The Whiteboard is The Step Back’s daily basketball newsletter, covering the NBA, WNBA and more. Participate here To have it delivered to you via email every morning.
Of all the shocking trends we’ve seen so far in the first round of the playoffs (and there have been more than a few), the New Orleans Pelicans splitting their first four games with the Phoenix Suns should be at the top of the list.
The Suns were the best team in the league during the regular season by a fairly large margin. The Pelicans finished ninth in the Western Conference standings and needed to beat the Spurs and Clippers in the NBA Play-In Tournament just to win a first-round match with the Suns.
A myriad of factors play into the Suns’ underperforming, Pelicans’ underperforming and the impact of Devin Booker’s injury has been enormous. (suns plus 1 in the 65 minutes he played in the series, minus 13 in the 127 minutes he left). But then, Brandon Ingram’s portrayal may be the most important variable in the series.
Brandon Ingram was making every shot
Through four games, Ingram averages 29.8 points (along with 6.8 rebounds and 5.0 assists) while shooting 51.3 percent from the field and 50.0 percent from outside the arc. That’s the kind of efficiency we’d expect from a particular jump game that gets a lot of open-ended looks, but Ingram has done it on a consistent diet of hotly contested shots.
So far, Ingram has attempted 59 shots at least 10 feet from the basket and 40 of them Comes with a defender that’s at least four feet tall (rated Highly Protected by NBA.com). He scored an effective field goal percentage of 53.8 percent over heavily defended jumpers, a sign better than elite bowlers like Kevin Durant (50.2), Steve Curry (53.7and Chris Paul45.6) administered during the regular season.
Making Ingram shots was incredible, but the defensive change on the part of the Suns might slightly reduce the difficulty level for him. During the regular season, Suns used Mikal Bridges as a primary defender in Ingram, for a total of 52.1 possessions, compared to 29.1 for Cam Johnson and only 7.3 for Jae Crowder. In this post-season game, Bridges spent three times as much holdings on C.J. McCollum as he did at Ingram, leaving primarily defensive responsibility to Crowder. Bridges is an elite defender but this cross match doesn’t work in reverse because Crowder doesn’t have the speed to keep up with McCollum full time, running out of screens and curls. But Crowder is a solid wingtip defender, the problem is size – Crowder is 6-foot-6 with a 6-foot-9 wingspan. The bridges are listed at a height of 6 feet by 6 with a span of 7 feet and 1 wingspan. Ingram is listed at 6 feet 8 with a wingspan of 7 feet 3, two inches longer than Crowder with an additional six inches of wingspan.
And just to be clear, some of Ingram’s shots are paying off silly And he’s also punishing The Sun Medium range daggers When he gets a huge receding guy he turns on. and hit some silly shots Over bridges too. But when he rose from dribbling, Crowder wasn’t able to disturb his shots in the same way.
Across the first four games of the series, Ingram scored 31 points, shooting 7 of 15 from inside the arc and 5 of 9 from behind at the property where Crowder was his primary defender (although that’s fair to include some) property shooting which fires Deandre Ayton or another defender after the switch).
In the void, Ingram takes the kind of shots the Suns defense would like to see – half of his shots were drag jumpers at least 10 feet from the basket, half of which were tightly defended. But Ingram just managed to use his height and height to rise above defenders and continue to drain them. According to the InPredictable model, Trae Young is the only player who created More postseason added winnings For his team with his shot alone, and according to this model, he was the second most influential player in the entire playoffs.
The Suns could try more Cam Johnson or Torrey Craig on Ingram, but he mostly took advantage of both in the same ways in his first four matches (total 30 points in 13 of 20 shootings at property with Craig or Johnson as his primary defender). They could try to get Bridges off McCollum but that puts a lot of defensive pressure on Chris Paul and Cam Payne at a time when they need both players to be more productive offensively. They can also try to take Ayton and JaVale McGee up in quick shots to keep Ingram off the middle of the floor but this exposes their line of defense to other modes of attack.
In the end, just waiting for Ingram to come out, sticking with their scheme, and hoping for some regression to mediocre levels of its effectiveness over the rest of the series might be the best option. But funny things can happen at a small sample size of a single comma string and without a booker, their margin of error is a lot smaller.
Other NBA Stories:
We’ll be back tomorrow with more of our attempt to rank all 30 NBA teams in their attacking style this season. But now, check out Part 1 (Timberwolves, Hornets, Warriors, Pacers, Pistons, Thunder) and Part 2 (Lakers, Rockets, Tottenham, Jazz, Caves, Knicks, Blazers).
The Toronto Raptors avoided a sweep and if they can continue to win the minutes when Joel Embiid is off the ground, the big man’s thumb injury can open the door For them to push this further.
At times this season, it seemed like Tom Thibodeau might have been teasing little Knicks. That’s not how RJ Barrett sees it.
[ad_2]
