Thunder @ Suns

[GMATCa]

Game Seven of the NBA Finals!

... well, not really, but as close as it will come for the Suns this year ...

 

[GMATCa]

... good start, Suns up 18-10. The ball movement and body movement seem to be better.

The questions now are whether the Suns can keep the pace up and, if not, how they fare once it slows.

 

[GMATCa]

When the Morris twins play with activity, they become good players.

Who knew?

 

[Davis_Mike]

Good first quarter for the Suns. I just don't understand why the refs keep giving calls to guys like Westbrook/Harden who just throw themselves into defenders. It just creates a game I don't want to watch. And haven't much in the last 5 years.

 

[GMATCa]

Good first quarter for the Suns. I just don't understand why the refs keep giving calls to guys like Westbrook/Harden who just throw themselves into defenders. It just creates a game I don't want to watch. And haven't much in the last 5 years.

I don't understand how, based on today's standards, Westbrook's foul on Marcus Morris was not upgraded to a flagrant ...

 

[Davis_Mike]

The Suns do what they do against good teams, jump out to a big lead & then let the other team back in before the half.

 

[GMATCa]

I love the way that Brandon Knight is splitting the defense off the high pick-and-roll, squirting into the lane, and kicking to wide-open shooters and cutters as a result ... shades of Kevin Johnson or Mark Price there.

This was the kind of thing that I was talking about a couple of weeks ago—attacking the feet of the defense rather than settling for a three-pointer or some twenty-three or twenty-two-foot jumper off that play.

To start, both guards—like many in today's league—need to realize that a shot that you can take with five seconds or less on the shot clock is not necessarily one that you should take when there is plenty of time remaining on the shot clock. Just because you can shoot a shot does not mean that you should shoot that shot. Unless it is a great look (like Knight's two left-corner threes at the start of the Cleveland game, at least one of which was of the catch-and-shoot variety), I would like to see the two guards generally eschew the long two-point jumper and the three-pointer (shots that are, say, twenty or twenty-one feet and out) early in the shot clock when the time and space allow for something better.

What often happens with Brandon Knight, and sometimes with Eric Blesdoe, is that their defender tries to go over the screen, while the opposing big man defending the screener drops back a bit—but not radically—to protect against the drive. Too often, Knight and sometimes Bledsoe respond by almost hurriedly popping the long jumper, sometimes while their trailing defender pursues them from behind and bothers the shot at the last moment. Even if the trailing defender does not bother the shot, Knight and Bledsoe possess the time, space, and quickness to attack the big man's feet, cross-over on him, and get into the lane, either creating a higher-percentage shot for himself or drawing help defenders that create wide shooting openings for the likes of P.J. Tucker, Marcus Morris, and Gerald Green on the wings or in the corners. In overtime in Brooklyn on Friday night, Knight indeed made a crucial play where he kept his dribble alive, attacked the feet of a retreating Brook Lopez, and hit a high-arching runner. Too often, though, he settles for a three or some twenty-three-foot two-point jumper that misses.

As discussed on ESPN during that Brooklyn game, Knight may indeed possess the best court awareness and playmaking instincts of any of the Suns' rotational point guards this season—Bledsoe, Dragic, Thomas. Apparently, Hornacek feels that way. But what holds him back as a playmaker and an overall guard is Knight's tendency to take the long jumper whenever it comes along, even when he possesses ample time, space, and quickness to explore further and create something better, to generate a high-percentage shot rather than just a plausible shot.

Another embarassing sequence | Page 2 | SportsHoopla.com Sports Forums

And P.J. Tucker sometimes looked like a mini-Charles Barkley in the first half. T.J. Warren's energy helped, too.

 

[GMATCa]

I would like to see Bledsoe start picking up Westbrook in the back-court and directing him to one sideline or the other rather than just letting Westbrook come and choose whatever he desires.

 

[FORKWDEVIL]

We gave up a 20 pt something lead FML

 

[GMATCa]

I love the way that Brandon Knight is splitting the defense off the high pick-and-roll, squirting into the lane, and kicking to wide-open shooters and cutters as a result ... shades of Kevin Johnson or Mark Price there.

This was the kind of thing that I was talking about a couple of weeks ago—attacking the feet of the defense rather than settling for a three-pointer or some twenty-three or twenty-two-foot jumper off that play.



Another embarassing sequence | Page 2 | SportsHoopla.com Sports Forums

And P.J. Tucker sometimes looked like a mini-Charles Barkley in the first half. T.J. Warren's energy helped, too.

Granted, the Thunder big men are defending the play a little differently, getting caught too high on the perimeter, and Oklahoma City basically quintuple-teamed Tucker on one possession. So the Thunder have committed some defensive mistakes.

But in the second half, Knight and Bledsoe have begun settling for threes again. At least Warren has provided some energy. He really is a cross between Cedric Ceballos and Shawn Marion offensively.

 

[GMATCa]

Turnovers ...

 

[BPNAZ]

Blow the team up............plain and simple

 

[GMATCa]

Blow the team up............plain and simple

The Suns need a full training camp and preseason with Brandon Knight. They need to add a shooter, and a power-rebounder would be helpful as well. If Phoenix could come off the bench with Goodwin, Tucker, Warren, the Morris twins, and Wright, the Suns would probably be in good shape, but the Morris twins' contracts may not allow for such a roster.

 

[GMATCa]

... a couple more thoughts:

After the home loss to Portland, I wrote that from an offensive perspective, Phoenix reminded me of Jason Kidd's Sun teams. In Kidd's final two games as a Sun (both at home and in the playoffs), Phoenix blew 17-point and 19-point leads, respectively, and the Suns also blew a 28-point lead in a home game that season. I have actually been drawing this analogy for weeks now.

The difference is that Kidd's Suns usually proved much better defensively—sometimes elite. In his final season in Phoenix, '00-'01, the Suns basically tied San Antonio as the best defensive team in the NBA, with both clubs allowing 98.0 points per 100 possessions (technically, the Spurs finished first in Defensive Rating on a decimal-tiebreaker). And remember, San Antonio featured both Tim Duncan and David Robinson at that time. But the Suns were so bad offensively in the half-court that once the game slowed, they still struggled to protect huge leads against playoff teams, even with their great defense. Phoenix ranked twenty-first of twenty-nine teams in Offensive Rating (points scored per possession) and dead-last among the sixteen playoff clubs even though the Suns possessed one of the most dangerous fast-break offenses in the NBA. They led the league in turnovers forced, and with Kidd and a second-year Shawn Marion, Phoenix excelled at not only forcing turnovers but quickly converting them into points on the other end. Yet even with that ability, the Suns were still a bad offensive team, which tells you how awful their half-court offense happened to be. This year's half-court offense is not much better, even though Eric Bledsoe is a much more efficient and explosive scorer than Jason Kidd.

Also, that Phoenix team slightly out-rebounded opponents (by about +0.11 per game), whereas this year's Suns are being significantly out-rebounded (by about -1.406 per game). I actually think that next year's roster should offer some defensive potential. Bledsoe, Knight, and Goodwin all possess excellent foot speed and commendable lateral quickness and athleticism, and they can all pressure the basketball. If they are all healthy, Tucker should be able to defend small forwards almost exclusively (he lacks the quickness to match up with quick shooting guards, as Dion Waiters revealed last night), and Alex Len offers rim protection and should continue to improve. But the Suns also need more players with a Tucker-like defensive attitude.

And this issue brings me to one of my biggest questions about last night: why did Bledsoe never pick up Westbrook in the back-court or at half-court? I know that if you defend Westbrook too tightly, he is liable to rocket past you, but he is liable to do so even if you are sagging off him. In that case, he just chooses his direction and blows by you while you are backpedaling, making you look like a statue (as happened a couple of times to someone as athletic as Bledsoe). At least if you pick him up in the back-court, you can have a chance of turning him up one sideline or the other, or in one direction or the other, and set your team's defense accordingly. Bledsoe is—or is supposed to be—one of the best defensive guards in the NBA. I think that his help defense is better than his on-ball defense (much like Kidd), but his on-ball defense can be very good, too (better than Kidd's). In the biggest game of the year, you have to introduce some ball pressure way above the three-point arc. I know that point guards hardly ever pick guys up full-court or even at half-court any longer, but Hornacek needed to at least try and turn Bledsoe loose in that regard, or Bledsoe should have tried it on his own. Another strategic option would have been to throw some full-court or half-court traps at Westbrook, especially since the Morris twins combine height, length, and mobility. But again, there was nothing of the sort.

You can see here, late in Game Four of the 1993 NBA Finals, how the guards pick up higher—especially Kevin Johnson against B.J. Armstrong:


To be sure, Armstrong was no Westbrook athletically, but Armstrong picked up Kevin Johnson full-court throughout that series. Here is an incident from earlier in that game:


In the last couple of games, I also think that Bledsoe has been 'leaning' on his jump-shot here and there. He needs to further refine his mechanics over the summer so that he is going straight-up and squared-up on virtually every shot throughout the game.