Early in the Toronto Raptors first round series against the Indiana Pacers it looked as though they would dominate the interior. The timing on the pick and roll was very good and the Raptors big men were just too big, too strong, too mobile to be stopped. Paul George was bottling up all-star guard DeMar DeRozan but the Raptors were surviving because their defense was holding up and their interior offense was making up for what they weren’t getting from DeRozan. Starting in game three that seemed to change, those passes over the top weren’t there and the Raptors struggled to get the ball inside. This wasn’t for lack of trying, the Pacers altered their pick and roll defense to try to take those options away and made a bigger effort to keep the Raptors big men off the offensive glass, where they had feasted up until that point. If you watched the Pacers pick and roll defense and thought that it looked familiar, it’s because they actually adopted many of the same strategies as the Raptors, trusting that they wouldn’t have the personnel to counter their own pick and roll defense.
The Pacers pick and roll defense wasn’t really bad early in the series, the Raptors offensive timing was just better. The Raptors guards would time their passes perfectly, hitting the rolling big man as he pulled even with the defending big man, trusting that a good pass and forward momentum would get their man to the pass before the defense could react. Valanciunas doesn’t finish this one because he bobbles the pass but you can see the strategy – the pass is thrown when Valanciunas pulls even with Mahinmi and there’s no way Mahinmi can recover in time:
Here you see Cory Joseph and Valanciunas run that to perfection:
That’s a great pass from Joseph and the timing is impeccable: just the right lead and thrown at the precise moment when the defense is helpless to react. That’s a tough play to execute but it wasn’t always so difficult. The pick and roll baskets were even easier when the Raptors guards were able to get clear separation from their man, forcing a bigger commitment from the Pacers big man:
There’s nobody in position to help. Once Lowry gets that separation from George Hill it’s all over – he either gets to the rim or he hits Valanciunas for an easy basket. It became very clear that any time you let Valanciunas catch the ball in the paint without a swarm of defenders near him the Pacers would be in trouble, so the Pacers started swarming.
Starting in game three the Pacers started clogging up the middle, trusting that the Raptors would not find the open shooters, that those shooters wouldn’t make their shots or that George would be able to help at the rim and still recover to shooters. Suddenly Valanciunas had less room to operate and more bodies to battle for rebounds. He still produced but he wasn’t able to come with the kind of dominant performances we saw from him in the first two games. It’s kind of hard to dominate inside when you’re up against this:
This should look familiar, it’s a more aggressive version of the Raptors own pick and roll scheme. The Pacers are just dropping their guards even lower than the Raptors do, daring the Raptors to beat them from outside. And it’s not just about collapsing to the paint, if possible they’ve started walling off the paint like the Raptors do:
The Pacers have essentially stolen the Raptors pick and roll defense, the same defense that had them near the bottom of the league in three point defense. It’s had the desired effect for the Pacers, the Raptors three pointers per game went from 19 in the first two games to 31 in the next two and while their percentage did increase from 24.3 to 29.5 it’s still not a particularly good percentage.
Luckily for the Raptors they’ve spent a lot of time watching teams beat this style of defense and we can see mistakes that they’ve made fairly clearly. Their decision regarding who to pass to and when has been fairly poor. This is from the first featured pick and roll from game three:
Carroll has Lowry wide open with a lot of space to either launch a three or attack a rushed close out but ends up passing out to Patterson after Miles swipes at the ball. They still got a fairly good three point look out of this play but a Lowry three pointer with his feet set like this is among the most desired outcomes for any Raptors offensive possession.
The Raptors decision making regarding the direction of their pick and rolls is also interesting, to say the least. They’ve shown a tendency to run the pick and roll toward a loaded strong side, ensuring that there are multiple defenders occupying a very small portion of the court and little room to operate:
If that screen is set on the other side the Raptors have Scola one pass way with his man as the only viable help defender, and in theory he is a threat to hit those corner threes. It also keeps the play away from Paul George, which is something the Raptors should be actively trying for on every offensive possession. Instead they run a pick and roll directly at him while he’s guarding DeMar DeRozan, an offensive player that he can ignore until he has the ball in his hands. There may be some kind of strategic advantage for the Raptors in running pick and rolls into traffic but I’m at a loss as to what that may be.
Fortunately there are easy adjustments for a defense that sends bodies to the paint to deter passing the ball to big men on their way to the rim: play your shooters to punish the collapsing defense with effective three point shooting and team them up with as many playmakers as possible so you know they’re getting the ball where and when they need it. The Raptors three point percentage as a whole has been subpar but most of that is due to the struggles of their all-star backcourt, who have shot a combined 14.3% from deep on 35 attempts. Their designated spot up shooters have actually come through so far – Terrence Ross, DeMarre Carroll, Norman Powell and Patrick Patterson are shooting a combined 40% on 50 attemps, with each of them hitting above 38.5%. If you get them looks their performance to date suggests that they’ll make them.
Unfortunately this might require some tough personnel decisions for the Raptors, who are light on both playmakers and shooters so long as DeMar DeRozan is playing heavy minutes. The Pacers have no respect for him as a shooter because he’s missed all 8 of this three point attempts in the series and his playmaking is generally limited to dump off passes and kickouts on his scoring drives – he’s not getting any drives matched up with Paul George. It might be a good idea to limit DeRozan’s minutes not just because of his own struggles with making his shots or taking care of the ball, but because the Pacers are essentially daring the Raptors to do so by loading the paint with bodies and leaving the perimeter wide open.
