(sJacas)

Entering the Top16 at 5-5 and merely a footnote amongst the Euroleague’s big guns, elite defense has turned Anadolu Efes into a Final Four candidate. Here’s how.

Rank the top defenses in modern Euroleague history by fewest opponent points per game (going further back fails for a lack of historical data; as does going more advanced), and you’ll see the name of two coaches occupy the first seven slots: CSKA’s Ettore Messina registers four times, three for Barcelona’s Xavi Pascual.¹

Next up the rankings: Oktay Mahmuti with 2004/05 Efes Pilsen, at eight. Mahmuti is far from a stranger to elite defense.

Two and a half months after publicly calling out his players following a 76-91 home loss to Caja Laboral,

The players who are called ‘stars’ – it’s not me but the other people who called them stars – were not on the court mentally. They were only there physically.

Efes are third in schedule-adjusted defensive rating, and although Mahmuti is unlikely to crack the historical defensive top ten with this year’s version of Anadolu Efes, 68.6 opponent points per game (their Top16 average) would just qualify ahead of Xavi Pascual’s 2008/09 Regal FC Barcelona. Efes squandered that chance in the regular season. But that only bears relevance for the record books. Not for the ongoing season and the plan to finally bring a Turkish team to the Euroleague Final Four.

Expected winning percentage sees Efes not at 87.5 but at roughly 70 percent based on Top16 performance, and they’ve played five of their eight Top16 games at home. But still, Mahmuti has his “so-called” stars play defense. And a 70 percent expected winning percentage puts them into the second group of Final Four contenders. With home court advantage in the play-offs, things would look even better.

Not stopping the roll

I wrote in length about pick and roll defense (Part II: single side versus double side pick and roll) and the typical rotations and recoveries the defense has to make in order to contain the rolling big man as well as the three off-ball players spreading the floor. As it turns out, Efes are defending the pick and roll differently.

Remember, what’s relatively typical in pick and roll defense is what Zoran Erceg is doing here:

As Jordan Farmar and Stanko Barać execute the high pick and roll, Erceg rotates over to slow down Barać’s roll to the rim exactly until Nenad Krstić has recovered back to Barać. Erceg himself then recovers to his assignment at the three point line. This is standard procedure.

Efes under Mahmuti, however, don’t cover the roll man with a third defender at all, they only rotate over late with their corner help defenders on the pass/catch. The four defender, Duško Savanović or Kerem Gönlüm, is usually not a key presence here.

The following is a typical example: As Miloš Teodosić and Sasha Kaun execute a high pick and roll away from the double side, Savanović is right there but doesn’t bother containing the roll man.

Instead, they play it a two-man game where Farmar must aggressively fight over the screen to challenge Teodosić’s pull up or the pass to the roll man. The center is going in flat coverage, not showing aggressively but back-pedaling in his attempt to find a good balance between challenging the guard’s scoring play as well as the pass to the roll man. This is super difficult stuff that requires plenty of effort and athleticism.

In this case, Erden and Farmar do cause Teodosić to pick the ball up and re-set the play. Job done.

This type of defense is vulnerable against a well-executed lob, which we see on the following Teodosić-Kaun pick and roll early on. Note that Messina is going with a Krstić-Kaun four-five here. So an inside-four rather than a stretch-four.

Here’s another case where it goes wrong. Farmar is not putting any pressure on Teodosić, who finds Kaun for the high percentage shot inside.

Again, this defense falls apart once the guard loses his assignment on the screen or before the screen.

From the limited action I’ve seen from the Real Madrid and CSKA Moscow games, Kerem Tunçeri has been doing a far better job defending the pick and roll than Jordan Farmar, whereas Semih Erden and Barać have both been extremely solid.

Here’s an example from the second half, where Teodosić loses Sinan Güler before the screen. Since no player is stopping the roll, Erden can only show against Teodosić for a split second and then must quickly recover back to the roll man. The Serb drains the open pull up three.

This is arguably what the strategy is vulnerable for: (1) A well-executed lob, (2) A pull-up, should the defender lose the guard on/before the screen, (3) A guard who takes the ball aggressively to the rim with his strong hand.

Both bigs have to be good, athletic shot blockers to come over late to challenge the driving layup. They will likely not challenge a jump shot, however.

The Efes wing defenders often apply help in the form of a quick move towards the ballhandler before flashing back out to their assignments, even from the strong side. That does carry the risk for a quick one-pass catch and shoot, but wasn’t really exploited by both Real Madrid and CSKA Moscow. In the following play, Josh Shipp applies help from the right corner to challenge Teodosić’s scoring play.

Fact is, Efes’ wings are quick and athletic, namely Shipp, Jamon Lucas (arguably a Defensive Player of the Year candidate) and, to a certain degree, Aleksandar Vujačić.

Here’s another play where Shipp distracts the ballhandler for a split second.

And again: With Sonny Weems executing a high pick and roll, Farmar rotates off of Teodosić, of all people, for a split second to allow Shipp to recover against Weems.

CSKA’s poor floor spacing

Efes were helped by the fact that, in the absence of Viktor Khryapa and Andrei Vorontsevich, CSKA’s high pick and roll lacked proper floor spacing. With Nenad Krstić playing the four, the paint was often packed.

Here’s a play where Lucas is allowed to challenge Kaun’s close range attempt due to poor floor spacing (on the weakside).

And in the following play, Gönlüm is defending Krstić in the paint while Teodosić and Kaun execute a high pick and roll. The paint is packed, hence there’s no easy path to the rim for Kaun. Erden is safe to challenge Teodosić’s lay up aggressively and blocks the shot.

In the last of three examples, again, Erden is safe to rotate over since Gönlüm has no difficulties covering the short distance between Krstić and Kaun.

Unfortunately for CSKA, what I would consider the best pick and roll setup against this type of defense, a Teodosić-Erceg-Kaun 1-4-5, appeared in just six minutes in Istanbul last week. During those six minutes, CSKA dropped 18 points on 13 possessions on Efes. With other lineups: 42 points on 56 possessions. This is where Khryapa and Vorontsevich were severely missed.

Here’s three examples for what good floor spacing does.

In the first play, Teodosić executes a high screen and roll with Kaun. Erceg, Weems and Jackson are stretching the floor. There’s plenty of space for Kaun to roll into. Shipp makes a rotation over from the weak side, but is usually in a disadvantage against the rolling big man.

In the second play, again, a Teodosić-Kaun high screen and roll. Now it is for Gönlüm to make a rotation over, since it is Erceg who is positioned in the corner. Maybe not the wisest of set ups, since you force the “4″ to make the weakside rotation rather than a “2/3″. So it’s big body against big body. But still, a late rotation that often enough results in a foul.

In the third play, Lucas rotates over early to stop the roll. Teodosić flashes a pass cross-court to Jackson, who has the wide open look. (He fakes and commits the traveling violation. Imagine what Dionte Christmas would’ve done here, but, oh well … )

Notes

A week after completely destroying Real Madrid’s pick and roll offense, Efes also contained CSKA on the pick and roll, but it is safe to say CSKA were not at their best, lacking the floor-stretching of Khryapa and Vorontsevich.

Here are the numbers: CSKA finished 36 pick and rolls with either a shot, possession-ending trip to the foul line, or turnover. They scored 31 points in those possessions.

Pick and rolls initiated by Teodosić led to 19 points on 20 possessions. Weems was Messina’s secondary pick and roll ballhandler, with ten possessions (eight points). Theodoros Papaloukas’ pick and rolls led to zero points on three possessions, Jackson (two points on two possessions) and Micov (two points on one possessions) were used infrequently. This also suggests: Messina doesn’t really see Jackson as an on-ball decision maker. Which may explain the pro-Papaloukas, contra-Christmas decision.

Pick and rolls with Kaun as screener led to 17 points on 14 possessions. (Krstić six points on 12 possessions, Erceg two points on three possessions)

As much as their lack of pick and roll productivity, it was CSKA’s trouble scoring in the post that led to their defeat. Krstić should be a mismatch against most power forwards, especially a 4/3 like Savanović, but failed to capitalise and forced several low-percentage shots from mid range. This was the softest we’ve seen him play all year. He finished on two for nine shooting from the field and had zero trips to the foul line.

Krstić has been playing 20 percent of his total minutes on power forward this season, due to injuries to Erceg, Khryapa and Vorontsevich. For some reason he is much less productive playing the four, shooting just 52.2 percent from the field (64.0 percent on center) and not registering a single offensive rebound in 83 power forward minutes. He is one of the league’s best per-minute scorers when playing the five (18.0 points per 28 minutes pace-adjusted) but sees his scoring drop to 11.2 per 28 on the four position.

In the first of four away games in the Top16 run-in, Efes face a Panathinaikos team this week that isn’t particularly productive on offense. But they (Diamantidis/Lasme) do play the lob out of pick and roll to perfection, so we could be in for an interesting evening. On the other hand, taking the ball all the way to the basket and finishing with contact is not Diamantidis’ forte (but Ukić’s).

¹ Pace inevitably plays a role here. Pascual’s Barcelona, however, played at a league-average pace throughout most of his season. Messina’s CSKA was usually playing at a below-average pace.