Root Cause Analysis: How Wolves bench beat Pacers

In a game of runs, the Indiana Pacers were on the wrong end of a big one against the Minnesota Timberwolves. Let’s find out why.

The Minnesota Timberwolves defeated the Indiana Pacers 101-91 on Monday. That’s a 10 point victory. However, when the 4th quarter of the game started, Indiana led 73-72. Two minutes and 48 seconds later, it was 84-73 in favor of Minnesota. When the final result is a 10 point difference, a 12-0 run is essentially the deciding factor in the game.

Identifying why a problematic stretch of play occurred can give an insight into how to stop it from happening again. Let’s do just that in this series – find a root cause for each Minnesota bucket that occurred in this 168-second timeframe.

The first possession of the quarter looked like this, ending in a relatively harmless Derrick Rose layup:

powered by Advanced iFrame free. Get the Pro version on CodeCanyon.

In general, the Pacers do a pretty good job of defending this set. They stop the staggered screens for Tyus Jones at the top of the key, they switch to stop an Anthony Tolliver back cut, and they amply defend a dribble handoff on the left wing. All the actions were stopped. But Rose isolated Cory Joseph on the wing and took it to him at the basket.

It’s hard to blame anything particular thing for this bucket – but the root cause here comes down to one thing. Talent. On this shot, we see Derrick Rose‘s B+ One on One grade and A- Finishing grade on display. On the flip side, Joseph supports a C+ Interior defensive grade, which is adequate but not great. It wasn’t enough here, and Rose‘s talent won out. He created separation on the shot and scored.

Root cause analysis is done to find a solution. To prevent this in the future, there are two options – either Bogdanovic or Sabonis rotates more urgently to help under the basket and thwart Rose, or Joseph becomes a superior interior defender. The former seems more palpable.

Timberwolves possession number two looked like this:

powered by Advanced iFrame free. Get the Pro version on CodeCanyon.

Derrick Rose is pretty quick with the ball. He’s fourth amongst Wolves rotation players in average speed on offense this season, and that is despite the fact he’s playing more off the ball this year (he’s currently supporting his lowest usage rate since he was a rookie).

That quickness is on display here. He gets the ball about 90 feet from his basket, yet he crossed the half court line before two of his teammates. That ends up mattering, as Domantas Sabonis and Bojan Bogdanovic do a little too much ball watching while their matchups are far from the hoop.

The Timberwolves set up a semi-transition pick-and-roll, but Sabonis is ball watching and gets caught a little too deep in his drop coverage:

Indiana Pacers Domas Sabonis drop coverage

The nearby Bogdanovic stunts at Rose, but ultimately he is more interested in hanging around Anthony Tolliver behind the three-point line and doesn’t cut off the drive.

This puts Sabonis in a tough spot. He is now guarding both Rose and the rolling Gorgui Dieng since Tyreke Evans died on the screen. One guy cannot guard two opponents, so Cory Joseph is forced to slide under the basket and help slow down Rose. That leaves Tyus Jones wide open (like, nobody even facing him) in the corner once Rose got into the paint:

Tyus Jones wide open for 3 against the Indiana Pacers

One superbly accurate leaping pass from Rose later, and the Timberwolves have 3 more points thanks to the most efficient shot in basketball.

What went wrong for Indiana? Short of just saying “everything,” let’s start with the ball watching. Right after DRose passes the logo, Bogdanovic and Sabonis have their eyes locked on him instead of their men. Tolliver immediately slows up and spots up to get Bojan to be in an awkward spot when the PnR is occurring. Meanwhile, Sabonis continues to drop towards the basket while watching the ball, which puts him far too deep in the paint when Dieng slams into Joseph. Suddenly, Rose has a runway to the rim.

Tyreke Evans deserves some blame here as well. He tries to go over the screen despite Rose hitting under 30 percent of his three-point attempts for his career. Going under screens on Rose should be a no-brainer, but it didn’t happen here. Combine that with the ball watching, and the problems are snowballing.

Joseph makes the correct play and slides over to help, but now it’s on Doug McDermott to cover two guys off the ball. When the pass goes to Jones, McD runs out to the wing and ends up on… nobody. He needs to close out the corner shooter and make him give it up, but to be fair it was a tall task given what happened at the start of the play. He was guarding two guys.

The root cause here is two things: ball-watching from Sabonis, and Tyreke trying to fight over a screen on a poor shooter. For Evans, just knowing his assignment better could prevent this problem from happening again in the future. For Sabonis, he just needs to stay engaged and know where his man is. If he is a step higher when the screen starts, he could have cut off the drive and made the Wolves reset. In tandem, two mistakes caused this bucket.

At this point, the run was still a manageable 5-0. Things start to get out of control on Minnesota possession 3. Here we go:

powered by Advanced iFrame free. Get the Pro version on CodeCanyon.

This one is just like the first bucket, only exaggerated by the fact that it was in transition. Tyreke Evans was in the 61st percentile defending the interior last season, so Rose‘s ability to take it to the rack and finish won the day here. Sometimes, it’s as simple as talent.

When Rose reached the half court line with the ball, there were three Indiana defenders back in a solid defensive position while only one Timberwolf was within 30 feet of the rim. As a residual effect from last play nobody helps out around the basket and Rose gets his shot.

Doug McDermott needs to rotate and help right about here:

Inidana Pacers Doug McDermott play help D

There are only four Wolves on the screen there, are only 2.5 of them are in a dangerous position (a Tolliver 30 footer is half of a good shot). CoJo can handle all the help on the opposite wing, especially with Sabonis close by. There has to be communication here, and McDermott needs to help Evans.

The root cause of this bucket? There’s two again – Evans‘ is just about an average interior defender, and a lack of communication kept McDermott’s feet glued to the ground when he should be helping. It’s much easier to correct the latter than the former. Talk, talk, talk.

Also, a 7-0 run in 78 seconds probably merits a timeout from the head coach. Nate McMillan is usually solid at game flow stuff, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt in terms of not calling one, but I think I personally would have.

Indiana got somewhat back on track defending possession 4:

powered by Advanced iFrame free. Get the Pro version on CodeCanyon.

What we call that, folks, is a heat check from Rose.

Heat checks can still be examined more carefully. The Pacers as a team do a great job of getting back this time, and it’s essentially 3-on-5 when Rose gets to his spot. Everyone filled a lane, and this time is in perfect help position in the middle of the lane, which prevents the drive (one of the solutions from the last Rose bucket).

Sabonis played about as good of perimeter defense as you can ask of him – he only graded out as a D+ Perimeter defender last year – and that was it. That Pacers finally made the Wolves miss.

After getting that stop, the Pacers had a modicum of defensive momentum. A stoppage on the other end allowed the Wolves to sub in Jimmy Butler for the red-hot Rose, but that didn’t matter here on Wolves possession number 5:

powered by Advanced iFrame free. Get the Pro version on CodeCanyon.

There’s a 9-0 run. And there’s a timeout by Nate McMillan, perhaps a little too late.

For starters, that is an effectively perfect rendition of the Spain pick-and-roll that so many teams run now. A Spain pick and roll is a PnR where there is someone screening for the screener just below where the first screen occurs, opening up the roll man and possibly forcing another switch.

This one starts actually somewhat poorly, Gorgui Dieng sets a weak screen on Cory Joseph and CoJo goes right over it and stays on the hip of Tyus Jones. But nobody calls out the second screen and Sabonis runs right into it. At the same time, Joseph realizes how open Dieng is about to be, so he attempts to switch, but the SabonisTolliver collision in the lane gets in his way.

Because of all that congestion in the lane, Jones, Dieng, and Tolliver are effectively going 3-on-1 at Bojan Bogdanovic under the basket. Bogdanovic makes the right play and stops the ball, but Jones dumps a pass right past him for easy points.

Sometimes, good offense beats good defense, and on this set that is largely the case. But there are still a few causes of this bucket that made it easier than it potentially could have been.

First of all, alerting Sabonis to the oncoming screen would allow him to turn and chase Dieng instead of backpedaling into the 240-pound wall that is Anthony Tolliver. Doing so would also allow CoJo to either chase the ball or slide on to Tolliver. That’s a mismatch – yes – but it still slows everything down.

Tyreke Evans could also come off the weak side and get in the lane to stop the roll man. He’s guarding the now subbed in Jimmy Butler. Butler is a great player, but he lacks touch from the outside; he’s made under 34 percent of his career three-point attempts. Corner threes are an effective shot, but I think I’d live with a partially contested Butler corner three over a wide open layup.

The root cause here is communication/lack of knowledge of the play, to me. There wasn’t enough talk to either alert Sabonis of the oncoming screen or to alert Joseph that they were switching once Sabonis was screened. They were in decent guarding position before the screen, but after it occurred everything fell apart. Look, here’s before:

Indiana Pacers good guarding position before screen

Not bad. You’d like to see Sabonis a little lower, but this is adequate. Here is the positioning of every player right after the screen:

Indiana Pacers in bad position after screen

So, yeah. Communication and being better prepared for something like that happening are the root causes of that bucket. But overall, that’s just a solid set by the Wolves.

And finally, here’s the last Minnesota basket of the run on the first defensive possession out of a timeout:

powered by Advanced iFrame free. Get the Pro version on CodeCanyon.

The Pacers get completely fooled on this play.

Minnesota set up for the same set – that Spain pick-and-roll – involving the same three guys. This time, the Pacers were prepared to stop it…

The only problem is, the Timberwolves were ready for the Pacers to adapt, and they themselves altered the play from the set before.

It starts out the same. Dieng screens for Jones and Tolliver steps up to screen for Dieng. The Pacers, prepared for what they think is the same play, send Bojan Bogdanovic (guarding Tolliver) up to stop the ball, they have CoJo stay on his man, and they have Sabonis drop. The plan was to put a ton of pressure on the ball and stop any easy passes around the rim.

The only problem was that the Timberwolves had no intention of getting to the rim. Just before Tolliver set the back screen from the set before, he changed it up and jolted out behind the three-point line. Sabonis thought he was dropping to stop Dieng, but instead, he made it easy for Dieng to screen his own man (Sabonis) and get Tolliver wide open.

Look how open Toliver is before Jones even throws the pass:

Anthony Tolliver left wide open by Indiana Pacers

By the time Tolliver catches, Dieng is already clearing Sabonis out of the play, and CoJo looks on incredulously as Tolliver is wide-open despite CoJo’s best efforts guarding the ball.

The Wolves were just one step ahead of the Pacers here. They had this wrinkle prepared and they called the play perfectly after the timeout.

The only way to stop this is to talk and be prepared for it. Given that two guys were guarding Tyus Jones and Sabonis dropped to the rim when no offensive player did, I would muse that the Pacers did neither. That’s two possessions in a row where talking would have gone a long way. Defensive communication needs to be improved on the second unit.

There you have it, the full 12-0 run. Bogdanovic finally stopped it with a layup on the next possession, but the bleeding had already become too much. Between communication issues, some tough finishes from Derrick Rose, ball-watching, and some slow help-side rotations, it’s hard to pinpoint one thing that made this run happen, but a bunch of little things would have had a big impact.

Indiana’s second unit has been solid this season, but this stretch was a huge blemish on their play in 2018-19. Thankfully, most of the things that went wrong for them are easy to clean up. Hopefully, they can be corrected moving forward.

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.