A reeling Phoenix Suns team entered the Crypto.com Arena on Sunday for a matinee meeting. It’s a franchise in hell with honest debate about whether it’s worse on or off the court. Kevin Durant trade rumors and a Bradley Beal trade clause hover over a team headed for a disturbing early exit.
On the court, a blossoming Lakers pick-and-roll pairing provided the torture, leading the Lakers to a fairly comfortable win. The ball screen duo of Luka Dončić and Jaxson Hayes kept the Suns’ defense searching for answers.
Hayes returned from a four-game absence due to a knee injury and immediately made his presence felt.
The play below is the first of many ball screen possessions, beginning with a simple hand-off. Suns center Nick Richards drops back – appropriately called drop coverage – with his primary responsibility being to keep Dončić in front while dissuading the lob.
Dončić understands this and extends his dribble, forcing Richards to come forward and setting up the easy bounce between two defenders.
Well, easy for him.
Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal do soft tags on the roll, resulting in the and-one finish.
After Luka picked apart that coverage, Plan B for the Suns was to not to allow Dončić to get downhill. Richards’ responsibility in the play below is to be at the level of the ball screen to hedge – slow him down enough for the guard to recover – and return to his man.
Watch as Dončić again wisely stretches out this hedge as far as he can, taking it all the way to the sideline. It not only forces a longer distance between the rim protector and the basket but also creates more room for the four-on-three the rest of the Lakers now have to operate.
Another porous tag on the roll. Another basket for Hayes, plus the foul.
On to Plan C for the Suns, which was to switch the pick and roll and negate the screen advantage entirely. Suns head coach Mike Budenholzer goes with Oso Ighodaro, a listed forward with theoretically more lateral quickness to stay in front.
The play concludes again with another successful lob to Hayes. The switch negated the screen advantage but allowed Dončić to pull out a defender he could beat off the dribble. Once he’s downhill, the defense is at his mercy.
After the win, head coach JJ Redick spoke about the importance of Hayes as a lob threat.
“That’s just vital and, obviously, anytime you get to the blender, now you’re re-driving,” Redick said. “Having someone that has the threat of catching a lob or getting a tip or getting a drop-off pass for a dunk, that creates – we call it marginal indecision against offensive players that we’re trying to create with our defense – that creates marginal indecision for the defender as well.”
With the threat of the lob now successfully established, this is where the Luka magic begins.
Here’s the same situation in an ensuing possession. The ball screen is set by Hayes, leading to a switch of Ighodaro on Dončić again. The threat at the rim now forces Beal into that marginal indecision.
Dončić waltzes to the rim, drawing four defenders in the paint. A patented two-handed jump pass whips to the opposite corner for Austin Reaves, who splashes a 3-pointer. The lead has now ballooned to 18 points in the second quarter.
Finally, when all else fails, teams arrive at blitzing, which is effectively sending multiple players at the ball to force the ballhandler to pass. It’s a defensive strategy Dončić has seen all his life.
The game’s last Dončić and Hayes ball screen creates the dagger.
This time, Dončić stretches this blitz to the Lakers logo at half-court. Instead of rolling all the way to the rim, Hayes stops and waits for the pass just away from the blitz, called a short roll. A quick swing from him to the corner finds Dorian Finney-Smith butt-naked wide open, as he would say.
Finney-Smith broke down these swing threes post-game.
“When [Hayes] is getting easy points, teams get frustrated trying to figure out how to stop him and it attracts the low man and now we’re getting corner threes or top-of-the-break threes, swing-swing threes, but it’s still with the ball moving. Luka always make the right play and we just got to read and play out of closeouts.”
Dončić picked up yet another victory on Sunday against a franchise he enjoys tormenting in the Suns. The ball screen combination with Hayes did the torturing and kept the Suns in perpetual hell, a fitting spot to be in as their season quickly spirals out of control.
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Follow Raj on Twitter at @RajChipalu.
