02-09-2025, 06:47 PM
(02-09-2025, 05:56 PM)KillerLeft Wrote: I think you're missing my point a little. Yes, he played the 1, on offense. But, I think the offense was designed for the guy labeled "4" to play the "1" on offense. I can find no other explanation for some of the sets I saw yesterday, particularly in light of the emboldened paragraph. I believe this because I don't think they have had time to add ANYTHING new by design. In other words, I think everyone other than AD and Christie are just running the same actions they have been, and (not for every play, mind you, just in certain player groupings) they literally just filled AD into the missing hole (again, not in terms of what to do from the sets, just purely from a spacing/court location point of view). I just don't think they've had any time to do anything else yet.
I don't expect this to continue, I just thought it was interesting.
If it helps, forget the numbers. My point is that it suuuuure seemed to me that the approach to getting AD out there fast was just not to disrupt ANYTHING anyone else has been doing all season. Even on defense, I think part of what we saw was due to AD being GREAT, defensively, and part of it was just due to the guy in Luka's place (low man, pretty often during the times Gafford gets pulled out) actually understanding how to play defense.
Okay, I guess I just don't see their offense yesterday being by that sort of design (AD replaces Luka). At all.
What I did find "Luka-like" was that AD got the ball a lot, and was the focal point of the offense. But I didn't think it looked like he was doing what Luka would do.
I do think there was an organic shift that looks like that, because AD is your best player that you want to give wide freedom to. Luka used to be that guy. And that guy gets the ball with great regularity.
But I didn't think AD was operating in "Luka areas" per se. He wasn't on the perimeter, dribbling the air out of the ball on possession after possession, although he did get it there at times. He only rarely brought the ball up the court. There were quite a few possessions where he got the ball in the post, or as the guy being assisted. That's how I saw it, anyhow.