Mike Conley Just Destroyed The Denver Nuggets…

Mike Conley Just Destroyed The Denver Nuggets…

Welcome to another hows and growls breakdown and today we’re talking about how Minnesota’s pick and roll offense shredded Denver’s defense to grab a huge win and take back the first seed in the west and that all starts with marike connley the Wolves were dominant on both ends throughout this game particularly

In the first half but the thing that really stood out to me was how they twisted up Denver’s defense with their pick and roll and ball screening actions once it was obvious that Denver wasn’t going to be able to guard Minnesota there they were able to lean on their

Staunch defense to propel them to a pretty easy win in the end and again if we are talking ball screen dominance we’re talking Mike Connelly at the controls so let’s take a look at how he wrecked Denver’s defense with the help of his teammates in this game so we can

Start with some pretty simple stuff here basic double drag High pick and roll Conley comes off nzar drifts here as a shooting and a scoring threat so Reggie Jackson can’t slide over to help in on go Conley draws joic toward him on the drive so go can slip in behind the

Coverage and catch that lob finish nothing groundbreaking there but right away you could kind of tell the Nuggets weren’t going to have any answers for Minnesota’s pick and roll game and I love the way that Conley is able to manipulate those same actions into different results it’s that same double

Drag action here you see Denver are switching it again with mpj onto Nas and Gordon onto the ball but in that switch this Gap opens up so Jackson has to come over in help when Conley goes through that Gap and now Jackson’s man is open in the corner for the three ball when

You have two bigs who can punish defenses in ball screen like Nar Reed and Rudy go and then you have Conley pulling the levers on it all it doesn’t take much for a defense to get muddled up for a second and Minnesota were really executing when that happened in

This game you see here they set up for their empty corner pick and roll action with connley and go but connley pulls Reed into it and then they go into that flare action Reed flares out into the slot go steps up to set the screen the

Defense is a fraction late to figure it all out and Reed has an advantage to the rim where he can get the bucket and the foul and really the reason that Conley is so fantastic in pick and roll is how quickly he reads and reacts to the defensive coverage on this possession

Denver are hedging out here with Jordan pushing up so Reed slips the screen Conley hits the pocket pass Jackson needs to rotate off the corner Denver are helping the helper like they’re supposed to but Reed makes the right pass to keep them in rotation mpj has to

Dig down and now the corner man is the final pass for an open look so Conley is the first Domino here but it’s a constant game of reading the defense and making the right pass that the Wolves played so well in this game and when Conley and his team knew that Denver

Couldn’t guard these ball screen actions they started mixing in their little variation I love this action they run here when Conley hands the ball off and Gober ghost that first ball screen and flows into a pin down here for connley to Pivot back off of it’s all designed to

Get into that empty Corner action they love where DeAndre Jordan is stuck here in between the ball and the roll man and in the end he’s caught in no man’s land for a second too long and Conley can get to his floater game so they run that in

The corner there but they can also get to that same action in the middle of the floor and find similar profit again Conley flips it back to jmac goar comes and sets this away screen now for connley Gober is so good at reversing those screen so Brown is hung up on it

Here and connley is in space so DJ has to step up connley can drop that pass off to go when he rolls down the middle of the lane and they get an easy bucket so you put put the defense in a bind in the corner by sticking the big man

Between the two scorers and you crumble the defense in the middle by having the big man have to step up to take away Conley’s pullup three both of those results are coming off the same pre ball screen action and now Conley uses the threat of the r man to create for others

They enter the empty Corner stuff again but now Jackson is coming all the way over to be the third defender in it so Conley goes to the opposite side nille Alexander Walker comes and sets this pin in screen and Jordan mclin hasn’t missed the corner 3 for 6 months

So you know that’s going in so all of a sudden that Twan game that Denver has struggle with on one side of the floor turns into a wide open Corner three on the other side of the floor that’s how you manipulate the defense in these ball screening actions so now the defense has

To react to it it’s the same empty Corner action it’s that same heavy help here from Jackson but this time they make sure the corner is covered up in fact they overcommit Jackson starts backpedaling out there and everyone forgets the big French dude standing in the middle of the paint it’s a slick

Pass through traffic it’s an easy finish and it’s a really wonderful manipulation of the defense again from Mike Conley and above all the reason that Conley can Force Defenders to Panic or overcommit in any of these situations is because he’s a legitimate knockdown shooter coming off a ball screen if the defense

Doesn’t come up to touch on those screens he’s going to walk into jumpers and he’s currently shooting 44.5% on pull-up threes which is the highest in the league of any player attempting at least two per game he made another four of them in this game which twisted up Denver defense even further

As they tried to Grapple with his shooting his playmaking and his ability to navigate ball screen actions all night long it was another master class from Minnesota’s Mastermind point guard and when you start thinking about playoff X factors Conley’s ability to have kns like this on a semi-regular

Basis certainly has to come into that line of thinking thanks again for watching hows and GRS Please Subscribe for more oh

He’s still got it.