Ugh, that was a rough game huh? The Nets were able to contain Brandon Jennings (sure he put up 19, but that is 6 points below his average), but they let Andrew Bogut go off on them. He has always been a great player in the low post, but the Bucks also did a great job running sets for him that led to easy baskets (he is pretty mobile for a big man which helps the coaching staff run sets for him). We are going to take a look at two of those:
Set 1 (Poor Rotation)
Here the Bucks are running a guy off of Bogut’s screen. Brook seems to know it’s coming and he is starting to edge out on it. CDR does what most NBA defenders are taught to do, and he trails the man coming off the screen.
The screen gets curled, so Brook needs to come out and show to keep him from getting an open lane to the basket. Bogut is starting to roll on the screen, and this is where the breakdown in rotation comes from. Josh Boone has his eyes fixed on his man.
Boone leaves the lane far too soon leaving Brook Lopez in no-mans land as he just watches Bogut get the ball in the lane and finishing. Josh Boone needs to understand who the bigger threat here. Boone’s man is two passes away, and the only way the ball is getting to him is if there is a skip pass thrown, that gives him enough time to recover. Boone needs to stay in the lane until Brook Lopez recovers, and if the ball goes to Boone’s man, then he can close out on him.
Set 2 (No Switch):
Here we got another set-piece involving a screen. This time, Bogut is the one coming off a screen. Here, CDR is trailing once again, and the set sort of looks like the previous one I talked about. However, instead of CDR’s man coming off the screen, he quickly sets up to set one.
This must of caught CDR off guard, because it seems like he didn’t call the screen. Brook Lopez gets blindsided and he gets caught in the screen. Now usually teams don’t like switching little/big screens because it presents mismatches.
And CDR doesn’t switch this one. He should have recognized this and switched the screen. You don’t like having Brook cover a guard, but it is better than giving Andrew Bogut an easy lay-up.
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What these plays show you is that while they lock down and play hard on defense, they don’t really know situations and they break down mentally a good amount. This is something the Nets can’t do. The Nets work so hard just to get a shot attempt, and then they turn around and give up open easy to get buckets (in the case of the second set, it only took them 5 seconds to get a wide open layup).
