For the second consecutive game, a stout Western Conference opponent found a way to exploit the hidden underbelly of the Sixers defense. The Spurs didn't expose the Sixer bigs on the glass, instead they put their cement feet on display for all to see by running pick-and-roll after pick-and-roll. Jrue didn't even resemble the PG who's been shutting down opponents with regularity as he tried to go under, over and around a series of picks from big men on nearly every possession and failed more often than not while his bigs proved to be more of hindrance than a help. (
Here's your rotation chart. One solid run in the second, very little of note the rest of the game:
Well, let's start by saying Jrue doesn't get off the hook because the bigs were so bad. He was part of the problem as well. He had a really tough assignment, and he didn't answer the call. He needs to be better prepared to deal with multiple picks, and he needs to realize that just because he plays the first one well (if he does, in fact, play the first one well) that doesn't mean the play is over.
The Spurs caught the Sixers off guard for most of the first half. Their plan was to attack the Sixers defense before it was completely set, before they could get their bearings, identify their help and rotation responsibilities. They'd get back on defense, turn around and the Spurs would already be attacking. It took the better part of the first 24 minutes for them to figure that out, but it still didn't solve the problem. The Spurs went early pretty much the entire game, later it allowed them to run one P&R and if it failed, the big would simply retreat to about the foul line and run it again. Tony Parker was pretty much flawless in his execution. The only success the Sixers had against the P&R was when Jrue went under the screen and gave Parker a wide-open long two. Parker missed every one of those, but he wisely didn't settle for too many.
This was, by far, the worst game of the year for Vucevic. He was downright exposed in pretty much every imaginable way. A complete disappointment. He's a rookie. Games like this are going to happen. The telling thing will be how he bounces back on Friday. Lavoy gave great effort, especially on the glass, but he also missed a bunch of assignments and got pushed around a little by Splitter.
Coming into the game, you had to give the edge to the Sixers bench. Lou and Thad both produced, but they were matched by Tiago Splitter and Gary Neal. The bench matchup wound up being pretty much a wash. The starters lost to Parker.
On the offensive end, the Sixers ran into a team that plays much like they do. Popovich's system is all about enticing opponents to take lower-percentage looks, and being just close enough to bother them a little bit. Whenever the Sixers fell into the trap, they went into offensive ruts. When they probed the defense and penetrated, they had success. Jrue had a great first half getting into the lane and setting his teammates up, for some reason it didn't happen in the second half. Iguodala got to the rim a bunch of times. Lou got in there, but couldn't get the whistles even when he seemed to draw contact. The Sixers only turned the ball over 10 times, which is a good game by anyone's standards, but they were -4 to the Spurs who only coughed it up six times.
The crazy thing about this game, and the testament to the Sixers fortitude, is that they spent the the first 39 minutes or so being thoroughly out-played by the Spurs and found themselves down by 12 points with 9:37 to go, then they came back and they had a legitimate shot of taking control of the game. After Lou set up Turner and Thad with jumpers, he missed one of his own. Lavoy grabbed the offensive board, the ball swung around the perimeter to Turner who drove baseline, found Jrue in the weak-side corner for an open three that he drained to cut the deficit to 5. All they needed was a stop on the other end. With Tony Parker on the bench, Gary Neal was running the point. The Spurs came down the floor and Matt Bonner came way out on the floor to set a screen for Neal (a moving screen, but that's beside the point). Jrue did his best to avoid the Bonner screen and Neal dribbled toward the sideline. Tiago Splitter immediately came up from the blocks to set a second screen, this time maybe two feet inside the three-point line. The best way to play Parker on the P&R was to go under. The same is not the case with Neal, who had already hit three bombs in the game. Jrue went under and kind of hesitated, waiting to see which side Neal would emerge on. Instead of meeting Jrue on the other side of the screen, Neal took one dribble, set his feet and drained a three to push the lead back to 8. That was the game. The Sixers cut into the lead a couple of times, but that was their chance. At a minimum, Jrue should've fought over the screen to take the three away from Neal. Ideally, they would've blitzed the screen and trapped Neal because he was so far out on the floor, the rest of the defense would've had enough time to rotate to Splitter if he rolled to the hoop. Everything broke down on that play and the Sixers last, best chance was squandered in the blink of an eye.
Player of The Game: Elton Brand. EB had a ton of boards, played some solid D on Duncan, but more importantly, he came into this game with the attitude that the atrocity on the glass that happened in the Lakers game would not happen on his watch. He was the only big with a pulse tonight, too bad the younger guys didn't really pick up on his cue. Iguodala had a good all around game, scoring 17 on 12 shots, and he basically shut Richard Jefferson out until a certain female ref gave him a charity bailout foul call late in the game and he split a pair of freebies. I wish they would've run more offense through Thad, especially during droughts. He finished 8/11 for 16 points with 7 boards and 4 dimes. Jrue's assists-to-turnover ratio over the past six games is now 32:6. Lou did his best to bring the Sixers back with another fourth-quarter spurt, but he stalled when he didn't get a couple of calls, and even picked up a tech.
Team Record: 18-8
Up Next: vs. LAC, Friday night.
Absurdity of the night: Violet Palmer's "don't mess with me" call on Turner at the end of the first half. Possibly the most blatant abuse of power by a referee I've ever seen. She completely blew the call on the previous trip down the floor, then punished the Sixers for calling her on it. Professionalism personified. I don't blame the loss on the refs, the Sixers lost the game on their own, but it disgusts me to see refs act like that. It's one thing to be a bad ref (which she surely is), but using the whistle to make a point, that really bothers me.
We'll see how they play the pick and roll on Friday, That's going to be a huge test to see if they can bounce back from tonight. This was a tough matchup, and they aren't immune from having games like this once in awhile. Really, I thought the offense was just as bad. They needed much more ball movement on the offensive end and it got stuck a lot, and this wasn't even Lou's doing. They need to be running plays and creating mismatches with a purpose. That should have taken 20 shots tonight.
I really really want to stress that Violet Palmer has no place refereeing in this league. Not because she is a woman, but because she is a horrible referee. Every fan base has had her do an incompetent job during one of their games, that I'm sure of. I hope it's not the league being afraid of PR backlash as to why they won't fire her.
If it really is a matter of wanting to have one female ref in the league, find a competent female ref to replace her with. She's just an embarrassment.
CP3/Blake is going to be a challenge, to say the least.
Here's a screen grab of her Wikipedia page from tonight:
http://imgur.com/L4nWe
Curious to see how Cleveland took them down tonight without Irving. They had a ton of success against Blake last year, but now he has a real point guard to play with, probably the best one in the league.
Really, really impressed with Parker tonight. I feel like you have to gameplan for him now a la Rose. A couple of times Jrue tried to give him baseline to keep him away from the screen and he got to the rim easily. You can't let him drive with the right hand like that, especially if there is nobody at the rim to meet him like they had with Rose. Maybe that's a matter of stretch fours being the team's kryptonite.
You should check out her wikipedia page now, it's even better:
"On February 8th, 2012, Palmer beat the Philadelphia 76ers 100-90."
I found it bizarre when I saw her run over to Pop pre game and gave him a huge hug. wtf
btw, Sammy D is showing Houston what an all world turd he is.
Yep. I can't tell you how much I prefer having Hawes in street clothes to having Dalembert on the defensive glass and challenging shots.
So I take it you prefered that we Signed Sammy D to a 2 year contract.
Sam on a one-year deal with a team option for next year or a malingering Hawes and Nocioni? Yeah, I'd prefer Sam (also cost you about $4M less).
Am I the only one who's seeing a pattern with these good pick and roll teams? First Andre Miller abused us, then Deron Williams, and now Tony Parker.
Our main weakness is that we don't have a good help defending big man, so when a Pg or big man gets into the paint off a roll, we don't have anyone that can block a shot.
Besides the Heat, the only teams that have been able to beat us at home are the one's who have figured out our weakness, have the personnel to make it work, and have continued to abuse it (NJ, DEN, and now SAN).
This Tim Duncan quote is the most telling:
"We stuck with it,” Duncan said. “It was consistency all the way through. Throughout the entire game, we played the same way."
Luckily, the Sixers get to play the Clippers in their next game. While they have Paul, Griffin and Jordan aren't as great at screening as Duncan. Also, Del Negro's sets are much easier to stop than Pop's.
That was the huge problem last season, which they had pretty much fixed this year. They were first in the NBA at defending the pick-and-roll coming into this game. The bigs pretty much blow at it, last year collins just gave up and had jrue play one-on-two eventually. Let them get what they were going to get on the perimeter, but left the big back in the lane to stop the roll man from getting an easy layup. If this continues, he'll probably have to go back to that. Everything they did right up to this point this year, they did wrong tonight. The Spurs are also very good at it.
I remember Miller beating them with it late in the Denver game, but I don't really think that's how he scored the bulk of his points. With Deron, it was more allowing him to get the mismatches with switches than pure pick-and-rolls. Hopefully, there isn't a pattern. They shut it down against the Bulls and a number of other teams.
Yeah this year's been pretty good because our rotations off of pick and rolls have been amazing.
The problem lies when teams have a clever passing point guard who can deceive Jrue and pass the ball into a big cutting in the lane.
Parker was able to fake going up for a shot and then pass it in to Splitter. D-Will was able to squeeze in bounce passes to Humphries. And then Miller was able to lob the ball in perfectly to Nene, who got great position off the roll.
We have players who can rotate and be ready to make a play. The problem is that our bigs aren't quite good enough to make that play. We have good post defenders like Brand, but not anyone who has both good mobility and who can swat shots as a help defender.
Luckily there aren't that many elite passing Pg's in the East. Rondo is the only one, which is why the Celtics scare me if they get matched up against us in the first round.
As for Rose and the Bulls. I think that was more a case of being able to sag in with Brewer starting. The Spurs had a plethora of 3 point shooters which made it difficult to stop. They're reminiscent of the middle decade Suns.
Also Rose isn't quite as clever as Parker is at getting the ball into his bigs in the lane.
http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/miamiheat/post/_/id/12263/dwyane-wades-new-magic-number-45
Interesting article on Dwyane Wade's free throw shooting and how it was too flat. What do you think Iguodala's angle is these days? 60? Seems like a ridiculously high arc that makes his room for error miniscule on the free throw line.
Yep, the higher arc he puts on it, the less control he has over the shot.
This is the first game this year that i was thoroughly disappointed. I really thought they will win this one, but their P&R defense was just inexcusable. After getting tremendous production of the young guys all season long, almost all of them failed last night. Only Iguodala, Brand and Thad truly stepped up and the way this team is built that ain't gonna cut it. It wasn't just the rookies. Turner was off, Jrue had a bad defensive night, Meeks was invisible...
Zumoff had a comment that pretty much said it all about last night: They need Hawes to help on the P&R defense. HAWES!?!?!@!@#
Additional note: I think Vucevic plays pretty good post defense, can block shots and is a solid rebounder overall and that continued last night. He was decent on the P&R until this game so considering he is a rookie he should be able to fix it going forward. I like that he displays different moves each game on the offensive end (tried to roll last night but got whistled for the offensive foul). The results are a mixed bag so far but as he gets some experience i think he might become more consistent and as a result have a huge arsenal of different moves on offense. The only uncertainty about his game IMO is his P&R defense and that will define if he will become a very good starting caliber center or someone who can dominate in Europe but is not more than a 15-20 min per game guy in the NBA.
Blog: Iguodala isn't counting on all-star spot:
http://www.phillyburbs.com/sports/sixers/iguodala-not-counting-on-all-star-spot/article_b52028a7-4d6e-5e1d-96e7-df9b4559127e.html
I thought Jrue's defense on parker early on was very good. Then Pop started to run those multiple screens and Holiday couldn't keep up, I'm really not sure how anyone could with parker navigating them like that. I didnt have as much of a problem with our offense as we missed some open looks (Brand, lou) but we win with defense.
Disappointing show but you need discipline to deal with the Spurs offensively with all those 3 pt shooters.
Thad is our best (and most mobile - Brand is passable but too slow) big defending the P&R, so it's no wonder our 4th quarter JTIBT lineup is so effective against a lot of units.
A decent big; it's glaringly obvious that is what this team needs most of all. Forget the sweet shooting guard or the go-to scorer.
Not to mess with team chemistry, but I keep wondering what Lou as a trade chip could net us.
I think Lou can opt out of his contract after this year. If that is the case they need to consider trading him.
He can. Maybe they should. But they won't.
ahahahahaha her wiki page is even better now: "Violet Palmer is the worst referree in the entire NBA. The sole reason she was hired is because she is a female and David Stern's wife is a hardcore feminist. On February 8, 2012, Palmer had the worst officiating performance in NBA history."
I really would of liked to see more of Brand/Thad up front in this game. Has to be our most successful P&R defensive FC.
The one thing I noticed about the Spurs was that they executed their P/R's more crisply than other teams. This had the effect of causing the big man (mainly Vucevic and Allen) to be a step slow in challenging "roll" shots, with mostly disastrous results. Other teams seems to be more sloppy with their P/R's, allowing the Sixers to defend it well despite their limitations.
While poor defense was the main culprit for the Sixers' loss, it's worth noting that if Vucevic and Allen had hit anywhere near their normal percentage (say, 5 of 11 instead of 1 of 11), the game would have been very different down the stretch. While the Spurs were conceding long 2's, there were several times the Sixers generated "medium" 2's from dribble penetration, and you'd have to think they would normally hit a higher percentage of those.
Just checking out the advanced box score and wow, Parker was 1/7 on long twos. Unfortunately, Jrue matched him shot-for-shot from the same distance. Parker was 9/11 at the rim.
Sixers as a team shot 4/15 from 10-15 feet (26.7%) and 7/25 from 16-23 feet (28%).
New from Wiki:
"Palmer is very comfortable in the kitchen and sound cleaner of laundry. She belongs here, in the home; not on the basketball court."
Yeah, I think that just takes away from the legitimate complaints about what a bad ref she is. Has nothing to do w/ her being a woman, she's just a terrible ref.
Jeremy Lin > Jrue Holiday
> >
Violet Palmer > Gozer
Vinsanity was half man half amazing. Linsanity is all Asian all amazing.
Good to see a guy succeed who had to take the hard road after not being recruited and then playing his way from the NBDL to the NBA... And he probably has a pretty good fall-back plan with his Harvard degree if this basketball thing does not work out.
Some people deserve their 15 minutes in the spotlight.
Meanwhile, with that performance, we drop to 7th in offense, and, finally, 2nd in the league in margin of victory, behind Chicago. Still 1st in defense, and still just 4th to last in strength of schedule. I guess we lead the whole league in home games played thus far.
So 1st in defense, 7th in offense. Better team than 2nd in offense, 24th in defense? Or how about 20th in offense, 6th in defense?
Speaking of; considering we have almost reached the half of the season, I'm beginning to think this combo guard license-to-hoist-bad-shots mode that jrue is stuck in might just be what we see all year.
Perhaps too early but how much patience before we start dropping the R word (meaning regression). His talents on defense and his good shooting touch hide it, but he has been in want so far.
Actually, he's been playing more like a PG recently, but he's taking way too many long twos and his FT rate has dropped even further. Whether it's his preference, Collins' preference or just the result of Collins insisting they don't turn the ball over, it's not a good direction, imo.
Thursday practice video: Iguodala on his all-star chances and Collins on pick-and-roll defense:
http://www.phillyburbs.com/blogs/sports_columnists/tom_moore/sixers-iguodala-collins/youtube_af9f81f3-b990-5565-a52b-3341e657d02c.html
Collins: Pick-and-roll defense is a group effort, but "we've got to be more aggressive on the ball."
Thanks, Tom.
Interesting stuff here. Especially when Collins talks about the two bad offensive plays early (the two where Voose picked up the charges). I'd love to be able to go back and watch those right now, I'm assuming maybe someone was supposed to set a screen for him, or Blair was supposed to be sucked out of the lane by some other kind of movement.
just watched replays of both (let's just say i have a lot of down time now);
1st one Jrue ran the play, meeks and Dre at opposite flanks of the 3pt line on each side, floor was spaced well. problem was brand was moving through the paint and blair while following him quickly helped. IMO Brand's fault on that on. Had no business in the paint.
2nd one, Dre ran it, Meeks and jrue were well spaced too, at least just a couple feet inside 3pt line, this one Brand was in the same position as before (out of paint but too close to baseline) but stationary, Blair drifts off and draws the charge. IMO Correct play would have been to pass to wide open Brand, not sure any Voose had any time to react.
Maybe Brand was supposed to bring Blair up to the elbow? They were both pick-and-rolls, right? Maybe Brand is supposed to be like 10-15ft away on the baseline for that little J, so if/when Blair helps, Brand has that easy open jumper?
yep. that's usually where Brand operates, that elbow.
lately he's been moving closer, he doesnt pick and pop that much at all since his J always seems to be short. maybe instinctively moving closer to get a shot from closer range.
Amazing that the spurs can run the same thing over and over and over and the sixers couldnt stop it. In all fairness--this is pretty much how the Spurs would beat down the Kobe/Shaq lakers in the playoffs every year.
Doug has some teaching to do.
Jrue looked like he quit on a lot of plays because he kept getting picked off.Hopefully Doug can make adjustments and its not just a limitation of our personnel. If its the latter---I would expect to see every team in the future doing regular pick and rolls.
Parker torched the Thunder even worse than this a few games ago. Sometimes there isn't a whole lot you can do with elite guys. Now letting Gary Neal torch you is another story.