Ex-Coach Luke Walton Discussion

Did I say fire? Hmm... must be my subconsciousness. And if you don't think there is an issue with our offense, I have an almost new bridge in New Jersey to sell...

Whatever lip service there is from Magic or whoever... I don't care. Coaches have been fired right after winning COY and such...

And I most certainly DID complain about interior defense and rebounding. Constantly.

It's beside the point though. Puke has very little time left, if this s*** continues.

 

I'm about to throw another log to "start" them fires up again, but please fam, try to #MeloOut...

 

I get that.

 

Conversely, He better change up his backup center after 1 game to preserve his credibility.

 

Still support Luke. He/we will be fine, you'll see

 

Not to tweet? WTF? It isn't some NFL level BS... it's f***ing horns.

 

Where is that fire Luke website at? @sirronstuff

 

Regarding LFR's observations, he's a lot more optimistic than I am. Here's what I have to say...

1. 1-4 high is a baby offensive scheme. Most high school teams run more complex offense than this. It's options are very limited, as myself and LFR have explained in detail. You saw this against Portland the other night. Eventually when they figured out what we were going for late in the game, their defense adjusted to stop it (rewatch the 4th quarter to see what I'm talking about). At that point, we didn't have the offensive firepower to keep up with them. Yes our defense and rebounding sucked, and yes it's only 1 game with a brand new team. But it's not like we were screwing up our offense and missing plays/options, it's that those options DID NOT exist for our high IQ players to take advantage of. That is what people need to understand. No amount of team chemistry or time can make up for an offense not having options for the players to utilize. So either the team scraps this offense in favor of something like a motion offense (which, midseason, is asking A LOT), or we continue to put up a lot of points due to our high pace, but fail to score when it counts.

2. The chest series is utter, utter trash. I've already dissected it last year, when we ran that s*** repeatedly and ended up ISO-ing Ingram when it failed.

3. Horns isn't a "set" - it's an alignment. Most teams are heavily prepared for this. The smarter ones will run a prelude into Horns (watch GSW to see an example of this) that disguises what they are going for, but ultimately it depends what we run out of it, and what actions we run beforehand. For reference, we ran Horns extensively in 2015-2016 under Byron Scott, but with his s***ty coaching you can see how well that turned out. This is probably the part that gives me the most hope to look forward to, but it remains to be seen what Luke does here.

For reference, coaches like Tyrone Lue, who are heavily criticized, run more complex sets. The Cavs, as much as the ISO-d LeBron, ran beautiful high post splits straight out of the Princeton offense last season, that got LeBron great looks cutting to the basket. Luke, at this point, doesn't hold a candle to most of the NBA offenses in the league today. And it remains to be seen if he can reimplement an entirely new scheme midseason.

This post got too long, but I'll quickly describe strategically, what's been going on at an NBA meta level offense wise in 2010.

 

www.fireluke.com

 

In 2010 ish, the best offenses would run some sort of inside outside action. The triangle set us for a great two man game with Kobe and Pau. The Magic ran the "4 out 1 in" where Howard would take it inside and kick to many shooters. The Cavs would repeatedly PnR LeBron and drive/kick to shooters, rinse and repeat.

Watch here how nobody wants to help Dwight's man in the post here. This is because the Magic are stacked with shooters and spaced in the 4 out 1 in offense. Dwight gets an easy 2 points because of it:



From there, the dominant defensive schemes adjusted, and focused on ICE-ing the PnR, which helped contain that inside outside action and most importantly prevent middle penetration. It's what the C Bags ran so well that made the 2 man game between Kobe and Pau difficult for us in the finals. It's also what propelled Tom Thibodeau to fame. If you check your NBA 2k settings, this is still an option for how you want the AI to defend the PnR.

Example of ICE-ing the PnR:



After this, numerous adjustments were made. The step up screen was implemented to thwart ICE-defenses effectively. Teams also employed much more off ball and weakside screening to occupy help defenses and make them pay for clogging the paint (like the old Boston teams did), or playing passing lanes aggressively (2012-2014 Heat). The Spurs started it with their motion strong and weak offense that we all saw in the 2014 finals, and Kerr took it one step further with his time in Golden State. Brad Stevens also copied a lot of the ideas from both these teams and implemented the deadly C Bags offense you see today.

Step up screen beating ICE:



Spurs motion offense:



C Bags twist on this:



What the C Bags are doing takes me into the next segment. Around 2014-2015, teams began to realize the easiest thing to beat all these various types of PnR actions and off ball screening is to switch. We all know what this is so I won't post examples of it, but the Warriors and C Bags had lineups designed to switch nearly every screen. Without the players needing to decide on the fly what to do, and just knowing to switch nearly everything, it stalled a lot of offenses today.

In the C Bags gif there, you can see they actually know the Sixers are going to switch. So they run the curl to throw them off and get that back door cut, while Baynes pulls Embiid away from the rim early. That is a well-coached team. Simple, yet effective.

In a well-spaced offense, the best option to counter switching is to go back to the old days and simply isolate. Even if a team defense can beat a superstar, defending him 1 on 1 is a difficult task. The Cavs used this to beat the Warriors with James and Irving in the 2016 finals. D'Antoni, who funnily enough invented the 21 series that most modern motion offenses build upon, reverted back to isolation with the Rockets. He would simply pick the weakest defender on the team, have his man screen for Harden, get the switch, and let Harden go to work on a well-spaced half court. Boring to watch, but a very potent option to defend switch heavy defenses. In fact, this idea was nearly the demise of the Warriors, if not for some intelligent coaching on the defensive side, which I will get to in a minute.

Watch here how the Rockets purposely screen for Harden with Curry's man, then let Harden isolate on the switch. No movement in this offense, but beats what the Warriors are doing defensively, since Harden will score on Curry 1 on 1, more often than not. He's just that good.



In order to beat this, both Kerr and Stevens around the same time have implemented scram switching. Where they will "bump off" the weaker defender the offense is trying to target for an isolation. This works especially well if the spacing is a little poor. This idea saved the Warriors in the WCF, and the C Bags used it to great success as well last year. We have yet to see how offenses will counter this, but we will find out this season.

C Bags using a scram switch. Watch how Baynes executes a perfect bump off and prevents the mismatch in the post:



If you look comparatively at what the Lakers are doing, our offense is outdated and not even as good as what teams were running 4 seasons ago. As much chemistry as we hope to develop, we need to have an equivalent amount of sophistication in the offense for our season to be successful.

 

TLDR: Fire Puke Walton.

 

No.

 

Yes

 

PLEASE bench KCP. He should not be starting.

 

Gotta play McGee down the stretch Luke

 

I love Luke the person, the personality, but Luke the coach? He's making it difficult...