The Boston Celtics’ defense had their hands full dealing with the Atlanta Hawks’ perimeter scorers on Friday. Per Synergy Sports, Atlanta ended up scoring a total of 42 points against Boston on Pick-And-Roll Ball Handler and Isolation plays, well above the average of 26.1 points Boston conceded to opponents on the season across both play types.
Late in the game, Boston implemented peel-switching as a solution to the comfort Dejounte Murray, Bogdan Bogdanović, and DeAndre Hunter had getting to their spots.
A “peel switch” (see below) is a defensive strategy where a surrounding help defender switches onto an offensive player once they’ve beaten their original matchup, and this original defender then “peels off” to rotate out accordingly.
In the context of this game, Jrue Holiday and Boston peel-switched to take away the space Atlanta’s ball-handlers had to attack coming out of pick-and-roll, allowing their drop coverage to function without conceding a good look.
Let’s break down a couple of example plays below.
Example 1
In this play, Hunter initially has the middle of the lane open to operate after Brown gets screened off. Holiday’s switch takes away this space and forces Hunter to pass it up. Brown is then able to "peel off" of Hunter and get a late contest on the shooter.
This conceded a 1.05 PPP look per Synergy, significantly better than the 1.2 PPP on PNR plays that Boston was bleeding to that point.
Example 2
In this play, Bogdanović is coming off of the screen looking to “snake” it. Having created separation from White on the screen, Bogdanović has the opportunity to attack the dropping big in space and get to his spot.
However, Holiday’s switch takes away the room Bogdanović has to operate and White peeling to the wing ensures that there is no advantage for Atlanta to capitalize on.
Takeaways:
In the above examples, peel-switching served to take away any momentary advantages the ballhandler had in a seamless swap of matchups. There is a high degree of communication that goes into successful execution of peel switches.
There is a traditional mantra in basketball to not bring help to the ball from one pass away, but when executed properly, peel switching brings effective help without bleeding any good looks. The above examples covered peel-switching in pick-and-roll situations, specifically hand-in-hand with drop coverage, but peel switches can be used to patch up any instance of penetration (drives, cuts, etc.).
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