New Orleans Hornets Breakdown

[Erick Blasco]

Paul is clearly one of the league’s elite point guards, but there are a few disturbing trends to his game that prevent him from capturing the top spot. For starters, Paul plays too many games in perpetual cruise-control and takes too many shortcuts, as he did against the Knicks.

 

To wit:

• Paul is the maestro of New Orleans’ attack, but he literally does nothing on offense without the ball in his hands. No cutting, no screening, no repositioning. The one screen he was asked to set was a total whiff. Of course balancing the court is a primary responsibility of a guard, but Paul would simply give the ball up and lounge around totally uninvolved in any play he wasn't a direct part of.
• Worse, there were at least two transition possessions where Paul would fail to balance the court and either lunge at the ball-handler in a desperate attempt for a steal, or not get back in time preventing Knicks run outs.
• One on inbounds play, Paul nonchalantly lounged in the backcourt and tried to grab the pass with one hand, nearly allowing Raymond Felton to steal the ball.
• Paul either arrived late or was completely ineffective on three baseline rotations. Twice his head was turned away from the ball, and the third time he was in position but jumped out of the way of a rolling Amar’e Stoudemire.
• Paul committed two obvious flops—one on an attempted charge in which the Knicks player barely made contact with him, and one on a late game three in which he feigned contact from Raymond Felton. Perhaps more legitimate attempts at playing basketball would have resulted in a defensive stop and a made three.
• Paul’s on-ball defense is totally reactionary—except when he’s reaching in trying to pick up steals. Plus, he didn’t fight through screens when asked to go over the top, perpetually finding himself a step behind Felton all game long. In fact, despite his gaudy steals totals, his on-ball defense is well below Rajon Rondo and Deron Williams.
• Paul also went under several screens allowing Felton to make open jumpers, particularly early in the game. However, this was most likely a gameplan decision rather than poor defense.
• Paul tends to overhelp on defense, following off-ball cutters for steal possibilities. This tendency also finds him near the basket where he gets to pick up cheap rebounds, though he is in fact an exceptional rebounder for a guard. On one possession he successfully boxed out the much taller Landry Fields, held his position, and secured the rebound in textbook fashion.
• Paul’s a clever finisher and he’s an excellent mid-range pull-up jump shooter, but he’s unwilling to get all the way to the basket, particularly this year compared to seasons past.

On the plus side, few players are gifted with Paul’s anticipatory skills. Throughout the game, Paul was able to anticipate the movements of both friend and foe, orchestrating Knicks defensive movements with his eyes, and dropping passes in one direction while looking another.

 

Indeed, Paul’s court vision is extraordinary, as is his ability to deliver the ball.

 

Paul’s a tough post defender because of his strength and his low center of gravity, though in mismatches he can be shot over. Still, Paul’s no runt defending the box.

 

He also has the fastest hands in the league, plays passing lanes better than all, and is remarkable at picking off entry passes while defending the ball handler.

 

Paul’s improved his shooting to the point where he’s dangerous if defenders simply go under screens. He’s excellent pulling up at the elbow out to 20-feet, and is an extremely accurate open shooter.

 

This aspect makes him a lethal screen/roll player as there is no easy way to defend him. The Knicks spent most of the first half sending Paul away from screens with the screen defender sagging off. This resulted in numerous made open jumpers for Jason Smith.

 

In the second half, aside from one instance of Felton cheating under a screen and allowing a made three, Felton chased Paul over the tops of screens with Stoudemire zoning the area, effectively neutralizing most of New Orleans’ screen/roll game. It should be added that Felton did an excellent job of fighting over said screens preventing easy passes to Emeka Okafor, and that more difficult passes to Okafor were simply dropped.

 

This is why Paul had modest success with screen/rolls in the first half, with the Hornets making three of their five baskets as a direct result of screen/rolls (Paul shooting; Paul passing to the screen-setter, cutter, or spot-up shooter; or direct continuity coming as a result of the screen/roll) leading to eight points on six possessions, a successful ratio.

 

However, Paul’s screen/roll game was bottled up in the second half with the Hornets only shooting 2-5 and registering seven points on nine possessions. Factoring three misses on Paul isolations, and the Hornets scored only seven points on 12 second half possessions where Paul was asked to generate offense, a deplorable number.

 

For sure, some of the poor numbers can be attributed to his teammates—Okafor’s bad hands, missed jumpers, etc, but too often Paul would come off the screen and instead of blitzing the screen defender, Paul would pull up and settle for 15 foot fadeaways.

 

While other elite point guards will have bad games—Deron Williams, Rajon Rondo, Steve Nash—how many times will those players have bad games because they settled, took short cuts, and were genuinely uninvolved in the game at hand? Paul takes too many games off, and the Hornets aren’t good enough to compensate when he does. But when he puts up numbers like his box score against the Knicks—4-9 FG, 2-3 3FG, 7-7 FT, 4 REB, 10 AST, 3 STL, 2 TO, 17 PTS—there’s almost no room for criticism by advanced stat junkies who look at his game as nearly flawlessly efficient.

 

Paul’s laziness, his inability to do anything off the ball, and his all hands-no feet defense prevent him from maximizing the Hornets into an elite team—and has me favor Deron Williams as my point guard of choice.

 

http://www.atthehive.com/2010/12/6/1858932/new-orleans-hornets-breakdown-where-is-chris-pauls-fire

[Abro]

Maybe this should be called the Chris Paul breakdown?

[Erick Blasco]

Maybe this should be called the Chris Paul breakdown?

 

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