Casey: "We Have To Participate In The Trend Of Going Small At The End of Games"

[Matt Damon]

Anyone remember watching this game and seeing JV get benched for the final 2 minutes after going 31/8?

[DanH]

@Scraptor, nice find. However, this is an example of analytics data where I would go with SVG's assertion that data collected on plays have an inherent flaw built in, i.e., they rely heavily on interpretation of the data collector on play intent. When I see JV, Amir and Hans leading the team in "cuts" the first thing I visualize is a guard-big PnR where the bigs know they have no chance to receive the pass as the roller, so they "cut" early to the basket, positioning themselves for the OREB off the inevitable low percentage contested mid-range jumpshot. It's no coincidence those 3 guys were likely our top 3 rebounders.

Actually, those "cuts" are in all likelihood those little duck in plays that the bigs do so the wings/guards have someone to handoff to near the rim when the double comes. Remember, these stats only track possessions FINISHED. So Jonas scored, missed or turned it over via a cut 187 times.

But the reality remains that the vast majority of these "cuts" that are supposed to emblematic of our good player movement is basically just the bigs getting into good position for a little dump off under the rim, not the wings or guards moving without the ball.

[golden]

Funny thing about those cuts - any idea who led the team in possessions finished on a cut? Anyone? Bueller?

You guessed it - Jonas Valanciunas. By a significant margin. Second and third on the team? Amir Johnson and Tyler Hansbrough.

Why, oh why, doesn't Jonas pass to all our cutting wings and guards? I guess because only he and the other bigs move without the ball.

@Scraptor, nice find. However, this is an example of analytics data where I would go with SVG's assertion that data collected on plays have an inherent flaw built in, i.e., they rely heavily on interpretation of the data collector on play intent. When I see JV, Amir and Hans leading the team in "cuts" the first thing I visualize is a guard-big PnR where the bigs know they have no chance to receive the pass as the roller, so they "cut" early to the basket, positioning themselves for the OREB off the inevitable low percentage contested mid-range jumpshot. It's no coincidence those 3 guys were likely our top 3 rebounders.

[DanH]

if this is a counting stat, then i would say the fact that Tyler Hansbrough is in your top 3 is a pretty major indictment against your offensive "system"

Yep, raw counting possessions.

Jonas was like 5 times any perimeter player, who were all around 40 while Jonas was just under 190 cuts. Vasquez and Lou COMBINED for 23 cuts all year. Heck Hansbrough was almost twice the 4th place player, JJ, at 81 versus JJ's 44. Helps that JJ played as a big a chunk of the time.

[KHD]

Funny thing about those cuts - any idea who led the team in possessions finished on a cut? Anyone? Bueller?

You guessed it - Jonas Valanciunas. By a significant margin. Second and third on the team? Amir Johnson and Tyler Hansbrough.

Why, oh why, doesn't Jonas pass to all our cutting wings and guards? I guess because only he and the other bigs move without the ball.

if this is a counting stat, then i would say the fact that Tyler Hansbrough is in your top 3 is a pretty major indictment against your offensive "system"

[DanH]

Funny thing about those cuts - any idea who led the team in possessions finished on a cut? Anyone? Bueller?

You guessed it - Jonas Valanciunas. By a significant margin. Second and third on the team? Amir Johnson and Tyler Hansbrough.

Why, oh why, doesn't Jonas pass to all our cutting wings and guards? I guess because only he and the other bigs move without the ball.

[DogeLover1234]

An offense with effective cuts is not necessarily an offence with many cuts. When the team moved the ball around they looked pretty good if memory serves, i imagine the problem was that they didnt move the ball often.

[Scraptor]

Here are some actual stats on how much we cut:

18th in the league in cutting frequency (Spurs and Warriors 2nd and 3rd overall)
5th in points per possession on cuts
http://stats.nba.com/playtype/#!/cut...ason&sort=Time

We might be successful when we do it, but we don't do it often. And basically every time JV got the ball in the post, the rest of the players stopped moving. Same thing happened when DD got to iso his man in the mid-range. Everyone (including the other team) knew a shot was going up.

[JawsGT]

I'm going out on a limb here and will say that JV is a better passer than the stats show and many here believe him to be. Passing out of the post just isn't a skill that the team has prioritized for JV to learn at this point. I will also say that he is not as good in the post as the stats suggest. He does not get enough attention from the defense to allow for the development of great passing skills. IMO, he needs more time and touches in the post to really make an accurate judgement on his abilities. If he becomes a more consistent post presence (throughout the game, arguably just a lack of touches and court time), we will really know more about his effectiveness there, as will opposing defences. And if his effectiveness is maintained, then he will demand doubles on a regular basis, and therefore will get plenty more opportunities to flash hsi passing skills, or show that he is weak in this area.

[psrs1]

If you have a full clock, you should always run your offense, for no other reason than to get the opposition defense out of position and expending energy, which hurts them when they go back on offense. Even Casey himself stated that the Raps offense was a likely cause for the decline in defense because the stagnant ISO style led to easy transition buckets for the opposition. You also run your offense to distract opposing defenses away from the ball handler, i.e., make them think twice about helping off their man. It's the same reason why you add floor spacing 3-pt threats around a low post scorer.

Another reason you run cutters for JV is to have him become comfortable recognizing situations to pass the ball. Even if he ends up just taking it to the basket 95% of the time, there is really no downside to running cutters as a decoy.

IMO, Casey is overly concerned with turnovers and values protection of the ball over ball movement & and man movement. Almost to the point where he won't even allow the opportunity for turnovers by making those players available to receive passes in the flow of a (non-ISO) offense. Worst part is that this team has shown that they can move the ball beautifully when they really want to do it.

They were 37-17 until they went to ISO heavy offensive sets.

[S.R.]

I remember when the Raps were working with Bosh and later DeRozan on their ability to deal with double teams. When you have a guy with offensive potential whom other teams are going to adjust their defenses for, you make specific strategic adjustments yourself to help your guys succeed and you coach him through this new skill development. Bosh initially sucked pretty bad when he got double-teamed.

They should be doing the same thing for Jonas re: passing out of the post. I don't have stats, but find any YouTube highlights of Jonas and watch the play the Raps are running. They did have a couple pet plays running screens to get him open, but the vast majority were (as has been mentioned) really traditional and static clear-out post-ups. I spent about 15 minutes on this and didn't see any off-ball action run at all while Jonas had the ball. His only option was to kick it back out to the entry passer.

Jonas isn't a very good passer and will never be great, but it's really weird to sit a young guy with potential or stop running him plays because he has a skill that needs work. Is DeMar supposed to stop shooting threes because he sucks at it? Did they tell him to stop dribbling the ball when his handle was weak?

[golden]

As I said before, this was from game 33 last year - the offence was much better then . I agree as the season wore on "flowing well" was not a term anyone would use for the Raptors offence.

The cutting is a chicken/egg thing. If you accept the fact JV is not a good passer at this stage of his career, and he was not finding cutters,, or able to accurately get the ball to cutters, what's the point of cutting? Because yeah, as the season went on JV was given the ball in the post and people cleared out, save for an outlet if/when he got doubled.

So rarely ran cutters for anybody is not true, rarely ran cutters for JV I totally agree with.

If you have a full clock, you should always run your offense, for no other reason than to get the opposition defense out of position and expending energy, which hurts them when they go back on offense. Even Casey himself stated that the Raps offense was a likely cause for the decline in defense because the stagnant ISO style led to easy transition buckets for the opposition. You also run your offense to distract opposing defenses away from the ball handler, i.e., make them think twice about helping off their man. It's the same reason why you add floor spacing 3-pt threats around a low post scorer.

Another reason you run cutters for JV is to have him become comfortable recognizing situations to pass the ball. Even if he ends up just taking it to the basket 95% of the time, there is really no downside to running cutters as a decoy.

IMO, Casey is overly concerned with turnovers and values protection of the ball over ball movement & and man movement. Almost to the point where he won't even allow the opportunity for turnovers by making those players available to receive passes in the flow of a (non-ISO) offense. Worst part is that this team has shown that they can move the ball beautifully when they really want to do it.

[Axel]

As I said before, this was from game 33 last year - the offence was much better then . I agree as the season wore on "flowing well" was not a term anyone would use for the Raptors offence.

The cutting is a chicken/egg thing. If you accept the fact JV is not a good passer at this stage of his career, and he was not finding cutters,, or able to accurately get the ball to cutters, what's the point of cutting? Because yeah, as the season went on JV was given the ball in the post and people cleared out, save for an outlet if/when he got doubled.

So rarely ran cutters for anybody is not true, rarely ran cutters for JV I totally agree with.

I'm not sure chicken/egg logic really applies here.

You have a young talented post scorer who, statistically isn't adept at passing to cutters, so to develop his passing you stop sending cutters? Sounds like Casey logic to me but clearly that isn't real justification.

When the opportunities dry up, how is he supposed to develop that part of his game? Same logic applies to not being ready to play 4th quarters. #FireCasey

[3inthekeon]

Like Axel said, anybody who thinks that last season's Raptors offense "flowed very well" is immediately discrediting themselves as an authority on the topic. He must be confusing efficiency with aesthetics. The offense was brutally efficient at times, designed to take contested mid-range shots and get to the FT line to compensate for poor FG%. It was not designed to maximize man-movement + ball movement for open shots, even going back to the previous seasons and Nets playoff series. Agreed that it did get a lot worse with Lou.

Secondly, I'm not even sure how to assess whether or not a cutter is available to JV in the post, other than by watching a lot of Raptor games and looking for those particular instances. I'm going by eye-test and seeing a lot of clear-outs and stagnant off-ball movement when JV goes into the post.

So basically, are you (and Josh Gutchess) trying to say that when JV goes into the post, the Raptors are flashing cutters into the lane all the time, but JV is always missing them? I'd like to see more video evidence on that.

As I said before, this was from game 33 last year - the offence was much better then . I agree as the season wore on "flowing well" was not a term anyone would use for the Raptors offence.

The cutting is a chicken/egg thing. If you accept the fact JV is not a good passer at this stage of his career, and he was not finding cutters,, or able to accurately get the ball to cutters, what's the point of cutting? Because yeah, as the season went on JV was given the ball in the post and people cleared out, save for an outlet if/when he got doubled.

So rarely ran cutters for anybody is not true, rarely ran cutters for JV I totally agree with.

[golden]

These people analyse over 16000 events per game, so they do see things we don't, That said, I agree the flow got worse as the year went on (this was from game 33). Also DD being out for half the season to that point also impacted the offence with less ISO play. Yeah, the link doesn't work, - they don't seem to archive much free material. I did read the story at the time. The Raptors did cut, although less than most teams, but were highly effective on their cutting.

Which brings me back to the original point. Despite the Raptors cutting effectively at the time,

Like Axel said, anybody who thinks that last season's Raptors offense "flowed very well" is immediately discrediting themselves as an authority on the topic. He must be confusing efficiency with aesthetics. The offense was brutally efficient at times, designed to take contested mid-range shots and get to the FT line to compensate for poor FG%. It was not designed to maximize man-movement + ball movement for open shots, even going back to the previous seasons and Nets playoff series. Agreed that it did get a lot worse with Lou.

Secondly, I'm not even sure how to assess whether or not a cutter is available to JV in the post, other than by watching a lot of Raptor games and looking for those particular instances. I'm going by eye-test and seeing a lot of clear-outs and stagnant off-ball movement when JV goes into the post.

So basically, are you (and Josh Gutchess) trying to say that when JV goes into the post, the Raptors are flashing cutters into the lane all the time, but JV is always missing them? I'd like to see more video evidence on that.