NFL zone coverage solves Holmgren/Markannen SLOB 3 buzzer-beater, Kerr/Wiggins become irrelevant
[video companion piece]
After the Niners’ game on Sunday, I spent the rest of the day contemplating the next video essay, calling it, “How not to be enraged by Steve Kerr on the Chet Holmgren buzzer-beater.” All of this, of course, after a night spent seeing outraged tweets.
After all this time I don’t think the loss can be pinned on Kerr anymore, even though my old-school dad said, predictably, “That one’s on Steve.” Heck, that was my initial reaction in the moment, it’s etched forever in our livestream, go look it up.
Even though I, as a former traveling amateur tournament coach, would’ve told my guys to foul. Even though after I polled three other coaches, including Coach Nick of BBALLBREAKDOWN, they all said they would’ve fouled. Anyways, the nuances of that discussion are in the video essay:
And then the foul call on Kevin Durant against Lauri Markannen happened last night. Or rather, the reversal of the call, even though KD’s right hand was clearly on Markannen’s midsection and they chose to completely ignore that (see pool report tweeted by Marc Spears). 🙄 Adam Silver has a replay review process that is entirely broken. The problem is, he doesn’t seem to realize it, as video evidence after video evidence shows that they can’t even judge a replay correctly! (Example: the unsuccessful challenge of the Andrew Wiggins clean block and legal shuffle of the feet versus Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.) Alas, that is a discussion for another day.
The solution to all this is, when there’s a sideline out-of-bounds play (“SLOB”) where you’re up three with just a few seconds left, the NFL zone defense. It’s effectively a “reverse zone” for the NBA. Just stick your tallest guy at where Holmgren and Markannen — I’m still amazed how this happened on successive nights — end up. So remove Kevon Looney from the inbounder and put him outside the arc where the arc bends into a straight line on the wing, basically near where Chet (and Lauri) eventually caught the ball. How many times has the inbounder been bothered the tall guy guarding him, anyways?
In fact, as my co-host Dean “of Positivity” Chambers pointed out, there shouldn’t be anyone inside the arc in that situation. So you effectively go man-coverage outside the arc with the other four guys not named Looney or, if he’s not injured, Trayce Jackson-Davis.
There were people throwing Steve under the bus for having Chris Paul in the game. Nobody really saw Wiggins’ poor switch, a switch which should have been obvious but then again, Andrew isn’t really a “cerebral” player and CP3 had to yell for a switch. I analyzed Wiggs’ faulty footwork in the video. But having CP in the game would be irrelevant in the “NFL zone” strategy when you’re up three. And so we’d get less casuals adding to the negativity of social media, too.
No reason to throw Steve under the bus for failing to see that, as well as other nuances I brought up in the video, such as the absence of cerebral guys like Draymond Green and Gary Payton II when the instruction of “foul only if you have a clean foul” (as Kerr alluded to on the postgame podium) requires cerebral-ism and Green and Payton were out.
This is because Frank Vogel also did not have five guys outside the arc to defend Utah and Markannen. The Jazz got the ball to their guy, he got fouled, the refs blew it, Vogel escaped being thrown under the bus.
Here are some other takeaways:
• I know that the general sentiment of the NFL is its officiating sucks. The replay review process of the NFL is what I’m comparing to the NBA’s replay review process, not the in-game flags or whistles. In all the 49ers games I’ve watched (granted, could be considered small sample size), the NFL generally gets the replay reviews right. They care about their game more than the NBA cares about its. As seen in Suns-Jazz last night, first of all the NBA takes too long to review. It should not take as long as it does to just figure out something we can all figure out within seconds. For example, the out-of-bounds challenge on Jason Collins versus Devin Booker should have easily been transmitted to the refs on the scene within seconds. Instead, the three sweaty refs have to convene (they might be huffing and puffing from running up and down the court all night), they decide to go to the scorer’s table, it takes a minute to drag the monitor on top of the table and put on the headphones to get themselves temporarily out of the environment of 20,000 screaming fans, yadda yadda yadda — I mean, why??!!?! Adam Silver’s flaw is in the operational steps for what seems like an easy NFL-like replay-center-to-venue transmission. It’s like I wouldn’t be surprised to go Secaucus, take a peek inside the room, and realize they’re utilizing 1970’s technology with old cathode ray tube TVs. It’s like a scene out of the TVA from Loki. Sheesh!
• The next question for the “NFL zone coverage” strategy becomes, how late can you do this? I think it might be okay to have all five guys outside the arc even with double-digit seconds left. For example, up three with 10 seconds left, you surprise the other team, you don’t guard inside the arc, they score a layup and there’s, what, 7 seconds left? You’re still up by one and they have to foul you. This assumes you have a timeout left, just in case you can’t get the ball inbounded. It becomes a free throw shooting contest anyways. Rinse and repeat until time expires. I don’t know, someone spend a day thinking about this and let me know…
• Chet’s Gonzaga FTP was “only” 71% so maybe he doesn’t even make all three, but I think it might be harder than it looks to assign someone on the bench to have every OKC player’s FTP ready to go, then be able to announce that information in the huddle before it happens.
• A commenter suggested Jonathan Kuminga on Holmgren: Ohhh, gosh! On JK, I have video evidence that he did sort of the same defensive jab step (ironically, as I don’t think there’s any connection) as Wiggins. This was on pick-and-roll defense of Shai, after the three straight turnovers committed alongside Stephen Curry in Q3. JK has been a crapshoot with POA defense lately, so unfortunately I have to cringe a little bit on that. I’ll do an Xs and Os video on this in the next couple hours.
• Someone in the comments mentioned that Wiggins may not have executed the “clean foul” instruction and that Steve wasn’t going to throw him under the bus on the podium. I did think about that, too. There’s really nothing Steve can say on the podium that puts blame on any player. You can’t do that to a basketball locker room. It was actually Coach Nick who pointed out to me when we discussed this that Wiggs’ switch was poor, when I brought up that the “clean foul” strategy requires a high-IQ defender such as Dray/GP2.
• As I said, I’ll do a video in a few hours going through the two stretches where I thought GSW mistakes really impacted the loss the most (in Q3, three straight turnovers and late in OT, Looney not handing the ball to Steph twice in a row). After that video is done, there’s really no reason to pin the loss on Steve. Everyone has something they could’ve done better. Let’s stop the addiction to blaming one guy. Draymond is out and he’s one leg of the stool of the rather fragile ecosystem of Kerr. You can’t have it all. Even Gregg Popovich has gone through some losing. There’s always something you can do better and if you get a guy — Mike Brown? — who can do that better, you’ll eventually discover something he’s not good at. Believe me, the folks in Sacramento will soon be poking holes, if they haven’t already. So is it ever enough? Are we playing that game of life? And there’s always validation on social media when you’re outraged and you comment that someone should be fired or traded. Pretty much instantly you’ll get 50 likes — kinda parallel to the “Instagram model” syndrome, except the predominantly male version. Most instances of throwing Steve under the bus are factually untrue, therefore maybe stop being addicted to that line of thinking. And if and when they resign or get fired or traded, it’s not the worst thing ever and it’s also not because the outraged person predicted it. LetsGoWarriors has always been about returning to gratitude for this great game we have, for how hard guys are trying and are dedicated without ego, instead of always fighting and declaring and judging and making yourself feel better temporarily through negative energy. I’d rather come together and feel more like we’re part of the team, rather than throw stones from the peanut gallery and stay separate. And, no, I don’t always agree with Steve. For example, I think the development of Kuminga could be better. But I realize they have a lot on their plate right now and no culture is perfect, no system fits all. But I don’t let the lack of perfection spoil the big picture. Live in abundance, not lack. We’ll get back to winning games soon, so stop it! Lol.
👍👍💛💙