Empirical evidence on Hawks pick-and-roll offense

[bfwolf]

I just wrote in another post how much I am infuriated by the Hawks completely ineffective pick-and-roll offense. It appears to me that the Hawks do not have the personnel necessary to execute it successfully, yet they continue to try the pick and roll nearly every possession. The other team, knowing that our guards are not good enough passers to get the ball to the rolling big, and also knowing that the rolling big is not much of an offensive threat even if he did get the ball, nearly always double the guard until they are able to reset offensively. And all that happens is we waste 5 seconds off the shot clock.

I realize though that I don't have any empirical evidence to back up my assertion. So I challenge other Hawks fans to watch the next few Hawks game and keep a record of:

1) How many times the Hawks run the pick and roll.

2) How many times the opposing team doubles the guard.

3) How many times the pick and roll has one of the 3 positive outcomes it's designed for (keep track of each separately):

a) Both defensive players go with the guard, who is able to find the rolling big for an open shot or a drive to the bucket.

b) The defensive big man stays at home, the opposing guard comes under the bottom of the pick, and the Hawks guard gets an open jumper.

c) The defensive big man stays at home, the opposing guard comes over the top of the pick, and the Hawks guard drives to the basket uncontested (until he gets in the lane)

Note that JJ dropping a 3 pointer with his man all over him after coming around the pick is NOT a positive pick and roll. It's just JJ being a stud, and we don't need to run the pick and roll to get him contested 3s.

Right now I am watching bowl games every night instead of Hawks games, but I'll try to keep some records once bowl season is over. Anybody else willing to keep tabs for a couple of games?

[TheNorthCydeRises]

BDawg . . what you have to understand, is that the reason why the pick and roll isn't effective now, is because of (b) . . the Hawks not being able to knock down open jumpers.

What teams are doing now, is completely smothering JJ when he comes off of that pick. That means all JJ has to do, is find the open man . . which is usually either Speedy or Marvin. And guess what? Neither of those guys are consistently knocking down open jumpers, or attacking the basket like they should, in order to make the possession offensively efficient.

When we had Lue, teams couldn't afford to leave him, because Lue was absolutely killing teams that left him open. We've lost 11 out of the last 12. But in the last 7 games that Lue has been out, we've lost all of them. It just goes to show you how important guys who can knock down open shots are . . especially to this team.

But if we were to go to a motion type offense, that would still require Speedy and Marvin to be aggressive offensively. Speedy is becoming more aggressive offensively, but he only stays that way if he's knocking down shots. When he starts out cold ( which is most of the time ), he'll stop shooting altogether and defer to someone else.

Marvin is altogether a different story. He seems to be afraid to attack the rim at times, because he's picking up 1 or 2 early offensive fouls a game, which is limiting his time on the floor. So he'll settle for jumpers, which isn't his forte yet. The fact that he's shooting under 40% FG right now, illustrates this point to a tee.

So to be honest, it isn't the fact that we're still running the pick and roll that's the problem. It's the offensive confidence of the players we have out on the court, that is the true problem. And when you talk about offensive confidence, the only active players that have it now, are JJ, Chill, and Salim ( who runs extremely hot and cold with his shooting ).

It'll be interesting to see how long Woody sticks with Marvin in the starting lineup. Because if you ask me, Childress is easily the 2nd best player on the team right now. And with all of the attention being on JJ right now, Woody may be better off starting Chill at the 2 or the 3, and bringing Marvin off the bench.

That's not to say that Marvin's minutes should be cut, because I don't think they should. But I think the coaches are really trying to see what they have in this kid, before they make a decision to bring him off the bench. Or maybe they feel pressured to start him, because he was the #2 pick in the 2005 draft.

To me, it's kind of the same experiment they were doing with Smoove last year. And if you remember, they had to bench Smoove for a few games last year, until he got his game right.

It's just hard to justify NOT having Chill out on the floor to start games now, especially with Smoove being out. He's outshooting, outrebounding, and is mentally a better ballplayer than Marvin right now.

I say, keep playing Marvin 30+ minutes a game. But start Childress. I've said since Day 1, that it shouldn't matter who starts the game, when you have to make a decision between Smoove, Shelden, Chill, and Marvin, because they all bring different things to the table. But right now, this team is struggling mightily offensively.

Woody's best bet may be to start Chill, and see if he can take some of the heat off of JJ early in games. Then bring Marvin in against the other team's 2nd team, to see if he can gain some offensive confidence, and do some damage against them.

[TheNorthCydeRises]

One more thing.

We're either running the Pick and Roll, or the High Post offense, with ZaZa now at the top of the key, trying to find JJ off the screen, then letting him make the decision with the ball.

When that offense was really effective back in November, it was Smoove receiving the ball at the top. He then was able to get the ball to JJ or Lue in the right spots for good looks at the basket. Smoove can force some passes at times, but overall, he is a very good passing forward which enabled us to do good things offensively. And before he got hurt, he was even starting to take the ball to the basket more.

You can't lose a player like that, plus lose what he brings on the defensive end, and expect not to have a dropoff in offensive and defensive efficiency.

It's incredible. Before Smoove's injury, the Hawks only had 2 games in which they failed to score 82 points or more. LOL . . the last 4 that Smoove has been out, we can't even reach the 82 point barrier.

This team basically has no margin for error. IF and WHEN we get everybody healthy, this team will improve drastically. But we truly need ALL of our key cogs healthy, to make this thing work.

So as long as we have key guys out, you have to expect this team to struggle mightily at times. We just have to hope that they can break out of this funk, and get everybody back healthy as soon as possible.

[TexasPete]

BK picks...Woody rolls.

[bfwolf]

I agree with you that Childress should be getting more minutes and Marvin fewer minutes, and I agree with you that having some of our best players injured makes us a much worse team no matter what offense we run. Nonetheless, we don't have the kind of team to effectively run a pick and roll even with everybody healthy. When JJ comes around a pick, it's NOT Marvin's or Speedy's man double teaming him. It's Zaza's/Lo Wright's/Solomon Jones' man. JJ is unable to get the ball over to those guys when he gets doubled beyond the 3 point line on the pick and roll, and quite frankly, why would he want to? Unless you've got a guard who can get the ball to the big (e.g. Stockton) and a big who is a big enough threat to warrant taking him seriously on the roll (e.g. Malone), the pick and roll is a waste of time. Now MAYBE Claxton could pass the ball effectively enough, but since he has a shaky jumper, the defending guard can just come underneath the pick and let him have the open 3 if he wants it. We just don't have the players to run that kind of offense. I'd much rather see one-on-one dribble penetration or start posting up Childress/Smith.

[TheNorthCydeRises]

But we did run it pretty effectively in November. It isn't the most fluent thing to watch, but offense wasn't our problem in November. It was finishing off games and stopping people at the end of games. If you look back at those November games, we shot a good percentage in the vast majority of those games.

One on one dribble penetration? With who?

JJ tries to do it, but he immeadiately gets double and triple-teamed now. Speedy does it sometimes, but can't finish. Marvin does it, but either doesn't finish or draws an offensive foul. Shelden almost always draws an offensive foul when he does it. Salim 90% of the time relies on his jumper, and almost always passes when he enters the lane ( which ends up being a turnover ). Chill can do it pretty well, if matched up against an inferior defender.

Now the post up game may have potential . . but it'll have to be with JJ and Childress. Right now, Smoove has no post up game whatsoever. He's trying to develop one, but JJ is easily our best post up player. But even he has to learn to go quickly, and not wait until the double team comes to him.

I feel your frustration man. But you have to realize that there's not an easy fix to all of this. And when we have people out, it makes it that much worse.

[bfwolf]

The idea that we ran the pick and roll effectively in November is a mirage. JJ came over picks, was doubled, kept dribbling until the big man went back to covering Zaza/Shelden/whomever, and then just drilled the 3 with his man right on him. That's not an effective pick and roll. That's Joe Johnson playing out of his mind. We don't need to run a pick and roll to get JJ contested 3s.

We need JJ knocking down open 3s...I don't want him on the inside posting up frequently. Childress is the best option here. He's unstoppable around the basket. As for taking the ball to the hoop, the good options are Claxton, Smith, and Marvin. None of these guys can consistently knock down 3s so it's definitely in our favor to get them taking the ball inside. Smith is really the only reliable finisher of the 3, so in general I would look to let him take it to the hoop.

Basically I feel like we can be a more effective offense by not making JJ shoulder the entire load, but instead relying on players like Smith and Childress to force teams to respect our inside game and thus create open shots/drives for JJ and Lue.

[bfwolf]

Alright, so I kept stats on this tonight. Here's what I came up with.

# of Pick and Rolls: 17

# of times opposing team doubled the ball: 6

# of times we dumped to the big man for an open shot or easy drive to the hoop: 1

# of times the opposing guard came under the pick and the Hawks got an open J: 3

# of times the opposing guard came over the pick while the big man stayed at home and the Hawks got an easy drive: 0

I also decided to keep track of the # of times the opposing team switched defenders since I guess this could be viewed as a win of sorts: 5

Now I will say that while those numbers look atrocious, this was certainly one of the most effective nights of running the pick and roll I've seen from the Hawks. First, because they didn't run it as often as they usually do. Second, because even if they didn't get immediately open Js or dumps to the big man, they DID try to move the ball quickly coming around the pick. There were several instances where the Hawk guard would come off the pick and immediately start swinging the ball around the perimeter while the defense was a little out of sorts. And there was one time where the Hawks ran the pick and roll perfectly, the ball got dumped to Zaza on the roll, and instead of him shooting it or taking it to the track, he stood paralyzed for a second while his defender caught up. I guess running the P&R successfully was quite a shock to his system. Third, I thought the Raptors played pretty poor D on the pick and roll. They should've been doubling the ball more often than they did. They respected the roll a little more than necessary given the Hawks total inability to find the big man on the roll.