I wrote an article recently about playoff myths -- things people think change in the playoffs, but in fact don't.
However, there's another piece to that puzzle. Perhaps there are things people don't think change in the playoffs, but in fact do.
I may have accidentally stumbled upon one in observing my two "home" teams, Atlanta and Portland, compete in the playoffs over the past two seasons. Watching the Hawks in particular, nearly every commentator has been shocked by how little ball movement their offense generates and how many times they end up isolating Joe Johnson while everybody else stands around and watches.
This complaint might sound familiar to folks in the Northwest, because it's not altogether different from what the Blazers do with Brandon Roy. Both teams' fan bases constantly complain about the lack of originality and shameless predictably inherent in such an attack.
The similarities don't end there. Both teams are coached by former players -- Mike Woodson for Atlanta and Nate McMillan for Portland -- with a no-nonsense, old-school mentality.
And both have been wildly successful with this system. In fact, if you look at the numbers, you wonder what everybody's upset about. Both Atlanta and Portland are far better offensive teams than people realize -- their slow pace, low turnover rate and monstrous offensive rebounding numbers mask their efficiency.
In the regular season, Atlanta played the league's fourth-slowest pace and the Blazers played the slowest, so their points-per-game numbers aren't reflective of how well they played at the offensive end. Neither are their shooting percentages: The Hawks were only 14th in true shooting percentage at 54.5 and the Blazers barely ahead of them at 54.7.
Yet if you look at the offensive efficiency standings, the two clubs had few peers. Atlanta, believe it or not, had the league's third-best offense this season at 108.9 points per 100 possessions, while the Blazers were eighth despite being wracked by injuries. This was actually just more of the same -- a season ago a healthier Portland team was second, while Atlanta (without the scoring of Jamal Crawford off the bench) was 10th.
It turns out the iso-heavy offense has some benefits. Though hard on the eyes, the "iso-Joe" and "iso-Brandon" attacks produce remarkably few turnovers. Since both Roy and Johnson are good ballhandlers and nothing technically precise was asked of the other players, Atlanta and Portland were first and second, respectively, in avoiding turnovers.
Additionally, perhaps because they knew when to time their runs to the board while Johnson and Roy created shots, both Atlanta and Portland landed in the top five in offensive rebound rate -- each grabbed 28.4 percent of missed shots.
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AP Photo/John Raoux
The Magic held Joe Johnson to 10 points in Game 1.
In other words, theirs is a volume strategy. The Hawks and Blazers might not take better shots than other teams, but they take a lot more of them. Over time, that gives them enough of an advantage to make them potent offensive squads overall.
So what's the problem?
Apparently, there isn't one … until Game 83. Remember when I was talking about things that change in the playoffs? One change is that these iso-heavy offenses apparently have a lot more trouble when opponents have time to game plan against them in a playoff series.
Take a look at the playoff results from these teams the past two seasons, and the conclusion is hard to ignore. If this happened in any one playoff series, we might be able to dismiss it as a short-term fluke. But the fact that it's happened six times in six series tells us that maybe something about isolation-heavy offenses doesn't function well in an environment in which opponents have several days to scout, game-plan and match up for this specific tactic.
We'll start with Portland. The Blazers were the second-best offense in 2008-09 in the regular season, and met the fourth-best defense from Houston in the first round. Based on the opponent, we would have expected some drop-off from the Blazers, yes, but among the 16 playoff teams, they were only eighth in offensive efficiency.
The Blazers were as successful as before at avoiding turnovers, but they couldn't make shots and couldn't get the misses. In particular, the Rockets eliminated their second shots, taking the league's top regular-season offensive rebounding team down to 11th among 16 playoff teams. Portland's TS percentage also dropped from eighth among 30 teams to 12th out of 16.
In 2009-10, Portland faced a much weaker defensive team in Phoenix, but basically the same thing happened. While some of this can be pinned on Roy's injury, the numerical changes were virtually identical to a year earlier -- they were just as good at avoiding turnovers, but missed a lot more shots and didn't rebound nearly as many of them.
Let's move on to Atlanta. In 2008-09 the Hawks played 11 playoff games, a larger sample than the Blazers have to offer, and seven of them were against a fairly average Miami defense (the other four, however, were against a robust Cleveland D).
The same thing happened that befell the Blazers: Atlanta stopped making shots. The Hawks had the second-worst TS percentage of any playoff team, and finished the postseason 13th in offensive efficiency.
This year, we're seeing the same movie. The Hawks have faced two very strong defenses, with Milwaukee ranking third in Defensive Efficiency and Orlando second. But while seven of their eight games were against the Bucks, Milwaukee was without perhaps its best defender in center Andrew Bogut.
Nonetheless, the results have been the same.
Atlanta, as the league's third-best offense, should at least be able to battle these defenses to a draw. But even before Tuesday's Game 1 implosion against Orlando, they were struggling. The Hawks can't make shots, ranking just 14th out of 16 teams in postseason TS percentage. While they've still been able to generate second shots (they lead all teams in playoff Offensive Rebound Rate) and have been somewhat successful at avoiding turnovers, the net result put the Hawks 11th among the 16 playoff teams in postseason Offensive Efficiency.
So what is it? Perhaps the Hawks and Blazers have just had some bad games against some pretty good defenses. But between the two, we've built up a 31-game sample showing that something more nefarious might be at work.
Obviously, this has important implications for Atlanta's Game 2 in Orlando on Thursday. Iso-Joe has had its moments; Game 4 of the 2008 Boston series, for instance, when Johnson single-handedly tore apart one of the best defensive teams in history. But in the aggregate, its failures have been far greater than its successes, and it's notable that the most similar offensive team has faced similar troubles.
Is there something about iso-heavy offenses that makes them vulnerable in the playoffs? We can't say it with certainty yet, but the case is building rapidly. The Hawks have three games left to show that Iso-Joe can be as effective in May as it is between November and April.
Let's try to elevate the level of discourse in this byeetch. Please
5/8/2010 7:50 PM