Improving the Half Court Offense

Last season the Suns had the best offense in the NBA by every category. Yet they would go through periods when they were not very effective. The Suns biggest problen is that they score in spurts but they wwould go through periods when it seems like they get shut down and give up big runs. 3rd quarter in Game 6 of the Spurs series was an unmitigated disaster.

The Suns offense stagnates when they are not getting good shots in their early offense. They get too predictable and lacked the patience to get open shots. In particular, the longer the Suns are very poor with the clock running out especially in the last four seconds of the clock: (stats are from http://www.82games.com/0607/0607PHO3.HTM

Suns 21+ seconds: 9% of shots and 40.2% shooting
Spurs 21+ seconds: 16% of shots and 46.5% shooting

During the regular season that's not terribly important, but in the playoffs where the refs let so many fouls go without being called and thus delaying shots, this is fatal.

One of the biggest problems of the Spurs series was the lack of productivity from Barbosa. Whether it was due to his injury or the Spurs defense, without his offense coming off the bench, the Suns could not sustain momentum. But beyond that, the Suns offense was too streaky and too vulnerable to physical defense. But this coming year they should become better. One obvious reason will be Hill.

During the Spurs series, Bowen was moved over to cover Nash because the Spurs did not fear Jones and Bell is not a threat unless left open. This meant the Spurs could use a weak defender like Finley on Jones with Parker available to deal with Bell.

Finley cannot guard Hill and Manu Ginobili would struggle. The Suns never could exploit Finley's defense (with his slow foot speed) because Jones is strictly a catch and shoot guy. Hill would just chew Finley up and Parker is just too small to deal with Hill. In other words, Bowen has to cover Hill.

Bowen on Hill would mean putting Parker on Nash, which is not nearly as effective. But even that is hard to sustain once Barbosa (the Brazilian Blur) comes it, because it means Finley or Manu will have to deal with the Blur.

Against the small ball Suns, this presents some serious problems for the Spurs. Assuming Oberto or Elson are put on Amare, they either leave Amare alone at the elbow or come out to guard him. But this leaves Duncan guarding Marion or (as is more likely) just leaving Marion unguarded.

In the Suns big ball lineup, Marion was guarded by a wing or Parker and often does not produce much offense. But against a small ball lineup by the Suns the Spurs would have little choice but to leave Marion uncovered.

The most obvious way to exploit Marion being left open is to do "drive and dump" plays. In those cases, when Duncan comes out of the inside circle to defense the man attacking the basket. Marion cuts in from the weak side for a dump pass and a jam. Even if the path is not completely open to the basket, Marion is pretty good at very short jump shots.

Marion is not a good three point shooter, but he is "less bad" when left wide open in the corner. If he hits even a moderate percentage of threes to force opponents to come out to guard him, it will force opponents to go small.

Some of the time the Suns will go to a lineup with Amare and Boris. My guess is that this year D'Antoni will use Boris exclusively at center and move Amre to PF in place of Marion. Diaw is not the finisher that Amare is, but would be vastly more effective at doing dump passes off the pick and roll. For the Spurs big defense, it would mean either Duncn comes out to guard Diaw or it forces them to use Duncan to guard Stoudemire and risk foul trouble.

If the Spurs drop back into a zone, the Suns are still the best three point shooting team in the NBA. With Diaw as high post center, he has the tools for tearing zones up with backdoor passes and open jumpers from the foul line..

In the end, the goal for the Suns is to force their opponent to go small. In the Spurs series they failed to do that. Adding Hill may change that dynamic even if he does not have a big series scoring. The Spurs defense is designed to take away primary offensive options, but the Suns may have more options than ever.