Clippers ponder best way to defend pick and rolls

It’s the NBA equivalent of a Shakespearean dilemma: to show or not to show?

That is the question facing Clippers Coach Doc Rivers as he tinkers with the way the team’s big men defend pick and rolls.

Showing involves power forward Blake Griffin or center DeAndre Jordan confronting an opposing ballhandler as he moves around a pick, an aggressive scheme that can disrupt the offense.

Not showing entails the big men staying closer to the basket. This protects the interior and keeps other defenders from having to scramble into help situations.

The latter scheme also led to something else over the season’s first three games.

“That’s probably why D.J. has five blocks a night because he’s in the paint more,” Rivers, who intends to have the big men show less this season, said Monday before the Clippers played the Phoenix Suns at Staples Center.

“Our thinking was we have, in our opinion, one of the best or the best defender in the league and there were a lot of times he was out of the paint. So let’s put probably the defender of the rim under the basket where he can control that and we would also take away some threes at the same time.”

The Clippers have had mixed results on the latter front. While the percentage they have yielded on three-point baskets has improved from 34.9% last season to 31.9% this season, the number of tries by opponents, something Rivers wanted to reduce, has remained virtually the same.

The Clippers’ opponents took 23.9 three-point shots per game last season as opposed to 24.0 per game this season before Monday.

In theory, showing less takes away layups and three-pointers but allows more mid-range jumpers.

“If a team beats us making contested two-pointers then they beat us making contested two-pointers,” shooting guard J.J. Redick said. “That’s essentially what we’re saying we’re giving up.”

The Clippers are not going to stop having Griffin and Jordan show altogether, though, preserving the option to give teams different looks defensively.

“It’s a game-by-game thing,” Redick said. “We’re not going to be taking our bigs off Ryan Anderson [in pick and rolls] when we play the [New Orleans] Pelicans. Our bigs are going to be in a show in that sense.”

Free-flow form

Jordan has vacillated with his form on his free throws, going with a lower release point in the preseason only to raise his arms back farther above his head in the early going of the regular season.

Rivers said the release point isn’t what’s important.

“I just want him to get up there and get arc and give it a chance,” Rivers said. “I think he’s doing that. I think his free throws have actually looked good. They’re not going in yet but I like the way they’ve looked.”

Jordan made 50% of his free throws in the preseason but had made only seven of 23 (30.4%) free throws in the three regular-season games before Monday.