Odlican post s reddita vezan uz razbijacinu Portlanda i Lillarda.
Gentry destroyed Stotts and this needs to be talked about more.
Gentry designed the Pelican defense to trap ball screens, which severely hindered Lillard and McCollum. The high ball trap forced the Portland guards to pass out and made someone else beat the Pelicans. The Pelicans did a great job switching back and when the switching was slow, AD was able to fill the cracks of the defense as an elite rim protector. When the they chose not to attack the rim with AD roaming, the Pelican chose where the ball ended up by giving Aminu 3-pointers, which he actually hit at a decent clip in game 4 but not for the series.
It was an amazing defensive game plan that Stotts was never able to get his team to adjust to. Scotts could have added multiple outlets from the trap and played more guards but he was never able to get his players to execute an efficient response. Instead, Portland generated offense through other means like off-ball screens, through the post, and Iso. While these were able to keep their offense from becoming anemic (McCollum even drove a good offensive performance in Game 4), Gentry’s defensive scheme never let Portland explode offensively as a team and especially Lillard.
In particular, McCollum was able to recover more in the series since he isn’t as reliant on high ball screens and wasn't guarded by Holiday as much, but Lillard, as the primary ball handler, was not able to recover as easily. He doesn’t use off-ball screens as much as McCollum, and gets much of his offense through ball screens and Iso. The trap defense took away the ball screen offense, and Holiday limited Lillard’s Iso offense when matched up. Speaking of Pelican players, we should give credit to the them (Mostly Holiday and AD) for there execution of the defensive scheme, but the scheme was designed perfectly for the Portland offense, which heavily relies on their two guards to initiate and perfectly for defensive skill-set of the Pelicans.
I don’t want to make this any longer so I’m gonna let other people tackle Pelicans offense vs Trailblazers defense.
In summary, Gentry deserves a ton a credit for the Pelicans’ performance and Stotts deserves a lot of criticism for the Trailblazers’ performance.
Sada je jos veca steta sto se Rođo ozlijedio, s njim su protiv Warriorsima mogli napraviti darmar, mislim da bi s njim imali legit sansu za prolaz.
