Basketball, She Wrote
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Can the Pacers dial up the pressure?
🕑 Added 2023-03-10 13:54:22 +0000 UTCAnd, more importantly, should they?
By Caitlin Cooper I @C2_Cooper
It's becoming a common, uncommon tactic for the Pacers. After an inbounds pass, as a surprise or situational defensive changeup, this is the sight.
Beginning as "near" as midcourt and, sometimes, straying well-beyond, it's not a 2-2-1 press, which they also turn to on occasion. Rather, with two players trapping the ball and everyone else falling back, it's just a normal double-team. Or, as normal as a double-team can be, when it occurs approximately 75 feet from the rim while also involving the rim protector -- repeatedly. After all, here it is again, with Myles Turner springing the trap versus Luka Doncic.
And again, both during the first half as well as the second.
Meanwhile, in the same game, it also happened intermittently against Kyrie Irving.
Then, a few nights later, James Harden got the same treatment.
So, what gives? Why would a team that is already typically undersized at every position but center, choose to exacerbate that size disadvantage by purposefully displacing the center from being able to cover up for their very literal shortcomings?
There are a few reasons, most of which are summarized by this clip. First of all, if the end result is a pull-up two from Justin Holiday, with the decision-making funneled to Dwight Powell, who never even looks at the rim before immediately shuffling the ball out, that's a win. Plus, notice how Powell has to jump to catch the pass as the release valve. In that way, one of the benefits of sending a big to double is the very obvious fact that they are big. As such, the player being trapped typically has to put air under the ball, which means that same big has more time to recover.
Of course, another factor to consider is that the Pacers were typically doubling from the inbound passer. So, the center being involved wasn't entirely a strategic choice as much as it was tied to some, let's say, curiosities from Dallas. Because, to be frank, the Pacers weren't always smothering in their execution of the scheme.
Just look at this possession from the first half. Again, Powell is the inbound passer (why?), which means he will be the nearest open player to the ball and in position to lubricate the offense from the middle of the floor. That aspect aside, with Turner backpedaling, this is a fairly loose trap; and yet, Irving willfully gives up the ball after hitting the nitrous button. Additionally, look at Luka, as well as Luka's reaction.
See, how he's being guarded, with Aaron Nesmith paying attention to him and only him? That sheds some light on why breaking the pressure wasn't as easy as for the Mavs as just having Luka inbound to Irving, or vice versa, for the other to attack with an odd-man advantage.
When both were on the floor, and sometimes even when they were staggered, the Pacers were denying the ball to the secondary playmaker, forcing anyone else for the Mavs to handle.
Circling back to Luka's exasperation, though. Everything about this is questionable, and that's what the Pacers are banking on. Why isn't Powell challenging Haliburton as the low-man? Better yet, why isn't he following Luka's instructions to make the very obvious pass to Justin Holiday in the corner, where the help is coming from?
Those types of record scratches were prevalent. Unlike the above example, where Nesmith is face-guarding Luka, Hield is available to zone up between Bullock and Tim Hardaway Jr. here, when Haliburton slides over as the low-man. But, Maxi Kleber has to momentarily spy looking down at the ball while attempting to maneuver in space and Bullock stays affixed to the corner, rather than crashing to the rim.
On the one hand, that's what the distance of the trap does. It produces the desired effect of influencing someone who isn't used to taking multiple dribbles into taking multiple dribbles -- notably, without even considering the potential functionality of doing so with their off-hand. However, on the other hand (no pun intended), spot the difference from the Sixers. Unlike what was the case from Dallas, when Jalen McDaniels cuts to the basket, all Tyrese Maxi has to do is step into an open three.
And now, it's Haliburton who is exasperated.
Still, it's reasonable to ask if that's the fault of the tactic, or if there's a way to make the tactic less faulty, whether via better execution or a potential tweak. To that point, when the Pacers hard hedge, they will oftentimes switch, with Turner peeling off to someone on the perimeter instead of recovering to his man, like so.
If the Pacers had implemented that same rotation pattern out of the hard trap, then Nembhard could've high tagged against Embiid, with Haliburton staying low and protecting against the cut while Smith chased out to Maxi with high hands.
That said, it isn't as if the Pacers are without vulnerabilities. When the Mavs actually purposed themselves to force the defense to commit, Haliburton basically got overwhelmed by Christian Wood like a tidal wave.
Granted, it's valid to ask why Haliburton is helping from the single-side, which leads to some hesitancy on his part. But, even if Mathurin had slid over from the full-side, where Nembhard would still be available to zone up against the shooters, they still don't exactly have the length to provide viable secondary rim protection on the back-side of traps, aside from *maybe* taking a charge. Of course, those same vulnerabilities are part of the reason they are doing this in the first place, right?
Luka scored 39 points and attempted 12 free throws. When the Pacers weren't trapping, he was hunting Haliburton, both with bully drives and out of the pick-and-roll to the point where it almost looked as though they were morphing into zone with how aggressive they were being in sending emergency help to the nail.
Altogether, there were less than 20 possessions where the Pacers doubled at half-court or beyond. Of those, very few led to shots when the defense was at a numbers disadvantage, with that example from Wood being somewhat of an outlier. More often than not, even when the release valve was a guard, the tendency was to wait and defer to Luka. For example, notice how Tim Hardaway Jr. bails out of the paint and searches for Luka instead of pressing toward Turner and forcing him to step up.
From there, what develops is basically a summary of why the trapping was necessary, as Luka gets the ball back and still scores despite multiple rounds of hedge-and-recover to keep Nesmith as his match-up.
Even so, the ball never touched the paint and the end result was a deep, late-clock three. Make or miss, the Pacers should be willing to live with that outcome and the same can be said for this ticking-time bomb from Harden.
All of which brings to question, what exactly the tipping point would be? By and large, trapping near midcourt and beyond worked as intended over a small sample, either leveraging players who aren't paid to make decisions into making decisions or choking out the clock before having to tussle with stars doing what stars do. Moving forward, if the Pacers double with greater frequency, as more than just a sporadic tactic following makes here and there, the outcome could swing either way. Maybe, they improve their execution and it becomes a means for them to mask what they lack in length with speed. Or, perhaps, they lose the element of surprise and end up finding out they don't have the reserve energy to consistently squeeze inbound passes without tiring at the end of games.
Either way, what seems clear for the Pacers -- and, quite possibly, the NBA at-large -- is that pressing, whether as full-court press defense or *merely* trapping the ball 75 feet away from the rim with a rim protector, might be underused against teams that rely heavily on one primary ball-handler or stars that dominate their team's time of possession. In that regard, for a young team currently outside of playoff position that probably ought to be treating the remainder of the season like a fact-finding mission, there's value for the Pacers in dialing up the pressure and making the uncommon increasingly more common -- even if the ultimate result in doing so is finding out they can't.
Comments
Frank M Cook
I think it's fair to call this the TJ effect. The team has gone to school watching him steal inbounds passes and pressuring the ball.
