Hawks manage to stifle MVP Rose in Game 1

Jeff Teague forced the league's MVP, Derrick Rose, into a dismal 11-of-27 night from the field in Game 1. (Dennis Wierzbicki/US Presswire)

Jeff Teague is receiving plenty of praise after Atlanta’s Game 1 victory in Chicago on Monday. The Hawks’ seldom-used second-year point guard (and current emergency starter) chased Derrick Rose around and helped hound the league MVP into an 11-of-27 shooting performance. (A performance, it should be noted, that included zero trips to the foul line.)

Teague played about as well as the Hawks could have hoped in place of an injured Kirk Hinrich. He didn’t embarrass himself on defense and he took care of the ball (one turnover). His ability to hold his own for 45 minutes allowed coach Larry Drew to use a three-guard combination of Teague, Jamal Crawford and Joe Johnson for heavy minutes in the second half. That’s an even quicker version of the Crawford/Johnson/Hinrich combination Drew often leans on, and it was quick enough to present matchup problems, especially the lack of a convenient place for the Bulls to put Kyle Korver on defense.

But the praise of Teague overlooks a knockout defensive performance by Josh Smith and Al Horford, two mobile big men long used to covering for Mike Bibby on pick-and-roll plays. These two guys, more than Teague, flummoxed Rose in half-court sets, and they did so with an entirely different strategy than Indiana used in holding Rose to 37 percent shooting in the first round. While the Pacers often trapped Rose hard on pick-and-rolls, sending him scurrying back toward midcourt, the Hawks’ big men lingered around the foul line, shadowing Rose laterally across the court until Teague could recover from the pick.

A great example comes at the 5:22 mark of the second quarter, when Rose and Joakim Noah run a pick-and-roll on the left side of the floor. Teague goes under Noah’s screen and Smith leaves Noah to take over on Rose as the MVP dribbles to his left, toward the top of the arc. Smith doesn’t jump above Rose, in a way that would make it difficult for him to turn the corner. He just stays in front of Rose, facing him straight up and hanging out near the foul line until Teague can recover. Once Teague gets back in front of Rose, Smith looks for Noah again.

Of course, this means Noah is briefly open. If you freeze the image when Rose picks up his dribble, you’ll see Horford standing in the middle of the paint, near the restricted area, responsible for guarding both Noah and Carlos Boozer. This is the moment where Rose has to kill Atlanta. Noah is on the right edge of the paint, and Boozer is on the left edge. They are exactly parallel to each other — close enough that Horford can nearly touch both of them if he stretches out his arms. Still, with only slightly better spacing, Rose has a chance to set off a series of quick-hitting passes that could lead to an easy layup for one of his big men.

Also of note: Johnson, guarding Keith Bogans in the left (far) corner, is helping out Horford. Johnson has crept over to the left edge of the paint, just below Boozer, ready to pounce if Rose decides to pass there. This was a recurring theme: Johnson, when he’s guarding Bogans, is going to rove into the paint.

There is no perfect way to defend a guy as good as Rose. The Hawks are banking on two things here:

1) They are willing to let Rose shoot long jumpers — even three-pointers. Again, this was a theme all night, and it’s typical of the way a lot of teams defend Rose. On at least three of Rose’s three-point attempts, including one off a pick-and-roll with Luol Deng late in the game, the Hawks barely bothered to get within 10 feet of him. (Rose finished 2-of-7 from deep.)

2) Atlanta is betting that the Bulls, and Rose in particular, will not be able to take advantage of the openings that briefly present themselves on these pick-and-rolls. You can bet the Bulls’ coaching staff will hammer this theme in the next film session. The Bulls need to space the floor just a bit better, and Rose, if he’s going to pick up his dribble, has to pass the ball quickly, before the big man shadowing him can recover back into the paint.

There’s another option, though, and Rose demonstrates it on Chicago’s last possession of the third quarter: He can keep his dribble alive, wait for the big man to rush back into the paint and start the whole process over again — often in isolation, without a screener to muck things up.

On this possession, the Bulls run a Kurt Thomas/Rose pick-and-roll, and Thomas’ man (Horford) hangs out at the foul line until Teague can recover from the Thomas screen and find Rose. Once that happens, Horford runs back into the paint to find his man.

But unlike on that first possession, Rose has kept his dribble, which means he can lick his chops and attack Teague in isolation. Rose is one of the best isolation players in the league, and he blows by Teague with a nasty right-to-left crossover dribble. Once in the paint, Rose spins back to his right for what he surely thinks will be an easy floater. But Horford is there again, helping off Thomas, and he forces the point guard into a brutal one-handed shot in which Rose is moving backward in the air as he releases the ball. He makes it, because he’s Derrick Rose, and he’s awesome.

Of note here: In that brief window when Horford guards Rose early in this possession, it once again means that one Atlanta big man (Zaza Pachulia) is guarding two Chicago bigs (Thomas and Boozer). And once again, those two bigs help the Hawks by spacing themselves poorly. Thomas rolls down the right edge of the paint and ends up next to Boozer, who is on the right baseline. Pachulia can guard them both without any issues.

Chicago actually played a decent offensive game; it lost this game mostly on the other end, where Atlanta hit an unsustainable number of tough jumpers. But the Bulls also lost in part because Atlanta held Rose to manageable numbers. The Hawks did so using a defensive strategy that has some holes in it, and I’d expect Rose and the Bulls to be better prepared in Game 2 to exploit those holes. If they do, it will be interesting to see how Drew adjusts.