How Ayton got to the hole
How two earlier plays help us make sense of Deandre Ayton's game-winning alley oop.
The Phoenix Suns were down a point with 0.9 seconds left at the end of Game 2. Then this happened:
Coach Monty Williams drew up a beautiful play and there is so much to love about the Suns’ execution:
Devin Booker’s crunching screen on Ivica Zubac to open up Deandre Ayton’s path to the basket.
Mikal Bridges’ cutting to the corner at the right moment to occupy the weakside help defender (Patrick Beverly).
Jae Crowder’s exquisite pass; a hair to the left and he would have had egg on his face with the ball bouncing off the backboard.
Cam Johnson taking Paul George completely out of the play with a decoy cut to the top of the arc.
Amidst the justifiable plaudits for the play, there were some questions.
Steve Jones Jr. raises a fair point, but a couple of plays from earlier in the quarter may explain Zubac’s positioning. First, there was a Cam Johnson 3.
Zubac started that play fairly far off Ayton and in recovering to him, put himself wildly out of position to help out on Cam Johnson flaring to the top of the arc. Jae Crowder’s screen at the weakside elbow (again, just a beautiful sideline out-of-bounds play drawn up by Monty Williams) combined with Ayton’s near screen put Paul George too far behind Johnson to contest. In that situation, Zubac should have perhaps been switching onto Johnson, something he was in no position to do.
Later in the quarter as the game remained tight, it was Mikal Bridges’ turn to pour in a 3.
This time, Zubac was aggressively far off Ayton, perhaps unconcerned with Ayton catching the ball on the short roll in space. When Ayton nails poor Paul George with a pin down for Bridges, Zubac is literally on his heels, in no position to help George out and close out on a switch.
With the two recent threes as background, let’s go back to that game-winning basket.
If I had to guess, Zubac was wary of the Clippers getting burned on another Ayton pin down leading to an open jumper. Notice his positioning, hard on Ayton’s right hip.
Zubac’s body is also angled towards the sideline there, likely in anticipation of needing to close out on Cam Johnson (46% on catch and shoot 3s in the playoffs per NBA advanced stats) should Ayton follow through on what looks like a screen for Paul George.
As soon as Zubac noticed that (i) a screen for Johnson wasn’t a threat, and (ii) Paul George was in contact with Johnson, he opened up to square off an Ayton pin down for Devin Booker.
And that’s part of what makes this such a beautiful play design from Williams. Leveraging earlier successes, he had Ayton fake Zubac out twice, first on a screen for Johnson and then rolling hard towards the rim, to get a high percentage look against the odds.