When I have to feed my toddler some breakfast in the morning, I usually have to put on some cartoons to distract the little demon while I shove some disgusting cereal in his mouth. Now that the playoffs are here, and with a FT job, that “cartoon time” has been replaced with viewing Wizards tape. Needless to say the little guy now has to watch DeRozan post-ups instead of Ba Ba Black Sheep. It’s not working out too well for him, but for you, though, you get to see three issues with the Washington defense that could favor the Raptors.
The Right Release Valve
DeMar DeRozan recognizes a post-up opportunity against a shorter player, Nene helps aggressively trapping DeRozan, but Amir Johnson is in the right release-valve position to make the pass easy for DeRozan. At this point, Toronto now has a 4-on-3 advantage, at which point the drive yields a very deep position for Jonas Valanciunas, who can finish in that area under single coverage.
Interestingly, Washington chooses to trap DeRozan much further out, but does not even send a double to Jonas Valanciunas who is in a more dangerous position. With Martell Webster available, post-ups against smaller players will need to be sought, since the default configuration of the Wizards defense would see DeRozan matched up with a taller player.
The key to this play is Amir Johnson, because every time the Wizards double, it’s imperative that a player present themselves to the trapped player. If they don’t, it results in possessions where the Raptors take an additional 10 seconds to reset, lowering their chance of success on the possession.
Washington Collapsing. Sound Familar?
Classic dribble-handoff on the left side, which results in DeRozan curling. Washington, again, helps very aggressively using a triple-team on DeRozan who manages to kick it out, leaving Washington at a numbers disadvantage on the weak side. They key here is the shot-making ability of Lou Williams, and the Washington bigs simply not being bothered to come out to the perimeter and rotate. They’d rather get decent positioning for the rebound, than prevent the shot-attempt.
Washington in this sequence doesn’t trust Nene on his own and collapse, showing respect to DeRozan’s finishing ability, and his ability to draw fouls.
Stretch Four Problems
This play highlights Washington’s problems defending the stretch four. The Raptors run this play early in the shot clock, which is great. Lowry’s drive draws help, not just from Gortat, but for some reason Nene is collapsing as well, leaving Patrick Patterson wide open.
The indisciplined Washington defense is prone to making such mistakes. There is absolutely no reason why Nene should leave Patterson open, but reviewing the tape, he tends to make such silly decisions throughout the game. This has been a glaring problem for the Wizards all season along, and they’re stuck between trying to matchup with players like Patterson using someone like Pierce or Webster, but that would come at the expense of rebounding, and take a defender away from checking a better player in DeRozan.
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Washington’s defense is not organized. They’re relatively slow, don’t switch well, and their help schemes aren’t consistent and border on puzzling. In that sense, they’re very much like the Raptors. Watching the tape, it’s not surprising that the Raptors have managed a 107 ORTG rating against the Wizards this season, and also exceed their season averages for eFG, TS%, and essentially every offensive statistic against the Wizards.
