2H, maybe due to injury, Nick Nurse stopped sending Joel Embiid to guard Brunson screens.
He pivoted to something fascinating – sending whichever wing was on Josh Hart’s side of the floor to guard the screen – Oubre here.
Quick thread on a fascinating tactical battle in the second half last night in how Philly was guarding Brunson/5 pick and rolls: pic.twitter.com/D6TFr5kGHB
— Rit Holtzman (@BenRitholtzNBA) April 21, 2024
by fultzacl
1 Comment
Great thread and thanks for posting. I’m not 100% convinced it was Joel’s injury alone that prompted this change. I think Nurse wants to show them different looks throughout the game/series to force them to think in realtime, thus slowing them down just a step. Nurse is famous for employing weird zone schemes in the playoffs, often to great success. For instance, I remember during Raps series against Bucks in 2019, he used almost the exact same scheme to bring help off of Bledsoe, thus giving a struggling Bledsoe some wide open 3pt looks in exchange for frustrating Giannis and Middleton. Game 1 Knicks were also killing us on the offensive glass–parking Embiid in the paint could ostensibly give us better chances for defensive boards and mitigate this advance.
Ultimately, Josh hart caught fire in the last 3 mins and sealed our fate. But this also shows that Nurse’s schemes very much dictated NY’s half court offense. We dared Josh Hart to beat us from deep after he’d been struggling all game and unfortunately he did it: hats off to him/them. I left game 1 thoroughly impressed by Nick Nurse and think he mostly danced circles around Thibs, which is maybe the most encouraging thing to come out of this game. Give up 15% fewer offensive boards and we win comfortably.