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View Full Version : Drive and Dish?



grepinbee
03-02-2010, 04:26 PM
After several seasons lacking presence inside, this season we finally have some bigs who can post up, catch and shoot pretty dependably. We also have Nolan, John and increasingly Kyle who are driving toward the basket and getting into the lane. Why do our players so rarely drive and dish off for easy layups? To me, it seems like if a Duke player begins a drive, he's going to take the ball all the way to the hoop, either for the bucket or hoping for a foul. As we get deeper into March, the refs are going to call fewer and fewer fould on drives to the hoop, so it seems like we could exploit our strengths and develop a solid "drive and dish" component to our offense. Comments?

Welcome2DaSlopes
03-02-2010, 04:46 PM
It's Jon not John, Just saying. But i do love the way Nolan gets into the lane.

DukeFanSince1990
03-02-2010, 04:56 PM
A lot of that depends on how the big men fill in the lane. Steve Nash would not get as many assists if his players didn't fill the lanes the way they do. I have no doubt that the big 3 would pass off to some one who was there. But its usually Lance and he is not the best finisher around the rim. God love him though, he is a lock down defender.

Underdog5
03-02-2010, 04:58 PM
Would also like to see this more given how much attention Jon, Kyle and Nolan draw. Saw it a little earlier in the year with Jon drives for lobs to the Plumlees. Good news has been that the next best play (bigs crashing for the missed shots) has become a fairly consistent part of the offense. Not that it helps today but I've watched Kyrie play a few times and I think he will be really good at this next year!

loldevilz
03-02-2010, 05:35 PM
It's Jon not John, Just saying. But i do love the way Nolan gets into the lane.

Nolan never dishes it though and almost never tries to get contact...he always tries the floater. Jon usually tries to get to the foul line, but he doesn't dish it too often. Kyle on the other hand does a good job of getting contact and makes some nice dishes every now and then. When he draws the double team there is always someone open.

Wander
03-02-2010, 06:08 PM
It's simply not a huge strength of theirs, so there's no reason to try and push it. You wouldn't want Zoubek taking threes, even if he's wide open. Turnovers are more harmful than assists are helpful, so I think it's worth the trade to, for example, just have Nolan play to his strengths and not try to drive into double teams.

Chitowndevil
03-02-2010, 06:38 PM
I'll go for the low-hanging fruit here: To have a good traditional drive-and-dish offense you almost have to have a big man or big men that can finish around the rim. Zoubek has made great strides in that area recently. But he is also the only Duke player shooting over 60% from inside the arc; he and Miles Plumlee (57%) are the only ones over 50%. It doesn't help that between the three of them, Zoubek and the Plumlees are shooting 57% from the free throw line. Finally, to echo another posters comment about turnovers, Zoubek, the Plumlees, and Lance Thomas are all turning the ball over on 22-25% of possessions used.

And one more file-this-under-obvious comment: Considering how well this team does on the offensive glass, I think a lot of the times, a shot is the best way to feed the post! At least by eye, Thomas and Zoubek in particular seem more comfortable shooting or passing back out after an offensive board than after a traditional entry pass.

(This isn't intended as a criticism of our big men, I'm just asking whether what we're already doing is in fact the best way to make the best of their abilities.)

RoyalBlue08
03-02-2010, 07:00 PM
It's simply not a huge strength of theirs, so there's no reason to try and push it. You wouldn't want Zoubek taking threes, even if he's wide open. Turnovers are more harmful than assists are helpful, so I think it's worth the trade to, for example, just have Nolan play to his strengths and not try to drive into double teams.

I would put Kyle in the same category as Nolan that his strength isn't finding open players once he commits to the drive. Jon on the other hand has very good court vision, but he very rarely draws a double on the drive and instead tries to put up a shot against his primary defender.

As an aside, I am glad that our coach staff is doing a great job at getting our guys in position to do what they do well instead of trying to make them do things that might be considered weaknesses.

Steve68
03-02-2010, 07:26 PM
After several seasons lacking presence inside, this season we finally have some bigs who can post up, catch and shoot pretty dependably. We also have Nolan, John and increasingly Kyle who are driving toward the basket and getting into the lane. Why do our players so rarely drive and dish off for easy layups? To me, it seems like if a Duke player begins a drive, he's going to take the ball all the way to the hoop, either for the bucket or hoping for a foul. As we get deeper into March, the refs are going to call fewer and fewer fould on drives to the hoop, so it seems like we could exploit our strengths and develop a solid "drive and dish" component to our offense. Comments?

We are exploiting our strengths. Contrary to your opening sentence, we don't have bigs who can post up, catch and shoot pretty dependably. We went to more of a motion offense halfway through the season to get the 3 S's more shots, partly because shooting was their strength and partly because our 4s and 5s haven't shown the reliability you claim. Our base offense includes the bigs playing high post screens, not low post, back to the basket positions. Yes, they do it sometimes, but the major portion of their collective jobs is to get the Big 3 open for shots, then crash the boards for offensive rebounds. It seems to be working rather well.

ReformedAggie
03-02-2010, 07:47 PM
I'd just leave it up to Coach K to make the call on all that. He seems to have at least a passing acquaintance with how to coach a game.

grepinbee
03-02-2010, 08:38 PM
Many good points and food for thought. My original post stems from my fear about how this season will end -- 3s not falling, refs not calling fouls on drives to the hoop, agile opponent big men blocking our bigs from getting ORs. This is how recent seasons have ended, and it just seems to me that we should have the drive and dish in the arsenal. And I would argue that Mason and Zoubek both can catch near the rim -- Miles and Lance are less dependable.

Just my opinions, YMMV.

DukeUsul
03-02-2010, 08:46 PM
Many good points and food for thought. My original post stems from my fear about how this season will end -- 3s not falling, refs not calling fouls on drives to the hoop, agile opponent big men blocking our bigs from getting ORs. This is how recent seasons have ended, and it just seems to me that we should have the drive and dish in the arsenal. And I would argue that Mason and Zoubek both can catch near the rim -- Miles and Lance are less dependable.

Just my opinions, YMMV.

The biggest difference between this year and previous years is that we don't rely on the three nearly as much. We're middle of the NCAA's in terms of reliance on the three. And we rebound much much much better. In fact, we have the #1 offensive rebounder (by percentage) in the country starting at center. I understand your fears, but going into the stretch run, we look very different than the past few years' teams.

BlueintheFace
03-02-2010, 08:57 PM
A few things:

1) Jon drives and dishes a good deal when the Plumlees are on the floor (or at least looks to). In the motion he often comes off an elbow screen and curls in the lane. The big screensetter then rolls to the hoop and Jon will toss up the lob when that big man's defender shades towards Jon. He looks for it frequently with the Plumlees and even throws an alley-oop off the backboard for Z once in a while (im convinced it is on purpose though some disagree)

2) Nolan has an issue with keeping his head down on drives across the lane

3) the structure of our offense is such that our drives are frequently curls from one side of the court or the other off of screens from big men on that opposite side. This means that the help will often come from a defender on the side of the court to which the Duke player is driving, and more often than not is a defender for a perimeter player. This means the open man is often a shooter at the three point line. Sometimes the other post man's defender helps too, but it is easier to find the open three point shooter in front of you than the big man behind you.

.... sorry if that doesn't make a lot of sense in writing. I wish I had a board to draw it out. The point is, our drives rarely force a post man's defender to cheat over in a way that opens up the inside dish.