Why Utah Just Might Beat Boston
Part 1: The Change to the Starting Lineup and Our Defensive Strategy
As mentioned, the starting lineup for Utah this series is decided and it will be Jason Kidd - Reggie Miller - PJ Tucker - Al Horford - Shaq.*
The reason for the change here is obvious: to defend Durant. Boston’s offense is incredible... by most accounts the best in the league. With all the incredible defenses that we’ve seen in this league, Utah is probably somewhere in the middle-ish overall (not top 3 but not bottom 3), but we do have maybe the best starting defenders this series to defend Boston’s two offensive engines of Nash and Durant in Jason Kidd and PJ Tucker.
Defending NashJason Kidd has been argued by a few posters (including Who) as the single best point guard defender in this game. I generally like to be conservative in my arguments, so I can’t say that’s definitively true, but I think he is certainly
among the best. Can he shut down Nash? No, I don’t think so. Can he contain him to some level? Hopefully. If we need to give Nash a little bump near the scorers table in game 4 of the series, then we can bring in Marcus Smart in off the bench for some “physicality”.
Defending DurantPJ Tucker is our answer defensively to defend Durant. Why? See for yourself.
Kevin Durant names PJ Tucker as NBA’s best one-on-one defender In the 2017-18 NBA season, Durant’s shooting efficiency went from 51.6% overall and 41.9% on three-pointers [in the regular season] to 46.1% and 39.6%, respectively, in front of Tucker and the Rockets in their seven-game postseason matchup in the Western Conference Finals.
Last season[2018-19], Durant’s shooting fell from 52.1% in the season to 45.8% in the five playoff games that he played against the Rockets in the second round. In both series, Tucker spent significant time on Durant in isolation settings, particularly late in games.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvyjYxetZHIWill PJ Tucker play 36-40 minutes a game opposite Durant? No. We still want to get some good minutes out of Jaylen Brown, Peja, and maybe Mashburn at SF. PJ will play ~24-30 minutes per game in this series and all of which will be when Durant is on the floor, including likely crunch time minutes. This is whether Durant is the SF or PF on the floor. The more time Durant spends at PF (which we expect some of), the more minutes we can play Peja at SF.
People might have been scratching their heads
in the 12th round when I drafted PJ Tucker. But as mentioned in that post, I drafted him exactly for this reason of possibly running into Durant in the Finals. This perceived head-scratcher was a gamble. A smart and calculated gamble that just paid itself off.
Other 1-1 matchupsAll the other 1-1 matchups, we feel fine about. Reggie has played Allan Houston 34 times in his career and despite Reggie's perceived defensive weaknesses, we have no concern for Allan “Mr. 25-1-1” Houston to do any better than an average performance for him against Reggie. In fact,
Allan’s only scored 20+ points in 5 of his 34 career matchups against Reggie.** And our front court 1-1 matchups pose no problems for us.
Defending the 1-5 pick and rollThis is what most of you came here to read. Despite all of Utah’s 1-1 matchups here being as solid as most teams can ask for, the ability for Nash to attack Shaq in the 1-5 pick and roll creates a serious vulnerability in Utah’s defense. We need to come up with a plan for how to defend the 1-5 pick and roll.
When Shaq is in the game, our plan this series is to
ICE the 1-5 pick and roll. Kidd/Rondo forces Nash away from the screen to the sideline, where Shaq is dropped back into sag coverage. If Nash wants to take it into Shaq with a defender trailing on his hip, OK go for it. If Nash wants to dribble into an off-balance jumpshot, it’s unfortunate for us that he’s actually awesome at making those, but we’ve gotta live with it. The best way for an offense to attack an ICE defense is for the big man to pop and take the open jumper given to him by the sagging big man. So that’s what Utah will do and live with when Boston runs the 1-5 pick and roll. Marc Gasol is a pretty darn decent jump shooter too. In the 2013 season, he shot 45.1% on 10-16 foot jumpers, 49.4% on 16-3pt jumpers, and only shot 1/12 on 3’s for the season, but we know that is dishonest for us to assume he’d shoot that poorly (or infrequently) from 3. In reality, I’d expect him to shoot somewhere near his career averages on all those shots... Somewhere between 41-49% on the 10+ foot 2s (his career % is about 42% for that range) and about 35.6% on 3s. And that’s what we’ll surrender to Boston. That Marc Gasol long jumper is a play with an ORtg capping out around 106-107. It’s not ideal, but when an offense is as amazing as Boston’s is, that's the poison we're picking and our plan is to do better on our offensive side of the floor.
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*Assuming Boston goes with their normal starting 5.
**To be fair, 7 of those games were very early or late in Allan's career, so let's say 5/27 times. Still nothing to worry about.