Four Lessons For The Sixers In Guarding Trae Young
Four Lessons For The Sixers In Guarding Trae Young
He’s going to get his, but here are four things the Sixers can do to limit the damage.
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Even though the Knicks’ attempts at stopping Trae Young were ill-fated, the Sixers will still have the benefit of studying their various tactics on both ends of the floor to help them better develop a game plan heading into their second round series. Here in this piece, I’ll pinpoint four lessons the Sixers can learn from the Knicks’ failed attempts, and what the Sixers’ personnel might allow them to do differently.
Lesson 1: Don’t use deep drop coverages
This is the clearest lesson that the Sixers can learn from the Knicks, especially considering the fact that the Knicks self-corrected as the series went on -- in Game 1 especially, the Knicks came out using deep drop coverages in the pick and roll, and Young simply carved them up.
The Sixers learned this lesson in last year’s playoffs, as well. When you give All-Stars like Kemba Walker and Jayson Tatum a wide open floor to get into floaters and pull-ups with ease, they will inevitably find a rhythm and tear your defense to shreds. The same happened with Young against the Knicks in the early stages of this series. Young is simply too dynamic to be given this amount of space.
If you are going to turn to a drop coverage (in favor of more aggressive coverages), you have to at least be higher up than the Knicks were in the beginning of the series. Take these plays from games 3 and 5, for example. Julius Randle and Nerlens Noel are much higher up than they were at the beginning of the series, and they’re able to force turnovers on both of these plays.
Again, the lesson here, which the Knicks proved in real time: avoid deep drop coverages at all costs.
Lesson 2: If you’re going to blitz, do it properly
As the Knicks transitioned out of their deep drop coverages, one of the things they tried was blitzing and hard hedging on pick and rolls. The results were hit or miss, and dependent entirely on their execution. For example, sometimes they swarmed Trae and forced turnovers:
Other times, their big men didn’t blitz hard enough, and allowed for Young to get off easy pocket passes to his roll man.
Here’s the key point I’d like to make, though: I think the Sixers are far better equipped than the Knicks were to blitz Young, and I think they should make it a major part of their scheme. For starters, the Sixers have much more size than the Knicks, making for tougher passes out of those situations -- he’s able to get those passes over and around Reggie Bullock and Julius Randle, but I’d like to see him try to get them over and around Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid -- but also, the Sixers have rangy defenders who are able to cover ground off the ball in case the passes do get out.
Take these two plays for example. In the first clip, R.J. Barrett fails to rotate to take away the pass to Kevin Huerter, and it results in an open 3. In the second clip, not only is Matisse Thybulle properly rotated onto John Collins, but he also covers enough ground to steal the long pass into the corner.
The difference in personnel, in my opinion, makes blitzing a far more valid option for the Sixers than the Knicks. With Simmons and Embiid or Dwight Howard blowing up the screens, and Matisse Thybulle and Danny Green patrolling the weak side, it’s a much more difficult situation for Young.
Blitzing is inherently a high-risk, high-reward endeavor -- the Knicks’ struggles with that plan illustrate that -- but I think the Sixers should make it a major part of their game plan against Young, especially when he gets hot. If nothing else, it gets the ball out of his hands.
Lesson 3: If you put size on Trae, prepare for more isolations
This lesson comes courtesy of a great article that Seth Partnow wrote in The Athletic. In it, he found a very interesting trend: as the Knicks shifted bigger defenders onto Young, the fewer pick and rolls he ran -- opting instead for isolations. While he ran an average of 52 pick and rolls in Games 1 and 2, he ran just 36 pick and rolls in Game 3 as the Knicks began putting bigger defenders onto him. This may also have something to do with New York starting to throw more aggressive coverages at him, but that drop off is massive, and the size correlation is there nonetheless.
It’s possible that the following trend unfolds in the Sixers’ series: Simmons succeeds in blowing up Young’s ball screens with blitzes or hedges, so Young instead opts to take him one-on-one without a ball screen with regularity.
With all due respect to Simmons’ one-on-one defensive skills, it is simply incredibly hard to fully contain a player as quick as Young with that height differential. Young will be able to get into his herky-jerky, stop-and-start game, and inevitably get by Simmons occasionally and draw fouls.
I am not necessarily saying this is something the Sixers should fear. If the Hawks want to turn their offense into a one-on-one battle between Young and Simmons, the Sixers will take that. I’m merely saying that the Sixers should be prepared for this dynamic. The numbers show that Young will go into isolations when you put size onto him, and he will surely get the better of Simmons and others on occasion.
Lesson 4: Find some way to involve him on defense
Far and away the Knicks’ biggest failure in their series was their inability to find ways to punish Young on the defensive end. Young, for the most part, was able to hide on players like Reggie Bullock, far away from the action. When the Knicks did try to involve Young in the action, players like Bullock were unable to punish him in any meaningful way.
“Attack Trae Young”
I heard @JCMacriNBA postgame discuss lacking the personnel to do so. When Reggie Bullock is in, I think he’s absolutely correct. Out of a timeout, NYK runs a play to do just that, but Reggie simply lacks the off-the-dribble juice to make anything happen. pic.twitter.com/Nc9FRGmgmo— Rit Holtzman (@benjy43) May 31, 2021
My guess is that Young will come out guarding Danny Green against the Sixers. The Sixers should run a ton of pick and roll for Simmons and Tobias Harris involving Young. This play (“12”), for example, which they ran while JJ Redick was here, should make a comeback. Force Young to make a decision between switching onto Simmons or fighting through a screen to stay glued to Green or Curry.
Outside of trying to get Young switched onto Simmons or Harris, the Sixers should also run tons of action that forces Young to chase shooters like Green or Curry through mazes of screens. If absolutely nothing else, you have to force Young to run around and tire himself on that end of the floor. The Knicks were completely unable to do so, and it inevitably came back to bite them.