the primary objective of every offensive possession is to create and exploit mismatches.
if the mismatch already exists by default, call an iso and read and react to the help.
if it doesn't, run something to get a switch (and then iso) or a trap where the defense is forced to scramble and recover after passes are made.
the defense's job is therefore to hold the offense off from creating and exploiting a mismatch within ~18 seconds (after the ball crosses half court and before the shot clock expires).
as mentioned in my post about scram switching, being able to switch on a string as a defense is a huge advantage.
the los angeles lakers defense had this beauty of a possession against the minnesota timberwolves:
the play begins with malik beasley at the top running a pick and roll with naz reid. marc gasol comes out all the way to hard hedge as kentavious caldwell-pope goes under the screen and attempts to recover.
kcp can't recover in time for marc to switch back to reid though, and is forced to commit to a semi-trap of beasley on top to try and stall him:
then two things happen at once:
malik attempts to turn the corner on marc, who shuffles his feet and cuts off the drive beautifully.
reid rolls to the rim and gets bumped by dennis schröder on the way. this bump is super important because it wards off a potential open roll-man. even though the timberwolves successfully got a trap on top, they weren't able to leverage it to play 4-on-3 because there was no open release valve.
then come the two awesome switches:
as beasley starts to pull the ball back out to reset after unsuccessfully attempting to drive past marc, lebron james suddenly comes in from the corner and attacks the ball. he yells at marc to switch with him, which marc does (both of those dudes are incredibly intelligent defenders). notice how bron positions himself with his arms out between beasley and juan hernangomez so there's no passing lane to the corner during the switch. first mismatch negated.
as kcp peels off of his semi-trap, he starts to recover to reid (marc's original assignment on the original switch). but reid on kcp would be a mismatch as well. instead, kyle kuzma comes sliding into the lane to scram switch with kcp: kuz picks up reid, and kcp sprints to the weakside corner on jarrett culver. second mismatch negated.
marc finishes off the perfect defensive possession by cutting off another drive on the baseline and forcing juan to pick up his dribble in the corner with 7 seconds on the shot clock.
glorious!
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