At the same time, pay attention to Schroeder in the bottom corner, in fact, his effect of opening up the space is relatively limited, and Clay's defense is relatively strong, and one foot has stepped into the paint area.) ）
Another conundrum is Davis' secondary ball handling ability:
The advantage of Davis' game is his increased aggressiveness.
But the disadvantage of AD is that he is the kind of "single-mode" player - this round, I plan to attack by myself, I must attack myself; This round, I plan to pass, then the probability is pass.
Like this round, DiVincenzo and Clay defended very strongly, completely emptying Hachimura and Russell on the weak side, but Davis couldn't see it.
In fact, to be honest, Davis is no problem with this choice, he does have the ability to score the ball on the map - but my question is: if the Lakers at this stage, they are determined to play Davis' blocking and dismantling smooth, and there is no passing plan at all - then as a "non-shooting shooter", is Troy Brown actually a little more suitable than Lonnie Walker?
Same question for the next round:
This round, Hachimura in the bottom corner had a passing window that lasted more than a second, and he opened his hand to ask for the ball, but Davis chose to attack strongly (in fact, Davis attacked three times in this stage, and he never passed the ball at all).
It's not that Davis is not aggressive - but I still say that "since Davis is determined to be more aggressive, what is the point of Lonnie Walker's existence?" Just because he could be a little bit more accurate than Brown?
I personally feel that the Lakers have room to do better in terms of rotation selection or game planning during this period - Davis is right to be aggressive, but at this stage, with Walker, Schroder, Russell three secondary attackers present, can you emphasize the impact of moving the ball to play Walker? (Should Davis also take a break?) ）
Or during this time, if you are determined to continue to use Davis as the main attack point, and everyone else is only as a "space point", is it impossible to take Beasley and give it a try? Beasley and Walker are basically half a pound on the defensive end, and they also have conversion offensive attributes, and Beasley's space opening effect is much better than Walker's.
(With Beasley, in fact, other positions can also be adjusted, such as Russell changing TBJ to take a break?) In this way, TBJ+Schroeder + Beasley, the defense may not be much more degraded than the current Russell + Schroeder + Walker)
Here are just a few nonsense, the specific adjustment we still see how the Lakers coaching staff arranges.
We continue to analyze the matches during this period:
Next, Russell suddenly missed Schroder's three-point shot - still exposing the problem of this lineup being small but not accurate enough.
(Of course, I'm not an afterthought to say that this lineup must not work - the Lakers can also maintain this lineup by changing the style of play adjustment, and even different feel will have different perceptions - such as Davis' three goals (one shot was not put in the picture), Schroder's three-point also scored, isn't the Lakers ahead?) This lineup is also not bad at creating offensive opportunities. You can also choose to continue to wait and see. ）
Then the Lakers chose to keep Davis from playing the first quarter (probably to prepare for the second quarter), but this "smaller" move led to the point difference being further widened:
The Lakers didn't go up to Gabriel, but took James to play five - they seemed to want to change the defense to solve the problem, but after losing the height of the rim under the basket, the Warriors easily found the dominant match - Poole used the speed to pass James for a layup.
In the next round, he switched to Hachimura and was still one step away, and Rooney caused a foul under the basket.
If the lineup led by Davis above still has the value of waiting and seeing, then the Lakers' lineup and thinking during this time are obviously problematic.
So at the end of the first quarter, let's take a look at their rotation selection and offensive and defensive ideas in the second quarter:
This round, I think, is more representative and can reflect the Lakers' second-quarter rotation selection ideas and defensive ideas.
First of all, we can see that they continue to abandon Gabriel and play a small lineup - the more interesting alignment is Lonnie Walker going to Green, rather than Hachimura or LeBron.
The idea of this adjustment is still obvious - in the last game, we said that the Warriors' killing move was Curry holding the ball and chasing dreams to block and dismantle, then the Lakers will continue the defense of Curry in the main stage - let a small man go to Green, and then limit Curry's blocking by directly changing defense.
The round in Figure 2 is an example:
Curry and Wiggins high blocking this round - the reason why he blocked with Wiggins instead of with Green is because the Lakers are against Green is Walker, if and Green block Walker will definitely switch defenses directly, then compared to Walker, Curry is still more willing to play the slower foot of the Eight Village base.
This round, Curry tried to use the speed advantage to break through after changing defenses, but LeBron's excellent defensive complement caused the Warriors to go out of bounds.
Let's look at another defensive idea of the Lakers:
Looking at the Lakers' defense of Poole in these rounds, what can you feel?
My personal feeling seems to be that the Lakers are deliberately "selling a flaw" to Poole.
When Poole cut out and chose to cover the shot from the high post, they chose to squeeze through the cover without changing defense, giving Poole a gap and inducing him to shoot three points;
And when Poole blocked and dismantled, they seemed to deliberately switch the slower Hachimura base in front of Poole (and did not continue to change) - it seemed to be also inducing Poole to take a personal attack?
The second picture is the most obvious: the first cover, Wiggins and Poole blocked and dismantled, the Lakers decisively changed, but in the second cover, Green and Poole did cover, the Lakers did not change.
Why not change? Perhaps because the second cover will become eight villages against Green once the second cover is changed, the Warriors are more likely to take another block and change the offensive point to Curry playing eight villages - and the Lakers still prefer Poole to play eight villages than let Curry play eight villages. (Poole did do that in the second round.)
This is a daring "gamble" – what we call "the lesser of two evils."
And combined with what the Lakers did on the offensive end, it is even more interesting:
At the beginning of the second quarter, the Lakers had almost one offensive tactic - James broke through the ball.
And I think this is the biggest reason why they adopted the five-small lineup: they want to open up space breakthroughs for LeBron as much as possible, and at the same time they can stand on the perimeter with a circle of shooters and play what domestic commentators often call "one star and four stars".
(Moreover, the Lakers may have predicted that the Warriors would use Rooney like G2 in the transition period, so that the five-way lineup could better target the squatting Rooney, but Kerr predicted the Lakers' prediction...) ）
Then combined with their defensive strategy above, the idea of the Lakers' connection section jumped on paper:
Selling flaws on the defensive end to Poole (if it weren't for Poole, the Lakers might even have been Klay), inducing him to personally offense and stripping Curry out of the offense as much as possible; On the offensive end, let LeBron play what he does best offense - forming a situation where LeBron and Poole play off to develop offensive ability.
I have to say that wishful thinking plays well - unfortunately, the effect is not satisfactory.
First of all, the Lakers didn't hit those half-empty three-pointers that LeBron had set up in this game.
Secondly, the Warriors' offensive end is not fully cooperative - even if the Lakers change defense, Curry can find a way to crack it; And the lack of interior height of the five small lineups was also exploited by the Warriors:
Looking at this round, chasing dreams, Walker was ready for Curry to change defense after walking on the left side, but Curry suddenly turned back in an instant, changed to cover the other side, and directly passed Schroder, who saved the defensive shot, and attracted Wiggins to score easily after the defense.
That's what top stars are capable of – and they can't be completely limited by strategy.
Curry missed the shot this round, but Wiggins jumped high and returned the rebound to Curry, and the Lakers' defense was confused, and Wiggins again caught the ball under the basket and scored easily.
The ideal is plump, the reality is skinny.
The game is like that, if you don't adopt a "theoretical" strategy, you will definitely get the desired effect on the field.
And in the same way, when you see that a strategy is not working well on the field, don't rush to spray the coach, or think that changing this way and changing another way will necessarily be the right thing - but think about what is the logic of this? What are the variables?
The so-called "strategy" is like a two-way intersection - it does not mean that one is wrong, the other must be right, and the same road you think "does not work" may be the next game with some "obstacles" cleared.
As a basketball analyst, I hope you can think more about the game - when you get used to this mode of thinking, you will find that the game has more fun than watching the stars and watching the goals.
summary
Having said a little gossip, let's evaluate the Lakers' G3 bridging segment strategy and G4 forecast.
Although consequentially, the Lakers' G3 rotation strategy failed again - they lost ten points between the end of the first quarter and the beginning of the second quarter, and were once again forced to bring Davis to the court at the first timeout of the second quarter.
But from the perspective of the process, in fact, there is no lack of merit in the Lakers' thinking - this is my feeling after in-depth analysis, and my first reaction when watching the live broadcast was also questioning.
In the next game, I think the Lakers should consider taking Gabriel in addition to the rotation at the end of the first quarter, they can actually trust this rotation once more - these two sets of rotation are actually not bad at creating offensive opportunities.
But of course, they can also make some minor personnel adjustments or tactical center of gravity adjustments - like I said, Davis focuses more on attracting the ball after the pinch, or try different backcourt combinations in Walker, Brown, Beasley depending on different offensive strategies.
Let's look forward to how the Lakers will solve this problem in the next game.