75, allow me if I can to say what you refer to in a little less basketball ease because it is a great point that I want folks to understand. The high screen ( up around the free throw line) is set by the opposing big man and it is set really tight so much so that it is very hard to fight thru the screen, teams are getting very good at this and they know it is a weakness in our defense. With ball handlers that now days are solid jump shooters, if our defending big man lets the guard go off the screen our defender is rubbed off by how close it is set, the guy has a wide open jumper on the other side or is able to have free sight line for a pass to a wing or baseline. No one wants to allow that so our defending big man either hedges or shows (consider a show as a soft hedge where our big man only makes it look as if he is switching off and intermediately peels back to cover the rolling big man else you have a Stockton to Karl Malone moment.
What Roy prefers is a hedge where our defending big man actually momentarily switches off to the ball handler, long enough for our defending guard to go under the screen and pick the ball handler back up on the other side. This is a very critical timing issue between defending big man and chasing guard. If the defending big man holds his hedge (switching out to the ball handler) to long he can not recover back in time to stop the big man that set the screen from rolling to the basket unguarded, forces us to rotate back side help and leaves someone wide open from our rotation off. If our defending big man does not hold that hedge long enough our chasing defender can not get back to the ballhander and leaves the ball handler wide open for a clean look and with the way todays PGs shoot, that is usually a wide open trey look from straight away, pretty much the most easy trey look to get.
Where the "keystone cops" reference comes in is if the communication and timing with our defending big to our chaser is not good, our big man will release the hedge, try to recover back to the rolling screen setter big man and actually run in to our chaser guard (we screen each other) and they have both rolling big man and ball handler guard wide the freak open and so many options open up for them and all of them pretty darn easy to score off of. The slower our big man's feet are the bigger this problem is and Manley has pretty slow feet, Brooks has better feet but his (both really) timing with our guard is a work in progress. Meeks struggled big time with this for his first 3yrs, got much better as a senior but part of this is on the guard and part on the big man and our guards are not big time experienced other than kenny.
Bottom line with this is our big man just can not hold the hedge so long that he can not recover back to the screen setting big that is rolling down and he has to have the awareness to NOT RUN IN TO HIS OWN TEAM MATE. Our chaser guard HAS to get thru MUCH QUICKER so our big man has a lane to recover back thru, it is a well known hole in our defense that everyone has scouted and knows about.
A real key to defending this is for our big man defender to turn the ball handler up court, so he is not able to cleanly move thru the set screen and giving our chaser more time to recover to the ball, we do not do a good job at turning that ball handler up to alter his path. Meeks learned to shade his man from an angle rather than take on the ball handler straight on Meeks took the angle between screen setter big man and ball handler, he would bump him up just a half step, just enough to divert him and feel when the screen setter was peeling back, Meeks would release and peel back but would do so with a solid angle to chase back and yet see the ball. EXACTLY what our big men SHOULD be doing, they struggle big time with this. Meeks got so much better with this as a senior that teams were trying to reverse it rather than try taking the passing angle to the rolling big man and many times settling for a much harder trey look.
Ideally you do want your chaser guard to fight thru the screen but again, those things are set so close now days, teams practice setting these very tight screens as well as being fully versed to know what options they will have if the ball handler can pass thru the screen and have the open look on the other side. That ball handler will immediately look to see if there is a rotating wing defender that goes to him allowing a baseline cut to the rim for his assignment, is his big man screener rolling down with a easy passing angle for a easy finish at the rim, or does he have to take the wide open jumper from the baseline extended or step back for the easy clean trey? Oh so many options and so little time! LOL
Another major flaw in this is when our defending big man does release the ball handler and even if he is able to not screen our chaser off, watch Manley, he will turn his back to the ball and run back to the rolling big man with his arms up in the air, he can not see the ball and that is always a problem, Brooks is a little better about not totally turning his head to the ball but he still loses it to much and it slows him from his ability to recover to the rolling big.
This is the very reason I do wish Roy would change up defenses like Dean did, force the opposing team to first figure out what defense is being played and have to attack it differently rather than being able to settle in to the same attack that we struggled to defend. ANY defense can be attacked effectively if the refs are calling a clean game, calling the moving screens, jersey grabs, and inside the paint holding. But without changing your defenses the other team already knows what you are going to do and their plan of attack is in place, they don't really have to think about it, they just flow in to the same attack that has worked over and over again.
Dean was a master at disguising defenses, seen his teams many times come down and set up in a 2/3 zone and wham, out of the blue we switch to man, or a high or baseline trap rotating thru passing lanes. It was amazing to watch and it was extremely hard for opposing teams to handle, they knew Dean's base defenses but they had to think to much on how to attack them. THAT was before the shot clock came in to the game, IMO it would be even more effective today with the shorter shot clocks and especially in the way most teams want to slow down tempo against us.
Geez, I don't know if that was any easier to understand than what 75 shared in fewer words but it is IMO a very important aspect of what we see. I see folks all the time fussing about other teams getting clean looks for treys, killing us inside the paint, or getting that rim rattle big time dunk on us from a baseline cut, I want folks to understand why that happens. It is a major reason so many teams have gone to zones or combo schemes like pac man. Those defenses have their own unique weaknesses but they do help cover up some big man with slower feet issues. Teams practice to be ready for what they expect us to do, when you switch to a defense they have not practiced to attack you can stunt their attack and usually force a bad shot or a TO.