From the Logo has been on an extended hiatus owing to some (very positive) changes on the personal front and an exciting basketball side project. I hope to have more on the latter soon. I hope to resume writing in this space soon. In the meantime, here are three questions I will be paying attention to in Monday’s Bucks-Nets Game 2.
How will the Nets guard ball screens?
The Nets are generally content to switch on-ball screens; the choices they make when they don’t are interesting. Kyrie Irving got burned by Jrue Holiday on a couple of occasions in Game 1 when he chose to go under screens set for Holiday.
Holiday shot over 40% on pull-up 3s in the regular season and Khris Middleton shot over 41%. Kevin Durant puts in a good closeout here, but the margin for error is slim.
The Bucks might want to put the Nets through some repeated screening actions on the perimeter and how the Nets guard those could go some way towards determining how much the Bucks perimeter shooting can bounce back from a poor outing.
Can the Bucks clean up their help defense?
For a team of smart defenders, the Bucks got a little sloppy with their help defense at times in Game 1. There was a lot of overhelping, which the Nets exploited with smart cuts to open up easy looks at the rim.
Khris Middleton has probably done enough to deter a Joe Harris attempt there, but Jrue Holiday’s aggressive help opens up the cut for Kyrie.
Overhelp, or even justifiable help, gets compounded when the other defenders don’t help the helper enough. Holiday is the culprit once again, not watching for Bruce Brown’s cut to the rim when Bryn Forbes goes to double Blake Griffin.
A related thing to watch: how much the Bucks opt to send double-teams. They oscillated between doubling and playing Durant straight up on post-ups. While a case could perhaps be made for sending the double at Durant, is it necessary to double Blake Griffin (0.8 ppp on post-ups in the regular season) there?
How do the Bucks approach the switching Nets?
The Bucks aren’t afraid to play the isolation game; only the Nets and the Portland Trailblazers isolated with more frequency in the regular season. I’m not convinced that this is the best approach for the Bucks to take when they generate a mismatch out of a switch. Stress test this flimsy Nets defense by running a secondary play even if a switch is generated and see what happens.