Matchup Mashup

Plus, pick up points and pick and roll combos

Coaches only have so many buttons they can press in the playoffs, but how they assign matchups is one worth monitoring—especially as a series progresses. So let’s take a look around some of the first-round series that are still in progress to see who has matched up with whom and what it might tell us about where each series is headed.

Who’s Guarding Nikola Jokic?

One of the most interesting things that happened in Game 5 of the Nuggets-Clippers series was Ty Lue’s decision to use James Harden as the primary defender on Nikola Jokic for stretches of the game.

Before Game 5, Harden had rarely matched up with Jokic. But in Game 5, he spent almost as many possessions defending Jokic as Ivica Zubac did. In some ways, it worked. Jokic had a pedestrian performance (by his standards), scoring only 13 points and shooting just 4-for-13 from the field. One could easily envision an alternate reality where the Nuggets didn’t shoot 50 percent from three in Game 5 and we’re sitting here today talking about what a genius Ty Lue is for putting Harden on Jokic.

Who is Jalen Brunson Guarding?

For the most part, the Knicks have been able to minimize Jalen Brunson’s weaknesses on defense by having him camp out Detroit’s least dynamic players. So far, that’s meant matching up with Tim Hardaway Jr. and, to a lesser extent, Malik Beasley.

But at the end of Game 5, Brunson rolled his ankle. I’ll be watching Game 6 to see if Pistons head coach J.B. Bickerstaff targets Brunson by ramping up Hardaway’s role as a screener or by replacing him with someone who will make Brunson move his feet on defense. A lineup of Cade Cunningham, Dennis Schroder, Ausar Thompson, Tobias Harris, and Jalen Duren lacks shooting, but it would force Brunson to either guard the ball (Schroder) or box out someone much bigger than him (Thompson). Either way, it could work in Detroit’s favor.

Who is Alperen Sengun Guarding?

All year, the Rockets have used Alperen Sengun as a defensive roamer by having him defend the opposing team’s least threatening perimeter player instead of the center. The idea behind this strategy is to keep Sengun out of as many pick-and-roll actions as possible so he can linger around the basket, using his size and timing to disrupt would-be finishers at the rim.

In Games 1 and 2, Sengun most often defended Moses Moody. But then Steve Kerr inserted Buddy Hield into the starting lineup in place of Moody, which forced Sengun to find someone else to hang out next to. Lately, that’s been Brandin Podziemski. Given the success the Rockets had in Game 5, I expect to see Sengun match up with Podziemski more often going forward or until Podziemski shows that he can take advantage of that matchup.

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Pick Up Point

One thing that’s stood out to me in these playoffs is how teams have tried to use their opponents’ lack of depth against them. For instance, in the Lakers-Wolves series, Los Angeles only had about five players they trusted. So what did the Wolves do? They pressured the Lakers’ ballhandlers as they brought the ball up the court in hopes of tiring them out over the course of the game.

In the chart below, I’ve plotted the average pick-up point for each team while they were on defense in this year’s playoffs.

Each logo on the court indicates where the defense began pressuring the offense on average (not including transition plays). This is an average—so in some cases, there was no pressure at all, and in others, there could have been full-court pressure. But at a high level, what you see is teams like the Wolves and Pistons making their opponents burn energy by putting pressure on them even before they cross half court.

It might not seem like much, but that pressure can add up and wear your opponent down, especially when they’ve already shortened their rotation. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the Lakers effectively held serve in the first half of each game (-5 total point differential) but were run ragged in the second halves (-30 total point differential).

The same dynamic is playing out in the Knicks-Pistons series. The Pistons are not letting Jalen Brunson walk the ball up the court, which he often does to buy himself some rest. Instead, Ausar Thompson is in Brunson’s hip pocket, making him work for every inch of space in hopes that it’ll wear him down. That could partially explain why the Knicks are winning the first halves by +17 but losing the second halves by -12.

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I Wish We Had More Dame and Giannis Time

I’m not sure how we’ll remember Damian Lillard’s time in Milwaukee. But one thing I do know is that the pairing of Lillard and Giannis Antetokounmpo never felt as successful as the numbers say it was.

The table below shows the top pick-and-roll combinations over the last two regular seasons (minimum 500 direct picks). The Lillard/Giannis combo came in seventh in terms of points per direct chance¹.

The problem, perhaps, was that the Bucks didn’t leverage this action enough. Of the 37 combos that ran at least 500 direct pick-and-rolls, the Lillard/Giannis duo ranked 30th (or 8th-least) in frequency on a per-possession basis.

Some of that is due to the fact that Giannis is not a traditional center, which means there was almost always someone else on the floor more naturally suited to pair with Lillard in pick-and-rolls. For example, Lillard ran about 500 more pick-and-rolls with Brook Lopez than he did with Giannis. Additionally, Lillard and Bobby Portis were the league’s most efficient scoring combo—albeit on a smaller sample than some of the others on this leaderboard.

I guess all this is to say that I wish we had gotten at least one full season of Giannis playing center full time. It would have been fun.

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Best and Worst Playoff Performers So Far

The last thing I wanted to share today is the best and worst players so far in this year’s postseason by Daily RAPM Estimate (DRE). I like looking at DRE in smaller samples because it only relies on box score data—you can think of it as a more advanced version of Basketball Reference’s Game Score².

Eighty-six players have logged at least 100 minutes in this year’s postseason. Here are the top 10 and bottom 10 playoff performers by DRE.

People might scoff at Jarrett Allen being the top player on this list, but any player averaging 85 percent True Shooting and three Stocks a game deserves recognition.

The other thing that stands out is how well Giannis and LeBron James played despite both of their teams losing in five games. But as Kyle Kuzma has shown us, in the Weak Link Era, the impact of a team’s worst player can all but cancel out the impact of its best player.

1. A “direct chance” is when the player involved in the action (either the ballhandler or screener) takes a shot, is fouled, commits a turnover, or passes to a teammate who, within one dribble, shoots, is fouled, or turns the ball over.

2. For context, the leaders in DRE during the Regular Season were Nikola Jokic (14.4), SGA (12.4), and Giannis (11.1).