Art of charm playing hard to get6/30/2023 ![]() ![]() “Gameplan-wise, the coaches will tell us, if they run an action, what to do,” Temple said. Temple and his fellow veteran players push those points on the court, especially with some of their younger teammates. They didn’t want to fight through a screen.ĭefense is about playing hard, about paying attention to little details and, crucially, about communication. Green guarded four of the five Grizzlies at some point during that play, but there was no good reason for it. Washington coach Scott Brooks admitted his switching-heavy scheme has been a huge problem early in the season, and they’ve scrapped a big chunk of their defense as a result. Watch this example from the Wizards against the Grizzlies last week. ![]() As long as you’re coming together and not switching off the ball.” I think that’s where we have to ward against those. It’s not about the good switches, it’s about the lazy switches that hurt you. “It becomes like lazy switches, that’s the problem. Stackhouse was more direct in warning against the dangers of relying on switching too much. But on the front end, we’re going to be aggressive and try to push through and be in your face a little bit more than relaxing and taking the easy way out.” ![]() “We’re going to be aggressive first, and then when things start to work out a different way, we’ll get to switching, we’ll get to being more of a scheme team. The Grizzlies’ desire to do things the old-fashioned way sits well with Mike Conley. We keep things in front of us or we don’t let them force triggers where we have to help and get into rotation.” Obviously there’s certain actions we will switch. But we don’t want to be a team that’s switching all over the floor. There are certain plays that we walk through, and we will switch those plays just depending on where our man is relative to the ball. “We’ve been trying to stick with our matchups, for the most part. “When you have situations where you’re flexible, where you have a lineup that can switch if need be, I think it’s really to your benefit to have players who are able to do that, but it’s also to your benefit to have guys who can play original defense and get wins that way as well.īickerstaff acknowledged that there is a switching component to the Grizzlies’ philosophy, but he doesn’t want it to become a default. ![]() McConnell and Joel Embiid come on a pick and roll, probably not going to switch that, where our team is concerned.” If you’re up against Philadelphia, and T.J. Temple said, like most things, it’s all relative: “I think it depends on your personnel, the type of IQ guys have, and the team you’re playing against. Many have tried, few have had consistent success, a handful have failed outright. Switching was seen as a panacea, the one-stop solution to so many defensive problems. After watching the intricacies of Golden State’s switching scheme at work, many teams have tried to copy them. In this increasingly offensive NBA, most teams deal with defense through a framework that largely involves switching. That sounds a lot like the reaction Bickerstaff was describing. Nikola Jokic, an All-Star candidate and one of the best young players in basketball, failed to take a single shot until the very end of the game, missing a three at the buzzer. The Nuggets left Memphis having failed to break 100 points for the first time, turning it over at their highest rate of the season, and logging their worst offensive rating this season. Coming off a big win over the Celtics on Monday, one in which guard Jamal Murray put up a career-high 48 points, Denver represented a huge challenge for the Grizzlies’ defense. That’s exactly what happened to the Nuggets. Our thought going into the game is - How physical can we be, within the limitations of the new contact rules? How many deflections can we get? How many passes can we deny?- to the point where teams are like, ‘Not tonight.’ They don’t want to make that extra effort to get it done.” Bickerstaff puts it rather bluntly: “We want to be able to strangle people with our defense. Doing things that most other teams wouldn’t want to. Being unique, difficult, a burr under the saddle. No team this season had won a game without breaking the 90-point mark until the Grizzlies did it. ![]()
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