(Micro) Prada’s Pictures: NBA analysis and absurdity in short bursts

The Chicago Bulls have a problem 29 other NBA teams will take. They have a frontcourt that’s the envy of the league, stocked with the ideal combination of low-post scoring, rebounding, unselfishness, athleticism, toughness and rim protection. Opposing coaches would cut their right arm off to have Pau Gasol, Joakim Noah and Taj Gibson on their teams, let alone all three.

Here’s the issue: None of them are as good as Nikola Mirotic.

You already couldn’t dribble or pass near Kawhi Leonard because he’ll steal the ball. Apparently, you can’t even hold it near him either, because he’ll just take it from you. Poor Monta Ellis.

SB Nation presents: How the Morris twins pushed each other to achieve greatness

James Harden is one of the league’s toughest covers, so it requires a multi-pronged team effort to minimize his impact on a game. Luckily for playoff opponents, the Phoenix Suns provided such a blueprint in Saturday’s 117-102 victory over the Rockets in Houston. Harden finished 5-of-19 from the field with only five free-throw attempts in the loss, and it was hardly a matter of bad luck or a rough shooting night.

Here was the Suns’ strategy:

How does a human being casually fire a 23-foot shot in one motion without bringing the ball down in an NBA game? You see this when pros are messing around, but not in the heat of battle.

Few coaches draw up set plays like Brad Stevens. He’s known for his last-second designs, but this one early in the fourth quarter of Boston’s win over Orlando was nice too.

It looks like a staggered double screen for Avery Bradley on a sideline out of bounds situation, but as Bradley cuts through, Jonas Jerebko turns and surprises Nikola Vucevic with a screen for Kelly Olynyk. Olynyk fades to the three-point line and Vucevic slams into Jerebko’s pick, giving Olynyk a wide open look.

Kyrie Irving didn’t just score 57 points to lead the Cavaliers to an incredible comeback victory over the Spurs. He scored 57 points against one of the league’s best defenses without really having any good looks.

In celebration of this performance, we’d like to show you just how difficult each of Irving’s 20 made field goals actually were. Without further ado:

This is presumably what Manu Ginobili saw when he made this pass.

How??

Wizards fans would call this “pulling an Otto Porter.“ NBA fans might call this ”pulling a James Harden.” But while this kind of defensive off-ball lapse does happen to almost everyone from time to time, it rarely happens so blatantly in the span of a few minutes in one quarter. Someone throw water on John Wall’s face to pull him out of his trance.

Rudy Gay did not pass this ball to the wide-open Ray McCallum. He instead shot it over two defenders, one of whom is Michael Kidd-Gilchrist. He missed.

This is hardly the first time he’s ignored open teammates to take difficult shots. At this point, he is who he is as a player.

(via CSN Washington)

There are a few smart big men who understand their job isn’t always to set a screen on the guard’s man. Sometimes, it’s even more effective to set a screen on their own man so they can’t provide help.

The Hawks and Cavaliers put together a treat on Friday night. While the Hawks won this round, this story is far from finished because the two teams are likely to face each other in the Eastern Conference Finals given the failures of every other contender in the conference. If and when they do, file this Xs and Os thought away.

The Hawks raced ahead to a 17-point first quarter lead thanks to their swarming defense. They forced six turnovers in the quarter, five of which were by LeBron James and Kyrie Irving. Most notably, they sent hard traps at Cleveland’s side pick and rolls, short-circuiting its offense before it could even start.

It’s also a tough thing to measure. That’s why this clip from Thursday’s game is instructive.

The Blazers are running one of their most common sets out of the Flow offense. As one wing slices up to the top of the key, the other is supposed to loop from the opposite baseline to the left wing. That same player then dumps the ball into LaMarcus Aldridge, who goes to work on his man.

NBA teams need balance to win in 2015. Rules changes and tactical advancements have made team play more essential on both ends of the floor. Great offenses need elite shooters, great passers, crafty screen-setters and spot-up players that are willing to actually move instead of always standing in a corner. Great defenses need guards willing to ride ball-handlers’ hips, big men to play angles to seal off the basket and all players to make third and fourth rotations to dangerous areas.

The game’s evolution has opened up new ways to qualify (and quantify) a player’s value. No longer are the elite scorers the only valuable commodity. Increasingly, it’s the decoys and the obstacles that contribute just as much to a team’s success.

Technically, this is not all because of Josh Smith. The Detroit Pistons also recently got sharpshooter Jodie Meeks back from injury, sneakily traded for Phoenix Suns deep shooter Anthony Tolliver and changed Andre Drummond’s role back to the rim-rolling, backboard-dominating, paint-protecting Godzilla it should have been all along instead of spoon-feeding him post-ups.

But all that is window dressing. The Pistons have won seven in a row since sending Smith on paid leave and even their winning streak underplays their dramatic facelift. For 28 games, this team traded eye rolls, blown defensive rotations and bricks in front of an audience that resembled an empty bar near closing time.

The Grizzlies aren’t a nightmare to play just because they physically beat you up. They are a nightmare to play against because they know exactly what you do well offensively and work together to shut it off.

The Warriors are ball movement savants, as you’ve surely read. They use passing to tilt defenses and leverage the threat of each player to create openings to cut backdoor or generate open perimeter shots. But Memphis’ defense is so coordinated that the Warriors constantly needed to go to backup options in Wednesday’s 105-98 Grizzlies win.

Good luck stopping this.

Rookies struggle to pick up NBA defensive schemes because they are so much more sophisticated than at youth levels. When players are younger, they are taught the more elementary task of staying with their man without worrying about funneling him into help. As they get older, their responsibilities increase, but nothing compares to the NBA.

This is where we need to point out an error Zach LaVine makes out of inexperience. Most defensive schemes ask guards to force their man to the sideline when they are running a wing pick and roll because it shuts off all the options available from the middle of the floor. The only schemes that don’t force the ball-handler to the sideline are ones where the big man is coming to trap, which clearly isn’t happening here.

I wrote about the surprising Hawks Monday, explaining why they are a real East threat at 17-7 despite playing an easy schedule. The one caveat in that piece: Al Horford, while still very good, has not been at his best after offseason shoulder surgery.

That’s why this play from the Hawks’ grind-it-out 93-86 win over the Chicago Bulls on Monday is significant.

(Via YES Network)

Lance Stephenson likes to catch the ball and hold it before making a decision, which can be a big problem. Witness this situation, for example. Gary Neal, the Hornets’ best three-point shooter, stands wide open on the left wing with his hands ready to catch the pass. The ball is swung to Stephenson, who naturally should whip it one more pass around the horn to the open shooter clearly ready to take a shot.

It’s often hard to tell when a player messes up a defensive rotation. It all happens so fast and who knows exactly what the player’s coach wants him to do anyway?

Separate the context from this Vine -- Molly Sullivan was referencing Brett Brown’s praise of Michael Carter-Williams specifically, the 76ers are playing better of late and they even won this game against a team that’s even more of a mess -- and it can act as a go-to anytime someone is talking about Philadelphia’s tanking strategy.

Drill it down deeper, though, and it becomes murkier. The travel rule is often misunderstood to mean two steps and two steps only. In reality, the NBA rulebook states that you get two steps “upon completion of a dribble.” In layman’s terms: you get two steps and a “gather” step that covers the time between your last dribble and when you put your hand(s) over the ball to terminate that dribble.

But this rule was not designed with Greek Freaks in mind. For most players, the gather is easy to identify. They’re short and they’re dribbling low to the ground, so they aren’t taking long leaps between their final dribble and when they cup the ball. Giannis, though, is different. Not only is he tall with arms that extend across skyscrapers, but he has a really high dribble. The process of gathering the ball takes a lot longer than normal human beings, yet it happens so quickly because he’s also so fast.

Think of this the next time you say all Kyrie Irving does is shoot.

The Memphis Grizzlies are one of the league’s best teams, which shouldn’t surprise those who pay attention. The Grizzlies have been very good for a while now and were one of the league’s best last year after Marc Gasol returned. That there were some who believed they’d struggle to make the playoffs is an indication of our tendency to overestimate the immediate impact of well-known acquisitions and underestimating the effect of chemistry and continuity.

Still, the means by which the Grizzlies raced to a 15-3 start that put them atop the West until Wednesday’s loss in Houston came much more out of left field. Memphis proudly hangs its hat on its stifling defense, but always fell short because the offense was not good enough to carry it past elite teams.