IZTOK ON KIDD'S DEFENSIVE SYSTEM AND THE ROSTER

[burekemde]

Yes Luka absolutely needs to attack the rim. ESSENTIAL for his effectiveness.

Luka shot 26.0% of his shots at the rim in 19-20, then 18.0% in 20-21, and now 11.5% in 21-22. I personally believe this is directly connected to his weight/conditioning which from my view has gotten worse progressively each of the last three seasons. 

But regardless of the cause, Luka absolutely needs to get back to getting shots at the rim, it opens up HIS game and everyone around him.

From seeing the stacked paint, it's in my view 100% on the scheme. When you have KP and Powell in the paint, its hard to get to the rim. What makes it worse, is the wrong positioning of players outside, that even when they get it open, dont hit their shots. Meaning the defenses can collapse even more into the paint as they dont respect our shooters.

Reverse back two years and you have Curry, THJ, KP, Maxi spaced well with proper positions on the outside, and the defenses had to respect each and could not collapse the paint. In addition, you only had Powell as roll man. Luka had single coverage and destroyed that. Any double team was punished by good spacing outside.

Luka doesnt attack into the paint as its not effective enough, there is too often double teams coming up. I count that many times a game, whereas before under RC that number was a lot lower.

To get back at ML point, both on offense and defense, Kidd is trying to fix some deficiencies. Yes we would be great if we could move more on defense. But we are not good at that. Yes, we would be good if we could have two big in the paint on offense getting more offensive boards and getting more mid rangers. But we are not good at that.

What he is trying, is maybe hurting the things we are great at. Thats exactly the question we need to ask. That's why the shooting has gone worse, thats why attacking the rim has gone worse. And everything in basketball is connected. Once you cant shoot, it effects your rim play as well. Its a super delicate balance.