Mazzulla’s in game adjustment on the Harden/Embiid empty corner pick and roll
Seeing the Harden-Embiid empty corner pick-and-roll generate great offense in the 3Q, Joe Mazzulla and the Celtics made a smart adjustment.
On "nexting" ball screens and how it worked: pic.twitter.com/Ti5Ea0FIWW
— Eric Shapiro (@eric_shap) May 12, 2023
by Plies-
6 Comments
This is a brilliant adjustment simply for the fact that this is something that they run in Europe a lot but it hasn’t been truly popularized in the NBA yet
Joe, Sunday is your final exam. Put your best foot forward. Don’t leave anything in the barrel. Punch first and be the aggressor.
This is the kind of detail I love to watch, it shows the chess match between the teams and how Doc didn’t really have a good counter to it except to trust that Harden will find the open man and they make the shot
This is awesome content.
While I agree this is a smart adjustment, I still dont really like this. Brown ends up closing out at full speed against Maxey and is still prone to giving up an advantage. I’m not even sure using ‘next’ is even necessary, since there will still be a Celtics player closing out at Maxey full speed, whether it’s White or Brown.
Why is the help even necessary? This team has strong individual defenders. I understand helping off PJ Tucker but why are they helping off Maxey? It makes no sense to me.
NNA offense is at such a high level that defences often have to pick their poison and live with it
A tyrese slightly contested three might be better than letting Embiid and Harden blow up
Not to mention the video shows when Jaylen chases hard while recovering Harden actually thinks twice about making the pass, resulting in the move breaking down. It’s the best situation for the Cs
Credit to the team on executing the adjustments smartly, and also the fans for seeing that Joe is actually doing the hard yards