On paper | Owen, are you going to ruin the Lone Ranger?

Little Little Chick MJ

2024-06-09 15:20Posted in Beijing Sports Creators

Let's talk about G1 in the finals.

A game in which all Celtics were on the line and played to their own playing advantages; At the same time, Irving was sluggish and the Mavericks were still immersed in the defensive logic of the Western Conference playoffs and failed to keep up with the rhythm of the game.

Let's take a look at a very interesting shot first:

Before the start of the series, we can expect the content of the game, in addition to the Celtics' own advantages -

All 5 people can attack with the ball, run without the ball, and do fixed-point three-point shooting without the ball, which is the offensive end;

At the defensive level, Holiday has a 1-4 change of defense and even a few rounds of dislocation to resist the center, White and Brown can change the defense 1-2 + bear a small amount of 3 swings, and Tatum can change the defense 1-4 + take on a lot of anti-center rebounding work. These are all cross-position attributes that the five possess at an elite level of defense.

But in addition, throughout the Mavericks' journey to the West, we said that they actually used the same defensive logic - by emptying non-space points, such as the weak side of the Clippers, and clustering on the strong side and the center; Or logically execute the anti-5 outside as a "pseudo-5 outside" to guard.

For example, it is the lack of experience of the Thunder's young shooters, the tension of the tournament and the average physical fitness of some players.

However, the most direct or first trouble that the Green Army created for the Mavericks was not the large number of elite-level players, nor the specific implementation of the positional advantage subdivided into positions; It's a challenge to the Mavericks' defensive logic and resoluteness when it comes to really executing on the court.

The above shot is very interesting, Gafford is a typical example of the "Mavericks after the major strategy" in this game, the first to not adapt, this ball, he played very struggling -

In the first round of the opening game, the Green Army's regular horn position, Iverson air cut, hung to 45 degrees to borrow cover, at this time to form a three-point line inside vacuum, 4 people outside the station, creating a one-man heads-up environment. This is Mazzulla's favorite thing to do since last season.

Gafford was forced to go to the perimeter, stepping on the three-point line defense, and without the advantage of a mismatch in the first place, which is one of the very few times he has been so far from the beginning of this year's playoffs.

After that, it was the old Horford who shook his head, and Gafford was too afraid of three points, flying at one point, and the basket was completely vacuumed. That's right, this kind of scene is the first time the Mavericks have seen it in the playoffs this year. Oh yes, and the Thunder G1 came up, Kidd used the regular matchup, and Holmgren shot those three-pointers from Gafford .

Shortly after that, during a retreat, Gafford defended his first reaction to protect the basket, and the Mavericks went to fight the Green Army's counterattack breakthrough; Missed Horford, who then arrived on the horse. Gafford made a slow save and was hit by another three-pointer......

After that, there was Porzingis' long-range shot; Of course, that may have little to do with retreat, it's just that Boshen is rising.

It's the same with this, retreating and pushing to protect the basket in the middle, emptying the outside three-pointer, and some of the Mavericks' retreat habits are very uncomfortable.

These interesting rounds actually clearly illustrate the challenge of the Green Army's offensive routine to the defensive logic of the Mavericks throughout the playoffs. After all, when a player actually steps on the field, what he thinks in his head and what he actually executes physically is often different. Especially for these finals recruits-

The same phenomenon happened to the Green Army: for example, in the first quarter of G1 '22, Curry scored six three-pointers, including several actions that seemed to "empty Curry".

Let's move on to this round.

From the point of view of alignment, the Lone Ranger uses conventional ideas, and the first choice of each position is not surprising. So from this point of view, after the Thunder's G1 at that time, Kidd switched to a misplaced defense, put Gafford in front of Giddey, dismantled the starting 5, and finally forced Dagneault to adjust the starter.

But what about the Greens? From a starter point of view (Boshen starts), the Mavericks only have the option of letting Gafford play against Holiday and use it to remove Holiday from his current back-to-back punishment for small guards. After all, in the past history, Holiday has had a three-point collapse in a single-point series in the playoffs -

However, after reducing production and cutting offensive scenes this year, the shooting rate has reached a new high in nearly six years.

Or, it is to empty White's bottom corner, and when White executes the line cover, the center expands out to pinch or delay the ball carrier to create a new "pseudo-non-space point" -

There are still risks. White couldn't shoot three-point shots from the bottom corner of the playoffs this year, shooting 4-of-20 from both sides and shooting 20%; But the overall three-point accuracy is scary, with 4 percent of the head. And in the playoffs, there was a game in which White grabbed the gap off the line and exploded.

If it's Horford's starter, it's better to deal with it - the center should shrink more to the basket to give Horford some shooting space; On the premise of continuing the previous big strategy and prioritizing the protection of the frame, he played a game feeling of "Horford, you shoot, do seventeen or eighteen points, score four or five three-pointers, but you can't beat me".

At the end of the day, it's the same sentence as before, "Any modification of defensive alignment is actually gambling when the alignment disadvantage and the previous grand strategy is challenged." "It's up to Kidd to choose that kind of game, and who he doesn't trust.

Let's talk more deeply about the defense of the Mavericks, and summarize this game in one sentence -

Kidd is experimenting with a variety of defensive strategies, and with the exception of the first alignment change, the other execution strategies have been used over and over again. Let's take a look at the image above:

From the beginning of the second half, the Mavericks changed to when Tatum launched a pick-and-roll on the line, Gafford delayed the pinch shot, drove Tatum to the corner and forced the ball. Then through the back line rotation, the weak side of the bottom corner to empty the bottom corner to challenge the Green Army bottom corner three-pointers. The idea of this strategy is actually the same game as the misplaced pair White we mentioned above, and the bottom corner vacancy brought about by the corresponding execution.

Then, with the arrival of Lively, Kidd modified his strategy to infinite defensive changes - the most classic form of defense with five outside and strong three-point defense, blocking three-point space through a large number of cover exchanges, giving one-on-one heads-up. Two sets of logic, one is to pinch the online development and delay the attack; One is to cut three points and solve the problem of alignment.

(In this shot, it is the infinite change of defense + Doncic is empty far White and standing in Tatum's breakthrough path)

In particular, the Green Army is a team that likes to use the outside line and curl cutting opportunities under the cross-cover of the weak side, and there are a lot of strong and weak side transfers. Kidd's second-half strategy forced the Green to make some strong three-pointers or force one-on-one heads-up to solve the problem. The defensive problem was solved to a certain extent; It's also what we've been talking about, and the Celtics have a three-point hand power outage from time to time in the playoffs.

This is a problem that has always been a problem outside 5, and the forward knife that the Warriors used to solve the problem was Durant; This Green Army is Brown.

Kidd's third change of strategy was to change his alignment to Brown later in Kleber's playing time.

Then Brown broke through twice in a row to cause fouls + a three-point assist + a three-point shot after a break, and the original 8-point difference was broken again. At this time, Mazzulla continued to pull Doncic to the line first, allowing Brown to take turns attacking Kleber and 77 in the high post, turning the entire outside defense of the Mavericks upside down.

A faint move. It seems that Kidd wants to make some strange moves like Kleber guarded Harden in the first round; But please...... Can these two people's current breakthrough abilities be compared?

For the Mavericks, they can't conjure up a Heat-style 2-3 joint defense or a 3-2 joint defense launched by pressing the line; Kidd hasn't seen much of this in the playoffs. Therefore, from the perspective of "forcing the left hand + instant pinching" to make mistakes, it is a bit difficult to do. In fact, in this game, from the perspective of single defense, the Mavericks deliberately pinched the right and put the left when defending the double tanhua, but the quick pinching and pressure after taking the left hand to help defend and apply pressure was not impressive.

If the Mavericks want to play better, they still have to work more on offense on the basis of the matchup game mentioned above.

Let's talk about what the Mavericks didn't do well in this offense:

In this game, Owen played very badly, and there were a lot of incomprehensible mystery operations-

Although before the game, we could expect that when facing the defense of Holiday and White, Irving would be reduced in production and efficiency. But in this game, Irving not only missed a few key half-open three-pointers to catch and retreat, but also had the problem of not playing and not being able to play when facing Horford's misalignment.

As shown in the shot above, when Hardy blocked Irving and caught Pritchard after switching defenses, Irving chose to pass the ball to the outside bullet Hardy to throw a three-point shot at Holiday on top of him. And so on, not to mention the rare dribbling and picking on Horford to almost "kneel" himself.

The Celtics basically have three sets of defensive logic in this game:

The principle of switching defenses with a misaligned first hand is very routine and predictable for the Green Army: Horford gives three points after defending Jones, and Tatum still plays to the center and directly executes the switch when blocking and pick-and-roll. The Celtics are arguably the team that used the most misalignments in the regular season this season, thanks to Holiday 's strong defensive ability at the 4 and 5 positions and his insistence on staying under the basket.

Even last season, Mazzulla used Hauser to keep the line in the regular season to consider the players' misplaced defensive ability.

But what's interesting is that when Doncic asked Horford to cover the defense, the Celtics all switched defenses, allowing Doncic to face Horford, and only set up a small number of swipes on the wings of the horns and Tatum's back line cruise. In theory, this is a very dangerous sign for the Green Army, especially with the start of the game.

But Horford defended very well and withstood the back-to-back challenges of Eastern Europe. In addition, from the perspective of alignment, put Brown on the outside to face Doncic, and give full play to the fast-break advantage of the first-line leader; This one is also very well done.

The second logic is that the Green Army used two very different sets of defense on Doncic and Irving.

Against Doncic, Horford switched defenses and defended the game quite well; Against Irving, Horford stepped back and prioritized protecting the basket rebound. It was a bold strategy for Mazzulla, who shot 44 percent from three-point range in the first round, and was caught in a lot of open space when he was back.

There are two reasons why this game dares to do this: under the misplaced change of defense, Jones was mentioned to the front line of cover, and we often say that because the front line player who puts up the cover becomes the first line, the quality of the block will naturally decline. In last year's Clippers series against the Suns, the Suns' cover player was forced to become Craig due to the existence of a misplaced change of defense, which led to a decrease in the effectiveness of the center at that time.

At the same time, because Irving's opponent Holiday has a strong ability to over-cover, it gives the Celtics the confidence to return to the position when they are covered. While this was what Mazzulla dared to do, Irving's poor handling of the local rounds made the Green Army very comfortable.

Therefore, it is clear that for the Mavericks, whether they can break the game is up to Irving rather than Doncic, and 77's ability is responsible for stabilizing the fundamentals; Irving, on the other hand, had to force Mazzulla to revise his strategy and even waver.

The same goes for Porzingis on the pitch.

Therefore, the Celtics' defense has formed such a big logic:

For Eastern Europe blocking, encountering high-quality cover, changing guards, downline contraction + non-space point emptying, so as to protect the basket; The focus is on cutting off the link between Eastern Europe and the centre-forward after changing the defence. In the case of low-quality cover, it will sink back and hand over the cover to the front-line counterpart, and the focus is still on cutting the gap.

As a result, the Mavericks handed in 0 open picks in the game, compared to a playoff average of 3.4, and handed in 9 assists in the game, the lowest in the playoffs. There were a lot of shots on the scene of role players forcibly killing the frame after the bottom corners of both sides could not be opened. Therefore, in the case that Irving was unable to blast from the flank, the Mavericks' non-spatial problems or unstable three-point chain thunderstorms caused constipation in positional warfare.

We've been saying throughout the playoffs that the Mavericks' offensive logic is very simple, and Kidd has only a few routines to play on the line. If you want to open the attack, you have to rely on the ability of Eastern Europe to block and launch and punish the empty spots in the bottom corner from time to time at non-space points.

The third set of logic, in the connecting paragraph -

When Irving went off, the Celtics continued the mismatch switch strategy, while Porzingis continued Horford's defensive Irving strategy at the beginning. The rest of the small tricks, such as the control of the real and false positions in the heads-up in Eastern Europe, and the volleys that some ball carriers suddenly grabbed under their backs -

Eastern Europe have all made mistakes in this kind of defence. This is what the Green Army is good at, and in the series against the Nets in '22, the Celtics used a lot of what seems to be a single defense + fake assistant defense, but quickly pinched and grabbed on the two 45° sides of the ball handler.

So, as we said above, this is a game where Celtic play to their strengths.

The Celtics' opposition disadvantage, or lineup crisis, occurred in the second quarter, but the Mavericks still didn't take the opportunity; It's also a place where this field didn't do well.

It can be seen that when Eastern Europe is going to play the rotation of the Green Army, Mazzulla still maintains the principle of misalignment, so Holiday was pulled out to play against Gafford. Hauser and Pritchard were forced to play opposite to Irving; In fact, we can also see from here that Mazzulla likes the principle of wrong defense.

But in such a matchup, Irving still didn't play an advantage, and the Mavericks still didn't take advantage; Whether it's playing Pritchard directly or switching to Horford. This is something that the Lone Ranger does very poorly.

Finally, let's briefly talk about the attack of the Green Army, probably with the following ideas:

Opening strategy - focus on the 45° blocking and dismantling of the wings and the transfer of the strong and weak sides, and take the three-point opportunity;

The big strategy in the first quarter - catch Irving's defense, Irving's cover man lifts the cover, and finds the wrong position to pick Irving's opportunity;

After Boshen came on the court - grabbed the misplaced opportunity under the cover of Boshen, and the main shot. A little mention here, I personally still recommend that the Mavericks adhere to the principle of changing defenses, but increase the swiping of the wings, especially the swiping of the ball, and do not give the opportunity to turn around and attack the frame directly; Stuck in the low post when attacking with his back. From the perspective of anti-projection, Boshen is the biggest advantage point in the whole group of counterpoints, and Kidd can only bet on Boshen's own hand fluctuations; And it is not recommended to pinch the wave god after changing the defense, which will lead to too many pinch points on the upper line, and the pressure on the frame of the lower line will be very large.

In this game, Boshen was in very good shape, playing the wrong position and shooting the defense and breaking the game. But this is the content of the game that the Mavericks must accept after they can't handle the matchup - either they can't shoot and everything is fine; Either you can throw in, and you have to be right when you attack;

The big strategy in the second quarter - the Green Army changed from the main focus on Irving in the first quarter to the main focus on Doncic to find cover, a logic.

Third Quarter - Encountering an infinite change of defense, the offense is blocked, but Kleber comes on the court and Brown grabs Doncic and the Coke Cup to break the game.

It's basically this trend, and finally make a small summary-

The Mavericks need to do a good job of game ideas to solve the alignment problem, and at the same time increase the number of online swiping to help defend to increase the pressure on the ball. But the most important thing is still that Owen must break the game, otherwise it will be in vain.

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