HOOPSWORLD | Basketball News & NBA Rumors

Each week HOOPSWORLD NBA analyst and coach Anthony Macri opens his notebook and offers an assortment of observations on games, players, and teams from throughout the league. Coach Macri serves as a player development consultant for the Pro Training Center and Coach David Thorpe, working with a variety of NBA players on their skills and game understanding. The Coach’s Notebook appears on HOOPSWORLD every Thursday.

What we have, here, is a failure to anticipate…

Early in their Wednesday game with the Boston Celtics the San Antonio Spurs struggled mightily to play as a strong, solid defensive unit.  The team was inconsistent in terms of effort and their rotations were sloppy at best.  Spurs’ coach Gregg Popovich called an early timeout and proceeded to let his team know they were not performing to expectations.  The Spurs responded, at least to some degree, but that response was short-lived.

While the Spurs sport one the best records in the NBA, their late-game performance against the Celtics leaves much to be desired.  The problems they seem to be experiencing were no more evident than in a defensive possession against Boston with 1:43 remaining in regulation (and only 8 seconds left on the shot clock).  Down by two, San Antonio failed to anticipate defensively, and that allowed an eventual Ray Allen three-pointer to push the lead to five.

With less than 10 seconds remaining on the shot clock, a deep sideline inbound play means the Celtics will be looking to get only one or two passes prior to getting a shot off.  They could also attempt a dribble handoff, though in this situation many teams try to avoid bringing two defenders to the ball as any bottle-up can lead to a turnover out front.  San Antonio’s defensive gameplan is sound – they are switching every screen, attempting to prevent Boston from getting easy "primary looks" (shots coming directly off of screening actions).

{AUTHOR_BOX}However, Manu Ginobli gets stuck and does not rotate out as quickly as needed to Ray Allen, who has enough time to catch, gather and shoot.  In this situation, the switch cannot be this slow.  In fact, Manu should be cheating on the high side of screener Marquis Daniels so he can readily jump-switch and jam Allen coming off the screen.  This is a failure to anticipate the action—something that needs to happen in close games.

Without being on the floor, it is hard to know if a lack of communication between Ginobli and George Hill bears any of the blame.  Because Ginboli is involved in switching multiple screens on the play, he must rely on Hill’s verbal cues to know Allen is his next target.  With how focused Manu remains on Daniels, it seems at least possible that their communication on the play was not at the level it needs to be.

It would be easy to say this was just a well-executed play by the Celtics, chalk it up to getting simply outplayed, and move on.  However, these mistakes were typical of the kinds of issues the Spurs were experiencing early in the game, and ones they made in their game earlier this week against the New York Knicks. Despite their position atop the conference and league standings, San Antonio still makes fundamental errors on the defensive end of the floor.  If they truly expect to compete for a title this season, these kinds of deficiencies must be overcome.

Have questions for Coach Macri? Be sure and drop by HOOPSWORLD on Mondays at 2PM Eastern for the Coach’s weekly basketball chat!  You can also follow Coach Macri on Twitter @CoachMacri.