Houston kills it on defense in the paint so long as Dwight is there. Beverly can frustrate the most clever of ball handlers. So, what play/plays do you think will be the 'go-to' weapon for the Blazers in the playoffs that will do the most damage to Houston? Some Options: (Please feel free to post your plays no matter how ludicrous) Refined Batman-Robin only no bounce passes, just up top to the rim 3P-4-3 High Pick, Pop & Pass for a 3 (Dame drive with LA screen, LA pops and catches to dish out the side to Wes/Nic for the Tre) Lob City. Rolo runs out to corner baseline to screen Wes/Nic to roll to basline while Dame gets Screen from LA, freeing up Dame to lob for the throw-down. Around the World. Everyones favorite passing game started by Dame off the dribble to the angle, pass to center 3 with Wes, to Nic at the opposite angle and back around again till someone is open. Flashback. Dame brings up over mid-court to find a screen being set by Duckworth, as he rounds the pick Drexler comes up from behind him, steals the ball and glides in from the foul line to stuff it over a cuddling Dwight & Harden holding each other for comfort.
I like that I saw the Blazer pounding the Batman/Robin, Green Lillard/Robin, Iron Man/Robin pick and roll all the time last night. That's a weapon that's been weakly scouted but is a really high reward play.
I think a healthy diet of high 1/4 p&r/p combined with some misdirection from the 2 and 3. Have Rolo set a high pick for la rather than going low for Wes or nic. Force Howard to switch on to la getting him away from the rim, have dame cut to the basket and flare out to the corner, with nico or Wes taking his spot at the top of the key, the other being on the opposite baseline. Read and react, la takes the shot, hits Wes or nic cutting baseline, or look for dame cutting to the basket after the play developed. Final option look for Rolo with the mismatch of jones on him.
I think it has to be a team effort. The less we need to rely on just two players the better, IMO. Dame and Aldridge will do their damage, but we need a collective effort from all fronts. We need to move the ball around like crazy.
Making 4th qtr free throws maybe? There would not have been an overtime against GS if we made them all. Pick and roll, pick and pop is probably more effective than the drive and dish game against Houston
Yeah...I mean the bounce pass is a great pass...but the guy getting it has to KNOW its coming and have good hands. Even Rolo can't get em all when he knows they are coming. I would Love to see some stat or pie chart..Mmm pie!...of Bounce passes into the Paint that: Blazers Scored, Blazers Missed, Blazers Turned over. I don't think it would justify the attempt >.>
I would really like to see Batum and Rolo working the pick and roll early. I think Howard would have trouble guarding that. It will totally fucking confuse Houston because I doubt they are planning for that.
Aldridge averaged 27/15, shooting 45%, in four games against the Rockets. So my guess is he will take a shit-ton of midrange jumpers. Houston isn't going to double him a lot (too afraid of our shooters), and it's a waste of time putting Howard on him (because the lane will be wide open). So there's 25-30ppg Stotts can pretty much pencil in every night. In the playoffs you never turn your back on that kind of productivity. That's 24 shots per game you can pretty much book right now just for LMA. We average 86 FGA's per game, but in the playoffs against a team like Houston that number almost certainly goes down. So maybe 55 shots left. A lot of the remaining shots are going to be read-and-react stuff. But of that which remains, I expect the lion's share to come from Lillard and Moe breaking down defenders off the dribble. Maybe it's wishful thinking, but I noticed Beverly racked up 4 and 5 fouls in his last 2 games since coming back, and averaged 3.2 PF's/game in 13 games in 30mpg in March. Lillard has had turnover problems against him, but even still he has a TS% of 55%, 18ppg and 5 assists. It's not like Beverly completely neutralizes Lillard, even if he is at 100% effectiveness. One thing I think will go almost completely away is Batum running the pick and roll with Lopez or Robinson. We might try it a little, but I just don't see it working against their centers. Besides, Batum has a career playoff PER of 10.2 over 18 games. It would be very unwise of Stotts to game plan for him to do much more for us than rebound, hit open 3's and defend. If Batum gets hot and completely proves me wrong, well, hey, that's great. But I'll believe it when I see it. The image of Batum getting dominated in the playoffs by the defense of Steve Nash is still vivid in my memory. Yeah, I know Nic was injured and yeah I know our McScribbles sucked, but Houston is looking for ways to take apart our offense, and this is low-hanging fruit that they are actually equipped to manage. One guy who is getting overlooked I think is Thomas Robinson. His TRB% is at 19%, which makes him one of the elite per-minute rebounders in the game. He's scoring at a nice 54%fg over the past 20 games. I think he's got a real chip on his shoulder about his former team and I think he'll come out storming. I'd still prefer to see Freeland out there instead, but I'm not as worried as I had been that Joel be in tip top shape for the playoffs.
^ good post there. I think we're all hitting on a similar aspect but no one has explicitly said it. I think the biggest key is to get Beverley and Howard into foul trouble early. Force the action in the first quarters by going at the rim HARD, and take those two out of the game. It will be our best chance.
One other aspect I'm really looking forward to is seeing Matthews in the post. He is so deadly down there, and who does Houston put on him? If I were Houston, I would want to leave Parsons on Batum to compensate for his length (and preempt a 2-man pick and roll game from emerging). So that means Harden or Lin is going to be "guarding" him much of the night. They may get a flop or two in, but you just know Wes will convert a high percent of the time, or at least force the Houston defense to help out and create openings for others. Harden is going to kill us. Howard is going to dominate Lopez. It's a little like the 2000 WCF in that we have the better starters but just not the two best players. It's kind of a Shaq/Kobe-lite vs Sheed/Pippen/Smitty/Sabonis-lite. They even have their Derek Fisher (Beverley). The question is if all our other matchups outweigh their two heavyweights.
I like this Mook...I want to see Wes in the post with Howard in the game cause he loves to roll over for help Defense which should free up a nice pass to Rolo for a stuff.
