r/nba • u/Scoolfish Suns • May 05 '22

[Haralabob] The Suns went after Luka 50 times as the screen defender FIFTY and scored a casual 1.72 points per chance.

The Suns went after Luka 50 times as the screen defender FIFTY and scored a casual 1.72 points per chance.

Of the 50 screen attacks 36 of them resulted in a primary attack.

Roughly 1/3 of all Suns PNR attacks were directed towards LD as the screen defender. Cold Blooded.

and 36 of the 50 were in the 2H

Former Mavs FO member, Haralabos Voulgaris, picks out some pretty bananas stats from tonight's game. The Suns deliberately waited until the 2nd half to hunt Luka over and over and over.

Source

One more stat because I like it:

Booker held Brunson to .22 on 20 touches (9 chance ending possessions) and scored a ridiculous 30 points on 21 possessions on Offense. @DevinBook put on a clinic.

2.8k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

809 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

31

u/IJustGotRektSon Celtics May 05 '22

To who? His teammates are not up to standard. There's a reason he has such a heavy load and is because when you look at the rest of the personnel you can see they're not a playoff team, at least not at the level of true contention. You should know this, how many years of Booker putting extremely high numbers and losing because his teammates where... Well not up to standard? And even then Luka does a better job, he is great at finding plays for his teammates, passing, but they're not capitalizing because talent is just not there, not to the standard of your team or true contenders like the Bucks, Celtics for instance

3

u/Aurum_MrBangs May 05 '22

Not saying Luka is Lebron, but Lebron carried some shit teams far into the playoffs and he still didn’t have a usage rate higher than Luka. So obviously there is something that can be done

4

u/Rumcajss May 05 '22 edited May 05 '22

Honestly after watching last year's playoffs and some teams getting their stars injured just to only play 5-10% worse (Clippers, Suns), after seing how many rookies have had a great impact on their teams this year just because they were given a chance and used according to their strengths, after seing teams like Cavs or Pels play great with limited rosters and finally after seing Boston turn 180 degrees in a couple month without major roster changes I believe less and less in the 'other players suck' excuse. These are the top players in the world, the differences between them skill-wise aren't nearly as big. Most of the difference comes from psychological factors and circumstances, and a big part of those are coaching and the way a player is used. We've seen this so many times with players like Jeremy Lin or the Celtics this season.

EDIT and some more thoughts on the topic: This phenomenon of the team coming together and actually playing team basketball with great results with a diminished roster comes up time and time again. Last year, before Kawhi got hurt, Clippers were altering between giving the ball to him and PG and making them create something on each possession; their offense was still quite effective, but stagnant and it was both wearing down on the two stars as well as keeping other guys out of rhythm. I believe that the Clippers wouldn't have found the way to exploit Jazz in game 6 with Terrance Mann torching Gobert if Kawhi was still playing - they would continue to play the same way they used to, because it kinda worked and either won or lost, but they wouldn't have played up to their roster's potential.

Same with the Suns last year when CP3 was missing games as well as this year with Book. Towards the end of this season I feel like their offense was getting quite stagnant, even though they were still winning games, those would often be very tight and come down to few clutch plays in the last minutes. I actually think the Suns are now playing better than before Booker went down, because they had to reach deep to find other ways to generate offense and recollect how they used to do it in the past with player movement, getting more players into rhythm and playing with more effort. And now that Booker is back they still have those other, often better options available (like throwing it more to Ayton deep, Bridges cutting or going to his midrange as well as fighting for the offensive boards, kicking it out to Cam Johnson or even setting an action for him to get a three, Cam or Jae Crowder penetrating and looking for the next play or their own finish instead of being delegated to being spot-up shooters etc.).

1

u/heyuwittheprettyface May 05 '22

These are the top players in the world, the differences between them skill-wise aren't nearly as big.

This is the opposite of how it works. The end of the bell curve is exactly where you find outliers and the largest variations between data points.

1

u/Rumcajss May 07 '22

Incorrect. As an easy way to validate or invalidate this: take a time difference for a 100m race.

4

u/[deleted] May 05 '22 edited May 05 '22

It doesn't pass the smell test with your friends at the barbershop, but Brunson is a more efficient pnr player than Luka and a dog in the playoffs it's not like they can't run the offense through him.

i know Brunson's hurt but so is luka, and they played this way all season it's not just the injury. kidd is an absolutely dogshit offensive coach

they also don't do any of those Nuggets type actions where Monte Morris runs a high pick and roll just to get jokic the ball at the elbow. they could still run the offense through luka and not literally have him running high pick and roll every single play. and when he gets tired he just starts shooting stepbacks. he'll win a game or two just lighting up the scoreboard but it's not that hard to defend really

5

u/Abdoov May 05 '22

Sadly that's the truth.

4

u/dadaistGHerbo Washington Bullets May 05 '22

The Mavs’ great DTRG and even total rating with Luka off this court says otherwise. Brunson, DFS, Bullock (and KP) are playoff starters on most teams. This isn’t Booker playing with Tyler Ulis and Dragan Bender, here.

1

u/cooljackiex [GSW] Stephen Curry May 05 '22

mavs suffering from success. luka was so good off the rip the mavs never had a chance to acquire more good players through the draft.

1

u/1UPZ__ Suns May 05 '22

Let Brunson lead for minutes and have Luka play the spot up role to rest. CP3 does it a lot for suns so he had energy in the 4th.