Weekly Rewatch 2: Bucks-Pelicans
Weekly Rewatch 2: Bucks-Pelicans
Come for Zion and Giannis, stay for Donte DiVincenzo and Willy Hernangomez.
Welcome to the second in the Weekly Rewatch series (the inaugural post looked at the February 21st matchup between the Brooklyn Nets and the Los Angeles Clippers.) This week’s co-headliner is a team that despite being forecasted as a marginal playoff team, features an inordinately large number of times on the National TV schedule: the New Orleans Pelicans. Aside from Zion Williamson and Giannis Antetokounmpo, the other obvious potential source of juice in this matchup is this summer’s Jrue-Holiday-for-a-lot trade (although Holiday was out for this game.)
Matchups can be interesting when teams present contrasts; here we had a Milwaukee offense flirting with the league-best ranking all season going up against a New Orleans defense that has been bottom three. Matchups can also be interesting when there are obvious stress points; only Washington gives up a fewer proportion of shot attempts at the rim than Milwaukee per Cleaning the Glass, while New Orleans is second in the league in proportion of shot attempts at the rim. This is a longish post (not all the Weekly Rewatches will be quite as long), but there was a lot to write about!
Quarter 1: Lonzo-Zion Magic (and Where’s the Transition D?)
The Bucks started the game with a tall lineup that had seen precisely 0 minutes up to that point: Brook Lopez, Bobby Portis, Giannis, Khris Middleton, and Donte DiVincenzo. Up to this game, lineups featuring both Portis and Lopez had fared abysmally on the defensive end, but this was the first time that Giannis would feature alongside both. Portis has never graded out as a plus defender and we get some indication of why early on. In the clip below, Portis has to show more urgency in getting back to form a wall with Brook Lopez against Zion's transition attack.
Portis is nearly at the top of the circle when Zion has barely crossed half-court…
…but is still too high to truly help Lopez once Zion is at the circle. Lopez is left with no choice but to foul Zion.
People have correctly excused some of the Bucks’ defensive drop off this season as Mike Budenholzer finally experimenting with different schemes (most notably switching more) in order to be better prepared for the playoffs. While that may be true of their half court defense, Bucks fans should be a little concerned by the drop off in the Bucks’ transition defense this season. After ranking as a top-two transition defense in each of the least two seasons (a super stingy 103.2 last season and 104.5 the previous one per CTG), the Bucks give up a league-average 111.9 points per 100 this season. Some of that may be that teams leaguewide are doing a better job of scoring in transition, and some of it is by design as Eric Nehm has detailed in talking about the Bucks’ greater focus on offensive rebounding. Nevertheless, moments like the one above are worrying against a team like New Orleans that is primed to capitalize. The Pelicans are a top ten transition offense, a number that gets supercharged to a fat 122 points per 100 in lineups featuring Lonzo Ball and Zion per CTG.
Fans have been salivating from the early days about Lonzo and Zion linking up in transition, but they have developed very solid chemistry in the halfcourt as well. New Orleans’ halfcourt offense is as good as its transition one when Lonzo and Zion share the floor. Watch their mind meld here; Zion is darting towards the rim even as Eric Bledsoe’s pass makes it to Lonzo.
Lonzo glances towards Steven Adams in the dunker’s spot as he appears to be weighing up his options, we see Brook Lopez glance back to make sure he has Adams covered and in a flash, the alley-oop is complete. Beautiful.
There is rapid improvisation in the Lonzo-Zion dance that is the hallmark of all the best pick and roll tandems in the league. Think Jokic-Murray, but with a turbo button. They will flow from a DHO to Zion flipping his screen to a quick roll in the blink of an eye.
Lonzo’s preternatural feel is evident in the timing and placement of his pocket passes. The pass above is bounced in front of Portis to hit Zion perfectly in stride. If it looks like the weakside Bucks defenders are mesmerized, it might be because they are. (Side bar: Zion is getting pretty canny with flipping his screens.)
Back on that Bucks transition defense. They dodge a bullet here as Zion misses a wide-open layup, but take a look at where on the floor the Bucks and Zion are at start the play.
That’s (count ‘em), three Bucks defenders between Zion and Bucks’ basket with Giannis almost at the logo. Most notably, none are crashing the offensive board, so their only responsibility is to get back.
Zion beats all three down the floor as Lonzo’s outlet arrives.
A few things to note here: The Bucks were missing Jrue Holiday, who in addition to being a hellacious point-of-attack defender has always made his teams better in transition when he is on the floor. The Bucks also tightened up their transition D as the game went on and for the game as a whole, actually did a very solid job of keeping the Pelican’s transition offense in check. Zion is also frighteningly fast and can make even NBA-level athletes look flat-footed (more on that below.) And finally, credit Brook Lopez with making it back and bothering Zion’s shot.
Moreover, the real transition culprits in the game were wearing red. Only the turnstile Sacramento Kings have a worse transition defense than the Pelicans per CTG. Now, the Pelicans also lead the league in offensive rebounding, grabbing nearly 30% of their own misses. Maybe that’s a tradeoff they are happy to make. That tradeoff hasn’t always been one that Coach Stan Van Gundy has had to make though; his Pistons teams routinely ranked near the top of the league in offensive rebounding and in their first two seasons, also managed to put together a very robust transition defense. At the very least, the Pelicans need to excise efforts like the one below: off a made Pelicans basket, Khris Middleton waltzes unimpeded to the rim.
If I’m Zion, I am trying not to make eye contact with Coach Van Gundy after that play.
Quarter 2: Zion Williamson, Athletic Marvel
Maybe the least insightful thing you will read here: Zion Williamson is incredibly athletic. It bears repeating though. His quickness and explosion renders minor defensive lapses as fatal ones. Here, Sam Merrill is a step late in helping the helper when Bobby Portis goes over to double Willy Hernangomez (a puzzling decision by the way). That is all that Josh Hart needs to get Zion an alley oop.
Soon after, Zion slips a screen on Khris Middleton to get another alley oop from Eric Bledsoe. This is a tough angle at which to catch the pass and then lay it in, but Zion makes it look routine.
It looks like DiVincenzo is late in coming over from the weak side, but look at where Zion starts his jump. There are very few players who do this so regularly; in many cases, DiVincenzo has arrived in time to put in a contest. When he has the ability to make plays like this, it is little wonder that nearly 85% of Zion’s shot attempts come at the rim. Zion truly is unprecedented.
One question I had going in to this game was how the Bucks’ deep drop scheme would fare against Zion in the pick and roll. On the one hand, it seems like the logical defensive coverage given that Zion is a far bigger threat on the roll than popping out for a jumper. On the flip side, that space could just give Zion the sliver of daylight needed to build up a head of steam, at which point he is well nigh unguardable.
Maybe the solution there is for Giannis to be further in and helping more aggressively off Lonzo on the wing, but this just seems like too long of a runway for Zion.
Give Zion the space in the paint to take two steps and he could run into a wall of defenders and it still wouldn’t matter.
I’m not sure what the answer really is on those elbow pick and rolls, particularly with an empty weakside, as is the case above. One thought: If damage control isn’t an option once Zion receives the ball, perhaps defenses should be experimenting more with blitzing the ballhandler. Show them a maze of arms and try to either deflect the pass, or prevent it from happening. The aim of such blitzing would be less to get the ball out of the ballhandler’s hands than to prevent the ballhandler from getting the ball to Zion specifically. Of course, that leads to a host of knock on effects that may be even less desirable, not least of which is that the problem of giving Zion a runway gets exacerbated further if the blitz is executed poorly. Still, it might be something worth trying (paging Nick Nurse and other mad scientists.)
On the other side of the floor, it was fascinating to watch how the Pelicans tried to cover Donte DiVincenzo, who went off for a career high 24 points in this game. Coming in to the game, DiVincenzo was shooting a sturdy 38% on pull-up 3s this season per NBA.com. With this in mind, the Pelicans seemed committed to fighting over screens and DHOs involving DiVincenzo. Eric Bledsoe had primary responsibilities on DiVincenzo and after starting strong, got burned a few times in the second quarter. Watch him go under the pitch-back from Giannis here and acknowledge his mistake even as DiVincenzo’s shot is in the air.
A few minutes later, Bledsoe goes under a Giannis screen and the outcome is similar; we don’t get Bledsoe’s reaction here, but Steven Adams pointedly raises his arms in a “wtf mate?” directed towards him.
Bledsoe and Lonzo Ball did a much better job the rest of the way in being wary of DiVincenzo’s pull-up shot. After going 6/8 from behind the arc in the first half, DiVincenzo shot 1/3 in the second half. More interesting than the percentages there is the deterrence effect; by fighting over screens, the defender not only tries to put in a rearview contest and sow doubt in the shooter’s mind, but also prevent 3-point attempts that otherwise may have happened.
Second Half: The Hernangomez Cometh
This has gotten long enough, so let’s compress the second half a bit. One of my takeaways from this game is that I don’t know how much the Bucks can expect to play Bobby Portis in the playoffs. He seems to be an obvious candidate when defenses want to hunt out mismatches. Steven Adams has no problem trundling into an easy post-up when guarded by Portis early in the third.
Portis was late on the help throughout this game. In this play from the second quarter, he has his eyes on Brandon Ingram the entire way and is still late in rotating over.
Opponents are shooting over 8 percentage points better at the rim with Portis on the floor per CTG, way down in the 4th percentile league wide.
On the flip side, the Bucks starting lineup in this game with Pat Connaughton in place of Portis is one to keep an eye on. They had played just 25 possessions together going into this game, but the Connaughton/DiVincenzo/Middleton/Giannis/Lopez lineup gives teams hell on defense. Some of that might be shooting variance, but +33.2 in 25 possessions (+17.7 in 38 after Thursday’s game) is no joke.
Now for this week’s hipster moment: I thought Willy Hernangomez gave the Pelicans some very solid minutes on offense in this game. Watch him tactically give up some ground here before screening two men.
That won’t show up in the box score, but Hernangomez’s screening is what forces Giannis to help in on Brandon Ingram’s drive, creating the wide open look for Josh Hart.
Those same smarts are seen in this sweet touch pass to the corner; what goes around comes around and a swing-swing gets Hernangomez an easy layup.
Sadly, the Hernangomez giveth and the Hernangomez taketh away. While the Pelicans are 7 points per 100 better on offense with Hernangomez on the floor, they are also over points per 100 worse on defense. Hernangomez makes the lumbering Brook Lopez look like Zion Williamson on this alley oop.
But From The Logo is a positive space and while Hernangomez’s minutes on the season might essentially net out to a wash, I want the takeaway here to be that Willy Hernangomez gave the Pelicans some nice offensive production in this game. And the Pelicans needed it too. After scoring 103 points through the first three quarters, the Pelicans only mustered 22 points in the fourth quarter. Some of that was due to own goals. Eric Bledsoe misses Zion Williamson on an open roll to the basket here.
(There’s Bobby Portis late on the help tagging the roller again.) If you’re the Bucks, this should not be ending in a contested Bledsoe midranger:
Post mortems of the game largely focused on the Pelicans’ perplexing final possession, when they played hot potato without getting a shot up, despite having multiple opportunities to do so. My guess is that Stan Van Gundy and the other coaches spent more of the following day’s film session focused on the defensive lapses that cost the Pelicans the game. On the positive side, as I noted above, the Pelicans did a better job going over screens for DiVincenzo and Middleton in the second half. This is just cold blooded shot making.
Too often though, that initial effort was not matched by the other players on the floor. Far from stepping in to tag Middleton after being in good position to do so, Zion steps back and virtually ushers Middleton to the rim.
It seems only fitting to end this week’s recap with Khris Middleton. Arguably the non-All Star with the strongest case to have made the team, Middleton torched the Pelicans throughout the second half.
Middleton got buckets every which way. This is a lovely play off a double drag from Brook Lopez and Giannis.
Again, not to sound like a broken record, but you want to see a better effort from Zion here. He doesn’t do much to fight over the Giannis screen, but also doesn’t cover Giannis’ roll; this floater could just as easily have ended up in a lob dunk for Giannis. Lonzo recognizes the threat too late, but from an otherwise heady defender, you might expect him to be stepping up sooner to to take the charge here ala Kyle Lowry.
Cutting Zion and the Pelicans some slack, this is minute 43 on the tail end of a back-to-back, so there are some understandably tired legs.
For next week’s recap, the current frontrunner is this past Friday’s streak-snapping Miami Heat victory over the Utah Jazz. Other suggestions always welcome!