Weekly Rewatch 1: Nets-Clippers

The first in what should hopefully be a recurring series.

Edit: The original version of this post mistakenly identified Lou Williams as having tag duties on the first DeAndre Jordan lob below. Thank you to Stephen Noh for pointing out my error, which has now been corrected. The decoy strong-side action is still something worth noting.

Two housekeeping notes: I have received feedback on the gifs not being large enough, something I am trying to rectify starting now. Going forward, I am also going to streamline things into approximately two posts a week: a “Weekly Rewatch” series in which I take a look at a game from the previous week with a view towards some broad trends/storylines, with the other post(s) being more free form. I would love suggestions and requests for upcoming games that you would like to see featured in this space!

For the inaugural Weekly Rewatch, I take a look at Sunday evening’s marquee matchup between the Brooklyn Nets (sans Kevin Durant) and the Los Angeles Clippers (with Paul George on a minutes restriction.) Let’s dive in.

Quarter 1: The Hunt for Number 11

Early in the game, the Clippers’ offensive strategy boiled down to getting either Kawhi Leonard or Paul George switched onto Kyrie Irving, rinse and repeat. The smallball Nets were only too happy to oblige. This started on the very first Clippers possession. Take note of how far out Kawhi gets the switch, a recurring theme in the early going. Kawhi’s position at the hash mark allows the Nets to gamble with a re-switch.

Shout out to Joe Harris’ early rotation on the cutting Patrick Beverley and James Harden filling to muck up a pass out to Nicolas Batum in the weak side corner.

On the next Clippers possession, it is Paul George’s turn to get the switch on Kyrie. Take note again of how far out the isolation is, as well as how low and up in George’s jersey Kyrie is in his defensive stance.

George is scoring a very robust 1.16 points per possession on isolations this season. But a combination of Kyrie’s defense, Jeff Green showing early at the nail, and Bruce Brown gambling off Pat Beverley to load the strong side as a second line of defense, force George to give up the ball.

Third Clippers possession and at this point we should know what’s coming. The Nets might perhaps be trying to avoid the switch and are lucky that Kawhi misses the 3 despite the resulting confusion. Look at the amount of space Kawhi has to launch here:

Perhaps that moment of confusion spooked the Nets, but they commit fully to the switching scheme the rest of the way, with some measure of success. The Nets’ success on defense this season will be determined in large part by how well they can execute their switching scheme ala the 2017-18 Houston Rockets.

In the clip below, Paul George again gets a switch on Kyrie beyond the arc, but this is just solid one-on-one defense from Kyrie to force the tough fadeaway.

As easily as the Clippers are manufacturing these switches, it seems like they would be better served by either leveraging them into easier looks for other players, or engineering these switches closer to the hoop.

More on the former in the fourth quarter below. On the latter, the Clippers adjust at this point, with Kawhi getting good position on Kyrie at the elbow.

Kawhi scores 1.17 points per possession on nearly 4 post-ups per game and some of that skill is on display here. Kawhi gets Kyrie onto his left hip and is then able to use that as leverage to spin right into a layup. Bruce Brown can only partially help, given the spot-up threat that Paul George can be (50% on catch-and-shoot 3s this season per nba.com. On a minimum of 2 such attempts per game, the Clippers can claim three of the top ten players in the league, with Marcus Morris and Kawhi Leonard also up there. Scary.)

This next play shows both teams trying to adjust to what the other is doing; after Kawhi initially gets the switch onto Kyrie, the Nets execute a timely scram switch between Jeff Green and Kyrie.

You can run, but you can’t hide though; Kawhi immediately enters the ball to Serge Ibaka with deep post position on Kyrie (arguably better than the original Kawhi-on-Kyrie mismatch) and Kyrie is forced to foul.

Quarter 2: Misdirection

I liked a lot of what the Nets did in the second quarter on offense, building up a 7 point halftime lead. In particular, they used simple decoy actions to create easy scoring opportunities.

The Nets had a lot of success with the Harden-DeAndre Jordan high pick and roll and this is mostly a bread-and-butter version of that.

The little exchange that Bruce Brown and Landry Shamet execute is a nice decoy action to potentially distract Paul George as he shades towards Harden at the nail; Paul is too good of a defender to get distracted though. With Joe Harris (56% on catch-and-shoot threes this season) occupying Terance Mann on the weak side, Jordan gets the wide open dunk. Jordan may not be the Lob City high flyer he once was, but he is still scoring over 1.4 points per possession as the roll man, better than elite roll men like Rudy Gobert and Bam Adebayo. That number figures to stay fat as he gets more reps with arguably the best pick and roll ballhandler in the league.

With the Clippers bringing many of their starters back at the 7 minute mark, the Nets take advantage of the turnover and confusion on a sideline out-of-bounds to get another open dunk for DeAndre Jordan.

Perhaps Kawhi Leonard thinks they are switching here while Nic Batum doesn’t, but what looks like a pindown for Joe Harris turns into a dunk after the pinpoint pass from Harden.

Finally, keep your eye on Kyrie Irving in the clip below.

That’s some high quality playacting there! After spending the first few seconds of the possession acting simply as a spot-up threat in the corner, Kyrie uses Pat Beverley’s moment of inattention to run straight into a flare screen for Joe Harris. Credit Paul George for fighting over the screen and distracting Harris enough to force the missed 3.

Quarter 3: Interregnum

Here is the Clippers’ shot chart (via nba.com) in the first half:

And here is the shot chart for the second half:

(Those three misses on the left? I call that the Lou Williams zone. He makes enough from there where if you are the Clippers, you just shrug and move on.)

Even roughly eyeballing the two charts should make it clear that the Clippers attempted fewer mid-range shots in the second half. On the season, the Clippers are attempting nearly 35% of their shots from mid-range per Cleaning the Glass, 5.5 points above league average. However, this isn’t the league-leading Phoenix Suns or the Brooklyn Nets we are talking about when it comes to accuracy; the Clippers shoot 43% on those mid-range shots (again from Cleaning the Glass), about 1 point above league average. This good-not-great accuracy from mid-range is part of the reason why some pundits sweat about the Clippers’ shot profile; they are scorching hot from beyond the arc, but with a bottom-three ranking in percentage of shots attempted at the rim and a bottom-ten one in free throw attempts, the Clippers could afford to make life a little easier for themselves on the offensive end.

The Clippers did move some of their shot attempts closer to the rim in the second half. When James Harden shows hard on the Paul George-Serge Ibaka pick and roll below, George hits Ibaka deep on the roll.

I am a sucker for a good decoy cut and Kawhi Leonard’s cut here pulls Jeff Green just enough out of position to ensure that he is late on the tag.

Speaking of cuts, Bruce Brown (who just had a career-high 29 points in the Nets’ Tuesday night win over the Kings) has been deploying cuts strategically to keep defenses that play off of him honest.

One final play really stood out to me in the third quarter and shows this Nets team really starting to gel on the defensive end. The Clippers go back to the early staple of getting Kyrie switched onto Kawhi, but a moment’s indecision from Terance Mann allows the Nets to switch back. The chemistry is really in evidence behind them though.

Even as DeAndre Jordan and Landry Shamet execute a second scram switch underneath the basket, Shamet manages to tag Kawhi before rapidly closing out on Lou Williams in the corner. I continue to be impressed by Landry Shamet.

Quarter 4: Hey Mister DJ

Before we get to DeAndre Jordan, let’s go back to the Clippers’ shot profile. In the first quarter, I noted that the Clippers could be getting looks closer to the basket and creating better shots out of mismatches. We saw evidence of the former already. In the fourth, Paul George successfully found Ivica Zubac for a couple of much-needed, easy looks at the rim. Looks like these played a big role in fueling the Clippers’ comeback from 15 down. Not wholly unrelated: After attempting 8 free throws through the first three quarters, the Clippers attempted 10 (making all of them) in the fourth.

In transition, George is able to use his momentum to get around James Harden, forcing a rotation that leads to the easy dump off to Zubac.

On the very next play, George flows out of a zipper cut straight into a dribble handoff with Zubac. Brown hesitates to help off of Morris (remember, top three in the league on catch and shoot 3s this season) and Zubac’s roll gets him another dunk.

It wasn’t all smooth sailing for the Clippers on offense and that was due in some part to…DeAndre Jordan? Jordan has been a source of some sturm und drang in the Nets fanbase for his defense, but he held his own on a number of plays in Sunday’s game. He moved his feet well when left on an island with Kawhi Leonard; in this clip, a Bruce Brown foul renders that somewhat for naught.

And again, Jordan is in position to deter a pull-up, but still backpedals with enough alacrity to stay in front of Kawhi’s drive, even recovering from a brief slip to block Kawhi’s midrange fadeaway.

It wasn’t always perfect and after the Nets gave up a soft switch to put Jordan on Kawhi again, an optimistic attempt at a denial puts Jordan horribly out of position and invariably leads to the foul.

On the whole though, DeAndre Jordan had one of his best outings as a Net and given his stoutness on defensive switches, it felt like divine reward that he ultimately had the game winner.

Switching Easter Egg

While we’re on the subject of switching and defense, this late defensive possession from the Clippers is art. Watch how they cover Kyrie Irving.

Paul George, recognizing that someone needs to cover DeAndre Jordan moving towards the dunker’s spot, passes Kyrie off to Patrick Beverley. Beverley stays in position to deter James Harden’s drive and Kawhi Leonard seamlessly picks up Irving as he loops up to the top of the arc. Playing off a shooter as potent as Joe Harris is a calculated gamble by Beverley, given that Harden would need to make the pass with his off hand, and the gamble pays off.

Miscellany

In last week’s Ten Things column, Zach Lowe wrote about a counter to the 2-3 zone that the Dallas Mavericks and other teams have run, with the top of the zone being screened from the inside. That looked very familiar and after some digging, I found this beauty from the Jazz-Blazers season opener:

The Jazz have also run this with Donovan Mitchell in Conley’s place. Mitchell is speedier than Conley and if the middle of that back-line is even slightly out of position, that floater can very easily turn into a thunderous dunk. Tasty!