The Raptors finished the first half with a ten-point lead over the Houston Rockets in what looked like a pretty ordinary game between a fringe playoff team and a conference final contender on Sunday. The Rockets came into the second half and didn’t do anything drastically different schematically and as a result, allowed the Raptors to extend their lead fifteen points by the eight-minute mark.
The monumental difference that occurred at that moment was the substitution that took Donatas Motiejunas out of the game in exchange for Corey Brewer, which slotted the 6-foot-9, 186-pound swingman as the nominal power forward. Brewer would not check out of the game for the remaining 16 minutes and in that time he was a plus-20.
This allowed the Rockets to do numerous things, both offensively and defensively.
Defense
The main deterrent when placing a wing at the nominal power forward spot is that it may leave the smaller defending team with a mismatch when it comes to post-ups. Oddly enough, the Raptors have the perfectly weird combination of Jonas Valanciunas and Luis Scola, where that actually might be an issue.
To combat the potential mismatch that would lead to Scola posting up any of the Houston wings, the Rockets chose to assign their most infamous defender in James Harden to defend Scola. Harden possesses some positive traits as a post defender, mainly that he has an incredibly strong base for a guard. Additionally, when the Rockets put Harden on Scola, they also decided they would double as soon as the ball entered the post, allowing for one of three speedy defenders to pressure Scola into tough decision making.
Scola had to face very quick and long defenders as well as having only one legitimate three-point threat on the floor to pass to. Even if you can consider DeMar DeRozan a threat to attack from the perimeter upon a close out, the remaining two non-shooters (Valanciunas and James Johnson) make that decision very hard for Scola. And it showed.
The Rockets’ aggressive defense didn’t end there. They leveraged their quickness and ability to rotate and recover by doubling the primary ball-handlers (Kyle Lowry and DeRozan) on high pick-and-rolls. The previously mentioned lack of shooting, as well as playmaking, made those scenarios very difficult.
Even when the Raptors were able to dump the ball off to the open four-man, the Rockets were tremendous in their rotations, further proving that Houston can really be a great defensive team when they want to be.
Offense
One of the primary incentives of “going small” is that it allows the offensive team to have more shooters on the court, therefore opening up the possibility of a “spread pick-and-roll.” As long as the five-man sets a solid screen for the ball-handler, causing penetration into the middle of the floor, the remaining three defenders will be tasked with guarding four players, all of who are threats to score. The Rockets executed this to perfection.
The Rockets spiced things up offensively by not just resorting to high pick-and-rolls. Rather, they used DHO’s (dribble hand-offs) to add variety to their offense. By doing so, they did not allow the Raptors to settle in and specifically target one thing schematically.
Yes, the Raptors had some very notable mistakes, which are concerning by themselves, but having no answer for three shooters surrounding a high pick-and-roll only exacerbated any of the actual issues and made them more impactful than they had to be. Additionally, the lack of speed from the frontcourt positions also became glaringly clear because of the added 3-point threats.
While the Raptors did not have a great opportunity to change their defensive scheme against the Harden/Dwight Howard pick-and-roll, they certainly could have to the Harden/Brewer combination that terrorized them. The Raptors chose to “hedge” on all pick-and-rolls as well as DHO’s involving that pairing, while deploying a lineup that consisted of either Scola or Patrick Patterson at the four-spot. Due to current personnel restraints, the Raptors chose to not match up with another wing against Brewer. This left a slower and less agile defender assigned to him. This is some of the carnage that ensued as a result of the pick-and-roll defense.
It could have been so much worse. Brewer shot 5-of-10 from 3-point range and some of those misses were awful, following great looks given by the Raptors’ schematic choices and Harden’s great passing.
This isn’t to say that Brewer wasn’t also hot. He most certainly was. Some combination of quickness as well as having the hot hand led to him scoring some doozies of the bounce.
However, Brewer being hot for the first 20 minutes should lead someone to believe that continuous open looks will only lead to disaster for the remaining 10, which it did.
The Raptors could’ve done things differently. They could have doubled Harden on every high pick-and-roll and made him dish it to the rolling Brewer/Howard/Clint Capela. They could’ve given some spot minutes to Norman Powell and played four guards and one big, allowing them to switch more pick-and-rolls. Powell had played well in Portland and in his brief first-half stint, and against Houston he continued his solid defensive play yet was absent in the second half. They could have even put Patterson/Scola on any other of the Rockets’ wings (Jason Terry, Trevor Ariza, Patrick Beverley) just so the Rockets would have had to feel uncomfortable with new screening partners every possession, and who knows, they might have even got lucky with one of the new screeners getting cold.
Instead, Toronto played Houston pretty much the same the entire second half even when there were obvious examples of their defensive scheme not working. If any team should know the difficulties of hedging on every pick-and-roll, it’s the Raptors. They overhauled their coaching staff for that very purpose as they moved towards ICEing this past summer.
Some simple experimentation was all that was necessary. I doubt it could’ve gone worse than what actually happened in the second half.
