Eurobasket 2011: Serbia

Serbia, even if they’ve lost two games by now is, in my humble opinion, the biggest menace for Spain in our quest for the Eurobasket’s gold.

I gave you an appetizer some days ago and here you have the main dish.

First, Spain must avoid a game start like this one. Not that Serbia’s doing it every game, but they have the skills, for sure they’ll have the motivation and we wouldn’t like to trail from the beginning...

Let’s talk about defense. And this is something I’ve already shown, but I think is interesting enough to take another look at it. The Serbian team manages really well defense on missmatch situations. They are used to involve more than two players in order to avoid advantages for the offense.

More “defense”, not only Teodosic is a wise fastbreak “stopper”, they’re all so good at using fouls to stop the other team’s fastbreaks! They look for a slow paced game that is clearly better for them. Spain need some points off the break, so we’d better reach the bonus as soon as possible and if they stop the break with fouls, at least we’ll go to the line.

Now, their some details on their offense:

One player in, four players out plus pick and roll. That’s one of the keys of their offensive game. Savanovic and Macvan can make mid range jumpers and threes (specially the former) They make good use of their skills to spread the defense and find space to drive. Serbians know how to punish helps. Just like here... Schultze helps way more than needed and Savanovic hits the three.

One play they’ve been using a lot. The same concepts. They set a down pick for the shooting guard to receive a hand off pass and then, again, pick and roll. Notice how Savanovic (in the first clip) and Macvan (second and third clips) end up in the corner. They read the defense and react. Nice triangles, good options for the shooter after the hand off... Dangerous.

They have many different options for baseline out of bounds’ plays. They look for the advantage and use it. As we see in the first two clips, it’s the same play but they play for Savanovic first and for Teodosic posting up in the second. Also, if you’re not focused on defense, they can find the easy shot after the first pass...

I want to finish with a state of the art passer. Teodosic is showing everybody his polished fundamentals, and the pass might be his best weapon. All kind of passes, with both hands, no looking passes... I’d say “kids, TRY to do this at home...”