The Luis Scola Problem

In the modern NBA, you want your power forward to do 2 of 3 things: shoot 3's, post up and play defense/rebound. They usually exist on a continuum: guys who shoot 3's tend to struggle with interior play (posting up and playing defense) while big men who operate near the basket can't offer the type of floor spacing that stretch 4's provide.

The problem with Luis Scola is that, at this stage of his career, he doesn't give you any of those things. At 6'9 245, he doesn't have a huge size advantage over the 4's who defend him and at 34, he no longer has the quickness and foot speed to create space for himself as a face-up player. He can't create shots for himself against quality competition, his shooting range is strictly at 20 feet and he's not much of a defensive player.

Line-ups with Scola in them are the worst of both worlds. They can't bully smaller line-ups by scoring around the rim, they don't space the floor enough to allow the guards to slash at the basket and they don't play much defense either. If Indiana is getting bullied on the glass and can't protect the paint when Scola is in, they might as well play Chris Copeland and open up the floor on offense.

Take a look at Scola's stat-line tonight. He played 27 minutes and had only 5 rebounds, which is a problem when the Pacers were -17 in rebounding margin. He had 5 personal fouls, which tells you that he couldn't move his feet quick enough to protect the rim and cut off dribble penetration. And while he had 12 points, he was 5-11 from the floor, mostly on open shots that the Wizards were prepared to give up.

Scola was getting wide-open mid-range jumpers all night off the pick-and-pop - if he could take 2-3 steps further back and hit 3's, Washington would have to switch up its defensive strategy. That, in turn, would open up more room for Paul George and Lance Stephenson to get into the lane. Basically, Scola has all of Copeland's negatives on defense and the boards without his positives at the three-point line.

All of this was obvious in his last season with the Phoenix Suns, where he put up average numbers - 13 points and 6 boards on 47% shooting - and played zero defense on an awful team. This wasn't a guy whose profile screamed that he needed to be on a contending team. I'll never understand why the Pacers thought they needed to give up a ransom (a future 1, Miles Plumlee and Gerald Green) for a poor man's David West.

That's the other thing - when you are a contending team, you don't want your backups to replicate the strengths and weaknesses of your starters. You want be able to go to your bench and play a different style, which allows you more flexibility to match up with different types of teams over multiple seven-game series. With Scola and West, Indiana is a slow two-post offense for all 48 minutes.

Going forward, you would expect Vogel to give Copeland more minutes at Scola's expense, which is exactly what he did in their first-round series against the Hawks. It's amazing to watch the Pacers make the same mistakes over and over without ever seeming to learn from them, but what would really worry me if I was an Indiana fan was the thought process that brought Scola on board in the first place.

Top 5 SF's in 2015

At RealGM, our position-by-position series continues with a look at the best SF's coming back to school.

A Learning Experience

Perception can be a funny thing. Because Dwight Howard and James Harden have been in the public eye for so long as integral parts of good teams, the Houston Rockets don’t feel nearly as fresh as the Portland Trail Blazers, who emerged this season to become one of the surprise teams of the NBA. 

Yet take a look at this:

Damian Lillard - 23
Wesley Matthews - 27
Nic Batum - 25
LaMarcus Aldridge - 28
Robin Lopez - 25

Patrick Beverley - 25
James Harden - 24
Chandler Parsons - 25
Terrence Jones - 22
Dwight Howard - 28

The average age of the Houston and Portland starters is almost exactly identical. They are two of the youngest teams in the playoffs. Dwight is a 10-year veteran, but Harden is the only other one of the Rockets starters who isn’t on a rookie contract.

When you look at Houston closely, they have all the hallmarks of a young team. They are cocky, they have a tendency to rely on their talent over their execution and they cut a ton of corners on the defensive side of the ball. Harden, Parsons and Jones should all be much better defensive players than they are. Harden may never be a stopper, but it’s not like he’s Steve Nash. There’s no reason for him to be a defensive sieve.

The Rockets are as talented as any team in the NBA, but they are still really young. A few years ago, when I first started covering the NBA, I wouldn’t have thought their age was that big a deal. Either they can play or they can’t - all this talk about “NBA experience” was just narrative, as the kids like to say.

But now that I’m a little bit older, I’m starting to see that it’s not the NBA experience that matters as much as life experience. I was 22 when I first started this job and now I’m 26 and you view the world a lot differently at 26 than you do at 22. I wouldn’t say that I view the sport of basketball all that differently, but my worldview trickles into my coverage of the sport in a million different ways.

The Rockets loss to the Blazers for a million different reasons - that’s what happens in a series as closely contested as this one was. Going into next season, they aren’t going to want to be in the position they were this year. That means becoming better defensively, valuing possessions more and taking every game in the regular season seriously - you don’t want to play a 5 in the first round when you could have been playing a 7 or a 8.

That’s part of the maturation process of a young team and it’s a step that can’t really be skipped. There’s a reason that young teams don’t win a championship in their first year together, no matter how much talent they have, and it’s not “narrative”. Portland, which had the 16th rated defense in the NBA in the regular season, will experience those lessons out soon enough.

That’s what the NBA playoffs are all about - every flaw in a team will eventually be exposed. For the Houston Rockets, you can chalk this loss up as a learning experience. What they learn from it will ultimately depend on them, but if this team does end up winning a championship, they will be able to point back to this series as the first step in that journey.

Top 5 SG's in 2015

At RealGM, the next in a position-by-position look at the best NBA prospects coming back to school in 2015.

Scott Brooks Made An Adjustment

After four straight playoff runs with the same starting line-up no matter what the situation, Scott Brooks finally made an adjustment before Game 6, moving Caron Butler in for Thabo Sefolosha. Kendrick Perkins has been the lightning rod for most of the criticism, but in his own way, Sefolosha has been just as big a drag on the Oklahoma City Thunder offense. On Thursday, we saw what it looked like without him.

Butler is hardly a world-beater, but he is a perimeter player who can shoot 3’s and put the ball on the floor, two things Sefolosha has never been great at. When you have him, Perkins and Serge Ibaka in the line-up, that’s two guys who can’t threaten you off the ball and three guys who can’t create their own shot. That, in turn, puts a tremendous amount of pressure on Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook.

Westbrook gets criticized for some of the shots he takes, but a lot of times there’s no other option on the floor. The Thunder starters play in no space and there aren’t many options when the shot clock starts going down. Combine that with Brooks’ rather unimaginative play-calling and you have a situation where Durant and Westbrook have to force up shots, even when they don’t have anything.

That one switch in the line-up opened up everything for OKC. For the first time in the series, they got out to the early lead, opening up on a 14-8 run and never looking back from there. With Butler and Ibaka spotting up and Perkins hanging around the basket, there was enough space for Westbrook and Durant to create offense without having 2-3 Memphis defenders draped all over them.

Sefolosha is a very good perimeter defender, but it’s not like Westbrook and Durant can’t handle tough assignments. Westbrook did just as good a job on Conley as Sefolosha - you don’t need to hide him on defense, that’s part of what makes him a great player. Westbrook is 6’3 with a 6’8 wingspan and Durant is 6’11 with a 7’4 wingspan and they are both elite athletes - the SG next to them doesn’t need to be a great defender.

With Sefolosha a free agent this summer, expect to see Jeremy Lamb in the starting line-up for OKC next season. While Lamb is a much better player than Caron Butler, there’s only so much you can expect from Scott Brooks at once. He’s a great athlete in his own right, he’s an elite shooter and he’s capable of attacking a close-out - Westbrook/Lamb/KD with Reggie Jackson off the bench is going to absolutely destroy people.

The Thunder brought in Sefolosha to match-up with Kobe Bryant, but the days of a Western Conference contender building their team around matching up with the LA Lakers have come and gone. Sefolosha is a pair of training wheels OKC no longer needs. The only real question is how much better they could have been if Brooks had taken them off 2-3 years ago.

The Pacers New Identity

After once again getting out to a slow start against the Atlanta Hawks with their normal line-up, the Indiana Pacers went small halfway through the first quarter, putting Chris Copeland in for Roy Hibbert. In a matter of minutes, they made up a 15-5 deficit, taking control of the game and the series. The Hawks didn’t have an answer for Lance Stephenson and they didn’t have an answer for Paul George.

Stephenson finished with 21 points, 9 rebounds and 1 assist on 7-13 shooting while George chipped in 24 points, 8 rebounds and 3 assists on 7-18 shooting. The Pacers have built their identity around their big men, but when they go small, there are very few teams in the NBA who can match-up with their two young wing players and the Hawks are not one of those teams.

Frank Vogel was trying to put as much shooting and athleticism around Stephenson and George as possible, which meant a few drastic changes to his normal rotation. There was very little Roy Hibbert and there was no Luis Scola and no Evan Turner. All three will still be needed at various points in the playoffs if Indiana can slip past Atlanta, but there’s not much use for them in Game 7.

There isn’t a true center for Hibbert to match up with on the Hawks roster, while Scola and Turner are subpar athletes who can’t shoot 3’s. When those two are in the game, the ball naturally winds up in their hands, since the defense doesn’t have to guard them out to the three-point line. On the other side of the floor, neither one can get out and guard the Hawks shooters 25+ feet from the basket.

That’s the way forward for Indiana, no matter what happens in these playoffs. Hibbert is who he is and David West is starting to slow down - George and Stephenson should be the future of this franchise. That’s two elite athletes who can create their own shot, run point, shoot from deep, crash the glass and defend multiple position on the perimeter. They are two of the most complete guards in the NBA and they are only 23.

George is already locked up to a max contract, but because Stephenson was a second round pick in 2010, he will be an unrestricted free agent this summer. You don’t see an under-25 starter who can contribute on both sides of the ball enter free agency that often, which will make Stephenson one of the most interesting players on the market. If I was Indiana, I would do whatever it takes to keep him.

As long as you have Stephenson and George together, you can move everyone also around them. Let those two guys dominate the ball and play in space and they will create a good offense. I would use them like Wade and LeBron - always have one of the two on the floor to run offense through. And just like Wade and LeBron, they can be the cornerstones on offense and defense.

That’s what has to happen in Game 7 - the Hawks don’t have the horses to run with those two. If Kyle Korver is on either one of them, give them the ball and let them create in space. If they have to move him on George Hill, not only have you opened up Hill’s offense, that also means Jeff Teague has to cross-switch on either George or Stephenson. Get him in early foul trouble and the game is over.

Spin it forward and it’s the same thing in the next round. John Wall and Bradley Beal are used to being the two most athletic players on the floor - all of a sudden, they are playing against guys who are much bigger than them and just as athletic. And while Washington had to win the lottery twice to get their star guards, Indiana got two potential All-NBA players with the No. 10 and No. 40 picks in 2010.

Keep Stephenson and George together and Indiana will have an elite team for many years to come. But if they let Lance walk and give Turner some of his money instead, the slide that began in the middle of this season might be a sign of things to come.

Stretch 4's and Floor Spacing

At RealGM, a look at the key to the Hawks-Pacers series.