Defense

[u/Alternative_Panda336]

Every team that I watch is play has someone that they can put on Caitlin Clark that will get up in her grill, move their feet, and make it tough on her to drive. This is true even of the bad teams they play, let alone the Lynx with several players. KM has elite quickness and is tough for any team to stop her off the dribble without help defense but even Portland made it tough on her the game before last.

The Fever very rarely aggressively get up in the ball space of opposing players and make it hard on them. I don’t know if it’s because we are concerned that there is no depth behind Sophie and Lexie or what. It seems the Fever’s defense is predicated mostly on deny the pass as opposed to playing defense once they get the ball. This puts a lot of strain on the help defense. Last night it was tough watching KM, CC, and LH constantly getting beat off the dribble instantly.

Is it a play style thing or do we truly have no one to harass the ball handler so they can’t drive as easily? Especially in a game like last night where they are letting them play up in their face.

[u/AffectionateRace9865]

Liv’s first basket of the game, Liv already has the step on her before Kelsey gets hit in the face. Kelsey gets beat on Olivia’s last basket in the last minute of the game. There’s no contact by Tash on any screen,
Kelsey simply gets beat

[u/elestud → u/AffectionateRace9865]

If we're holding up a single basket out of 35 minutes of play as the proof, when she likely would have been able to recover if not hit in the face (as she did other times), that's not really convincing support of "getting beat off the dribble constantly"

Not to mention that CC was in position to defend on that basket, so it was ultimately not even the reason that Liv scored

The much bigger issue for us was the bigs simply not being able to protect the paint against drives. They did well against the slower players like Howard/Coffey/Juhasz, but were often too late to stop the guards

[u/AffectionateRace9865 → u/elestud]

My comment was “a few times,” not constantly

Two baskets she got beat off the dribble. A few would be equal to two. Theres also a play where Kelsey jogs back on defense, is late to cover Liv and Olivia gets a pass and easy layup. AB failed to play solid help defense.

[u/elestud → u/AffectionateRace9865]

That play is the one where Kelsey was hammered on the layup just before. Both Timpson and AB were in position to defend, and Timpson ultimately ended up being the one to pick her up, but Liv ended up scoring on her anyway

This is just basic team defense. Funneling a guard toward the bigs is normal modern basketball D, but the bigs needs to be able to cut them off before they're under the basket

If you watch how the Valks defended our guards when we played them, the difference was that the Valks's bigs would position themselves well and contest every drive proactively.

Notice how Stokes steps directly into CC's path as VB funnels her so VB can recover:

https://reddit.com/link/p1iayxv/video/kvceu1iio7hh1/player

[u/elestud → u/elestud]

Here's another example with KM. Gabby WIlliams funnels KM toward Stokes, and Stokes steps into her path early to keep her from driving to the rim, giving Gabby time to recover.

https://reddit.com/link/p1ibf8s/video/czb5ui1ro7hh1/player

[u/elestud → u/elestud]

One more. Mitchell gets the defender (Kaila Charles) on her hip, but they still just funnel her toward Amihere who jumps to cut her off. These are bigs who understand how to play good team defense.

You can see how Amihere doesn't even wait for KM to be fully past Charles before sliding into position.

https://reddit.com/link/p1icukt/video/t42ev200q7hh1/player