Syracuse men’s basketball: Draymond Green vs the Orange coaching staff

The matchup you never knew you needed

You thought the Syracuse Orange win over the NC State Wolfpack was a big ACC game the other night, then NBA All-Star Draymond Green fired off a couple of post-game tweets.

So Draymond knows more about basketball than I (or any of you) know so let me be clear that I think he makes a great point in the first tweet. After Bell’s 8 first-half 3’s, he should have had more opportunities, especially with Syracuse trying to hold off the NC State comeback. Draymond’s idea of using Bell in pick and roll plays makes sense as NC State was face-guarding and that means his man would be unlikely to help in these situations.

However, I think there is some room to argument about the second tweet. With NC State locking one defender (often Mohammad Diarra) on Bell in the corner, that left the Orange playing four on four. I’d love to ask Draymond how he’d feel if teams were face-guarding Klay and then leaving more room on the floor for Steph and Chris Paul to drive. Now last Judah Mintz, JJ Starling and Maliq Brown combined to shoot 6-20 from inside the lane. I’d say Bell in fact opened up more room and shots for the Orange’s best shooters and they didn’t convert. (And I’ll note that following the game online there were numerous complaints about contact on shots going uncalled. Just going to say if you thought the refs were bad, maybe the shots weren’t so bad)

Now I’m not comparing the Syracuse players to NBA Hall of Famers in terms of their ability, but rather the strategy. If a team is willing to play four on four, every single coach is going to take that in today’s game. Apparently the Syracuse staff feels that Bell’s best used spotting up and the numbers would support that right now.

The Orange might have opened up more shots for Bell had they done a better job defensively. NC State grabbed 8 offensive rebounds and kept Syracuse from getting out in transition more often. As the season winds down, one way to get Bell open looks is for Syracuse to beat the defense down the floor and let their top shooter get some clean views of the rim.

I think the Syracuse offense still has a lot of room to improve, but we saw some positives after the Georgia Tech loss. If Draymond wants to take a summer vacation to Central New York next July, maybe he can impart some of his knowledge on the coaching staff before the 24-25 season.