On That Şengün Miss
How Houston's game winning attempt ended up with Alperen Şengün isolating against the best defender alive.
Down 1 with 13 seconds to go in Monday’s pivotal Game 4, the Houston Rockets ended up with…a perplexing play. Alperen Şengün isolated Draymond Green, the most impactful defender of his generation, 18 feet from the hoop. As good as Şengün’s evening had been up to that point, it went about as well as one would expect.
Ball game and a 3-1 series lead to the Warriors.
My immediate reaction to that play was: Surely that wasn’t what Coach Ime Udoka drew up in the preceding timeout?
Rewind four minutes earlier. With 4:20 left in the game and the Rockets up by a point, Houston ran an inverted pick and roll (i.e. with the player who would typically be the ball handler serving as the screener instead) with Şengün and Fred VanVleet. VanVleet’s defender, Steph Curry, went under the screen and with Şengün’s defender, Draymond dropping back, VanVleet (6/9 from three at the time) got the space to pull up and hit the three. Four point lead Rockets.
Three minutes later, now down three, Houston again went to the Şengün-VanVleet inverted pick and roll. This time, the Warriors defenders did not communicate; VanVleet’s defender (Buddy Hield) switched while Şengün’s defender (Jimmy Butler III) stayed with his man. Again, VanVleet had all the space he needed to sink the three and tie the game at 104.
After Butler made three free throws at the other end (live by the Dillon Brooks, die by the Dillon Brooks), the Rockets again went to the Şengün-VanVleet inverted pick and roll. Golden State had brought in Gary Payton 2 and Kevon Looney during the break in play, so instead of Hield or Curry, it was GP2 marking VanVleet and Draymond guarding Şengün. This time the Warriors executed a successful switch, leaving GP2 on Şengün. As good of a point of attack defender as GP2 is though, he’s giving up nine inches and 50 lbs. to Şengün. Şengün easily backed GP2 down and scored at the rim.
That’s three straight scores out of the same play. So after Steph missed at the other end and the Rockets had a last shot to tie or take the lead, guess what play the Rockets dialed up out of the timeout?
Golden State was ready for it this time. Ime Udoka broke down what happened on the last play in his post-game comments.
Here’s the relevant quote:
Draymond shot the gap and kind of denied the catch. Tried to get a switch with Payton, so we didn’t get a great screen and kept the matchup, but got a decent look. But, you gotta screen better to get Alpi open at the spot we want him at.
So the plan was clearly to run the Şengün-VanVleet inverted pick and roll again. With Brooks inbounding, the Warriors and Draymond first successfully denied Şengün the catch (not shown in the clip at the top of this post and below.) That forced Brooks to inbound to VanVleet lifting up from the corner, and VanVleet then pitched the ball to Şengün to initiate the action. That additional action gave GP2 time to get into good screen denial position, preventing the Rockets from even getting into the planned action. And that’s how we ended up with Şengün isolating Draymond, backing him down into no man’s land, and attempting a low percentage hook shot.
The post-game story was all about Draymond stonewalling Şengün in isolation, but credit Draymond and GP2 for doing the work up front to force the Rockets into that isolation look to begin with. This is why the playoffs are such good fun. Chess matches and adjustments don’t just happen between games, but between possessions.
Detritus
Some random thoughts ahead of Game 5:
Regardless of whether Houston can pull off a comeback in this series, it is becoming clear that they need some more offensive juice. As currently constructed, Houston doesn’t have a player who can bend a defense; the closest candidate, Jalen Green, doesn’t seem to be it (at least till his passing improves.) I may be more bullish than most on Amen Thompson’s potential to get there. Athleticism of this sort is tantalizing:
Against a set defense, Thompson gets to the rim in two seconds. The hang time as he bends around Quinten Post like one of those crazy bullets in Wanted had my jaw on the floor. Maybe the Rockets should dial up more ballhandling reps for Thompson in Game 5, particularly when they have him out there with the double big lineup?
It’s always amusing to see high-level NBA players go through phases where they get completely flummoxed by a zone defense.1 Golden State struggled in Game 4 against the zone defense that Houston trots out when they have their double big (Steven Adams and Alperen Şengün) lineups on the floor. The Warriors started figuring the zone out in the second half, behind the collective smarts of Butler, Draymond, Steph, and Brandin Podziemski. By the end of the game, their struggles against that zone look may have been overstated. There were enough reps of this sort to suggest the offense won’t be short circuited so easily in Game 5:
It wasn’t like the Warriors did anything fancy; they flashed a player to the middle, sowed some confusion by cutting across the baseline, and lifted to the top of the zone as space opened. Golden State missed a number of wide open threes in Game 4; maybe a couple of those fall in Game 5?
For all the, justifiable, talk about Houston’s offensive rebounding dominance, Golden State hoovered up 35% of their own misses as well (compared to 38% for the Rockets.) That is partly a function of how many threes Golden State take, with over half their shot attempts in Game 4 coming from three per Cleaning the Glass. Long shots lead to long rebounds. The Warriors took a lot of threes and missed a lot of threes. I don’t expect that to change. Ime Udoka has been candid about goading the Warriors’ worse shooters to fire away from outside the arc.
Steve Kerr has coached an excellent series, making adjustments (GP2 on the short roll in the fourth quarter of of Game 3 as one example) while not overreacting (sticking with the Warriors’ staple “Rub” baseline out of bounds set even after the Rockets blew it up a couple of times, trusting the players to figure out the right option each time.) One roll of the dice that did not pay off was the Trayce Jackson-Davis one in Game 4. Jackson-Davis was unable to do much against Steven Adams on the defensive glass and clogged the spacing on the other end. We might have seen the last of Jackson-Davis for this series. It was worth a shot!
Jackson-Davis only saw court time because Steven Adams was having his way with the Warriors. Ultimately, Coach Kerr went to the hack-a-Adams strategy to get him off the floor. I thought Ime Udoka threw in the towel too early on Adams; the Warriors didn’t even hit the foul limit when Adams was preemptively pulled. The Rockets defense was yielding nothing at the time. It might have been worth seeing how the free throws shook out (it wasn’t like the rest of the team was shooting well from the free throw line anyway.) Maybe the Rockets ride out Hack-a-Adams in Game 5 if it comes to it?
The Mona Lisa being Minnesota’s meltdown against the Milwaukee Bucks towards the end of the regular season.