Efficiency: Petteri Koponen

I’m not a big fan of the plus - minus stats specially when it comes to individual performances, I think there are many players involved in whatever happens on the court and that number can lead to misunderstandings. 

Anyway in the last Baskonia - FCB we saw a chain of actions that show the value of one of the great players in our basketball, Petteri Koponen. In the beginning of the third quarter, five consecutive possessions, creating a high value for his team on both sides of the court, scoring five points himself and creating another four for Ante Tomic, plus stealing one ball on defense.

Defense, scoring, decision making, play making, to get his team going in less than four minutes.

Also, I’d like to point out one of the offensive situations FCB use during this stretch, which we can see in the video, with a big man posting playing at the elbow for a hand off situation. In this example is precisely Koponen the player who ends up executing the shot coming off Tomic's pass. 

Using a shooter and getting advantages of small defensive mistakes to get easy looks for an elite shooter, FCB's playbook has really interesting options.

Shooters Defense: GSW Read And React

Photo: NBA.com

I watch as much NBA as I can. Which is half of what I’d like to watch, and that is probably half of what you need to watch to have a decent knowledge of the league… 

But I enjoy The League anyway, and I think there are many good things to see, analyze and pay attention to.

I won’t join the controversy about how many three point shots are too many. Everyone has an opinion. But it is a fact that the record of made threes during a seven games series was broken during the West Conference Finals, and this post is related to three point shooting. 

This classic situation is frequently used by the Golden State Warriors, staggered screens.

OKC tried to stop it switching in off ball screens to avoid easy catch and shoot options. Which is as good an idea as any other, if the defensive execution is good or if the offense is not ready to read it. Let’s take a look at some clips from games six and seven. In the first two plays, the Warriors run the staggered screen situation we are talking about, while in the third one we see the off ball screen right after an inside pass:

The Warriors reaction to the switch is to cut with the last screener to the basket. Draymond Green and Andre Iguodala are the cutters. As we can see, when the switch happens, the defender who is supposed to take the screener doesn’t protect the rim, and leaves the path open for the cut. In the first clip, there is still one more help, although the second cutter gets a perfect extra pass to score.

With the Finals starting tonight, we should be ready to take a look at how the Cavaliers defend this basic, but useful, situations.