Raptors Vs. Wizards Clipboard: John Wall's Good Decisions In Pick And Roll Late

Good to point out the progress as well.

I’m a baseball guy, but am glad to be learning more about basketball strategy. Posts like these help a lot.

the Chris SIngleton is being ostracized? Not getting high fives, no one talking to him on the bench…etc…

Has anyone else noticed this? I haven’t been able to see the interactions from my seat.

First Image:

the Raptors have Linas Kleiza trap hard as Jerryd Bayless gets held up.
I dont think its actually a trap, looks more like a textbook hedge. Booker set an awesome screen so kleiza hedged and then realizing bayless was stuck on the screen had to pick up the defender, hes waiting for bayless to come back and pick up his man….raptors suck at defense….

Second Image:

Bayless eventually recovers hard and Kleiza goes nowhere. Sensing this, Booker turns towards Wall and becomes an outlet, allowing Wall to make this dangerous, but necessary pass.

Again, raptors suck on defense because kleiza is so out beyond the 3pt line, and he as you said is going nowhere. Booker does the right move by preparing himself for the outlet pass. I agree the wall pass is dangerous due to the vicinity of bayless, but i dont agree its necessary. The better pass was the wing…ill explain in the next image

3rd Image:

Once Booker catches the ball, he must read Jose Calderon. If Calderon comes to him, he finds Jordan Crawford on the weakside, and hopefully Crawford makes a strong basket cut or knocks down the open three. If not, Booker takes it to the basket. Calderon doesn’t come fast enough and Booker uses the clear lane to draw the foul.

The image shows exactly why this was a bad pass to booker. He doesnt, and cant have an empty lane. The Raptors have a big man waiting under the rim. Against a good defense, that big man is stepping up for a charge long before booker takes his first step. The pass to crawford is difficult from this angle if calderon keeps his head up. For example if calderon was rondo, he wouldve baited the pass and taken it. If crawford gets the ball he has really one option, and thats to shoot, as you can see from the 3rd image, there are now 4 players in the painted area. Even if booker doesnt make the drive, the defense is going to set itself up to take away potential drives.

Ultimately i disagree with this line

The Raptors are a pretty solid defensive team under Dwayne Casey too

The next two scenarios show exactly why the raptors d is trashy, the traps so high are unnecessary and in both the two scenarios booker has a big baseline wide open for a quick finish which will be a score of foul (in the first scenario you say booker goes for some floater which is a shame due to how open (i believe its) mcgee is.

the wizards definitely have to start utilizing the pick and roll more with wall and some big. And it is nice that booker is making himself available in the middle of the floor. In each scenerio it seems wall got better and better at anticipating the defense and stretching it out to get booker the ball. Now someone has to get the other players to learn to put themselves in a position where they can feast on the defense. Javale has to be ready to catch passes from booker at baseline and finish hard with just a power dribble, while the wings need to learn how to start moving towards the baseline after booker gets the pass for better passing angles for booker. And most importantly booker has to learn to read the defense and see whos open as opposed to just attacking the rim.

I think all of this shows one bottom line that we all can agree on, the wizards need to run more pick and roll because it seems defenses are gonna have trouble keeping wall from turning the corner on screens without a double team coming at him, and thats gonna open up the floor for everyone else to make plays

But in your last paragraph, you put equal blame on Young and McGee for not making an adjustment that they “weren’t able to see”.

On that particular play against Toronto – JaVale set his normal crappy screen; didn’t hinder the guard, immediately took off towards the rim – leaving Young stuck in a double-team. McGee does this all the time. He does it to Young. He does it to Wall, and he does it to Crawford. The reason it looks so bad with Young is that Wall and Crawford have the ball handling abilities to get out of the double-team and Nick Young does not.

For some time now, I’ve been talking about Booker’s (and to a lesser extent, Seraphin’s) ability to not only set a proper screen, but to then move to an open area making himself available for a pass. Trevor moves into position and physically impedes the opponent Guard by making actual body contact (usually HARD body contact). But then he makes either a roll to the basket, or he moves to an open area, creating a clear passing lane for his Guard.

I would hazard that MOST of Nick Young’s assists on the pick-and-roll (as few as there are) are to Booker; and even in this Toronto game, we saw a very nice pick-and-roll play involving NIck Young and Trevor Booker.

.
.
Here’s a video of the play:
.
http://youtu.be/XB0QbQx8lnk
.
As an added bonus, at the beginning of that video, you can see a terrific John Wall block (that was called a goal tend by the BLIND Referees)….
.
.
My point in all of this is that the screener has a lot to do with the Guard either looking great, or looking like a fool…