The Subs Aren't Scrubs
By Chris Glennon
The NBA playoffs are now in their third week, and I'm already fed up with the defensive strategies, or lack thereof, being schemed up by the so-called brilliant minds of NBA coaches.
NBA coaches design plays on offense to try to confuse the defense, but at the end of the day, the majority of a good team's offensive sets are run through one player. That's just the nature of the game.
Take the Los Angeles Lakers, for example. Everyone knows their offense is run through Kobe Bryant, so defenses try to game plan to stop him. Some double-team him, while others will put their best defender on him and only bring help when it is needed. Double-teaming a star player can be an effective strategy, just not when done for the entire game.
On Saturday night in Game 7 of the first round of the Western Conference playoffs, the Denver Nuggets decided to double-team Kobe any time he had the ball; if he was 20 feet away with his back to the basket, you could be sure that a second Nugget would be close by. I'm not saying that this is an awful idea, as Kobe is high on the list of greatest players of all time, but the Nuggets were forgetting about the other four Lakers on the court. Steve Blake was left open time and time again to shoot uncontested threes. He shot 6. He made 5. The Nuggets lost by 9. You do the math.
What a coach can't do is allow a role player on a team to turn into a star. George Karl, the Nuggets head coach, allowed this to happen. Blake averaged 5.2 points during the regular season and shot 33 percent from three-point range. During the series, he shot over 50 percent from beyond the arc and exploded in Game 7 for 19 points to almost single handedly put the last nail in the Nuggets' coffin. Give Blake credit, he had to make the shots, but the Nuggets rarely had a defender within 10 feet of him when he caught the ball.
Every one of the remaining eight teams in the playoffs had an all-star this year, and five of them had more than one. If these teams want to win the championship, they can't blindly double-team the opposing team's star(s). The other players are in the NBA for a reason. They will knock down uncontested jumpers all night long if left open.
While I am partial to college basketball and the one and done format, the structure of the NBA playoffs does offer its own benefits. For nearly two months we get to see some of the best athletes in the world battle it out with one another, but I only ask one thing: Please, don't leave Steve open.
Chris Glennon is an undeclared freshman and editor of the Sports section.