The Zone Will Work Against The Heat, But Only In Stretches | NBA Playbook

The Zone Will Work Against The Heat, But Only In Stretches

With three of the top ten players in the NBA, the Miami Heat might end up seeing a lot of zone defense this year.  This seems logical because teams have trouble defending guys like LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh when they were the lone All-Stars on their team, and now they are playing together.  Few teams (if any) have three high quality individual defenders good enough to stop these guys one on one, so the zone is the next best option.  So how will the 2-3 zone work against a team like the Heat next year?

Since the Heat haven’t played any games yet, I figured we could look at Team USA’s performance in the 2008 Olympics.  Now I know that the two players that are going to be playing with James, Wade, and Bosh on the Heat won’t be Olympic quality, I know that the teams playing against them are better than Australia, Greece, and Argentina, and I know that the Heat’s coaching staff won’t have two Hall of Fame college coaches to help break down the zone for NBA guys.  However, this is the closest we can get to seeing how a high-quality team operates against a zone defense, and what I took away from watching Team USA’s Olympic performance is that the zone will work against the Heat, but only in stretches.

Why It Will Work

When the zone worked against Team USA in the Olympics, it was because it got them to stand around and just pass the ball around the perimeter.  Here, Team USA is just going through the motions on offense, making pass after pass after pass, just allowing for the Spanish zone to rotate and stay in front of their man.  There are no penetrating or attacking dribbles, and that is exactly what Spain wants.  They want to see the ball being passed around like this rather than having a LeBron James or a Dwyane Wade taking their man to the basket and either finishing or kicking it out to an open teammate.

Teams also tend to get three point happy when playing against zone defenses.  If the ball gets swung around enough, the wings start to open up, and since the middle of zones tend to clog up the lane, the offense is almost baited into taking three pointers.  Both Dwyane Wade and LeBron James can knock down a three or two, but I bet you that teams would rather have them on the outside shooting threes than driving.

Why It Won’t Work

Run the zone long enough, and teams start to figure it out.  Players stop settling for the open jumpers and they start driving, coaches get a feel of a team’s zone and starts making adjustments, and players start to find holes in the zone:

The biggest hole being the middle of the zone, right at the top of the key.  It’s a hole, because no one specific player is responsible for the top of the key and it ends up being left wide open. After getting stopped by the zone a few times, I can imagine the Heat putting Dwyane Wade or LeBron James right in the middle of the zone and getting him the ball there. Now, the defense is in a tough position. If they collapse on him, he hits an outside shooter. If just the big man comes up on him, he dumps it down to Chris Bosh. If everyone stays home, James takes one dribble and finishes at the rim.

The big problem with the zone defense in the NBA is that when you play zone, all five men are looking at the ball and reacting to its movements rather than focusing on one player and reacting to him.  This allows for players to make a lot of cuts off the ball to get into open spots, and that is exactly what LeBron does here.  Everyone is watching the dribble penetration, so LeBron is able to just sneak behind the Spanish back line and get to the middle of the lane uncontested.  He makes the catch, and finishes easily at the rim.

Perhaps the biggest flaw with playing the zone defense in the NBA is that you putting yourself in a position to give up a ton of offensive rebounds when you play it. The reason behind it is that every defender is covering an area rather than a man, so when the shot goes up, defenders need to find somebody to box out. Most of the time, one or two offensive guys get to the glass untouched.

–

Summing things up, the zone will work against a team like the Heat, but only in short stretches here and there. In the NBA, the zone works best when it is mixed in with a team’s man to man defense. This confuses the offense, and that confusion is what usually causes offenses to stand around and pass around the perimeter. Once players get comfortable though, they start looking for the holes in the zone that open up when you play it for an entire quarter.

That being said, I still think the Heat are going to see a lot of zone (maybe even a quarter’s worth of it), I just think that teams are going to run it in short stretches with a lot of man to man mixed in.  That might be the best way to try and stop the Heat.

21
Jul 2010
POSTED BY
POSTED IN Coaching Strategy Defensive Strategy Miami Heat Offensive Strategy
DISCUSSION 17 Comments
TAGS

  • Kamron

    With three of the top ten players in the NBA

    When did Chris Bosh get promoted? LeBron, Wade, Kobe, Howard, Gasol, Chris Paul, Deron Williams, Kevin Durant, Nash, Nowitzski, Melo are all clearly better IMO, and that’s not even counting guys like Amare or Boozer or Rondo or Josh Smith or Joe Johnson who are around the same level.
    There’s a reason he’s a perennial all-star, but only made all-nba once- he’s good, but he’s not top 10.

  • ohsnap

    ZING!! Oh man, you got him!!! on quite possibly the most irrelevant line in the whole article!!! Great job.

  • Midwest hoops fan

    Nice thinking, Sebastian.

    Maybe a further conclusion to consider: teams might succeed against the Heat if they have *multiple* zones/looks to throw at them. True, not many NBA teams will be comfortable with more than one zone, but if players could drop into either a 2-3 or a 1-3-1, say, in addition to their usual man and help, that would make things much tougher on Miami.

  • Abdullah

    Kamron :
    With three of the top ten players in the NBA
    When did Chris Bosh get promoted? LeBron, Wade, Kobe, Howard, Gasol, Chris Paul, Deron Williams, Kevin Durant, Nash, Nowitzski, Melo are all clearly better IMO, and that’s not even counting guys like Amare or Boozer or Rondo or Josh Smith or Joe Johnson who are around the same level.
    There’s a reason he’s a perennial all-star, but only made all-nba once- he’s good, but he’s not top 10.

    You honestly think Boozer & Amare are as good as Bosh? Boozer can’t score as efficiently and Amare can’t rebound NEARLY as well, not to mention they both had elite point guards (who you put in YOUR top 10) giving them pinpoint passes, allowing for easy finishes at the basket. Bosh would average 25 & 12 in Utah and Phoenix, so yeah, he’s top 10; you have to take into consideration their respective situations re: teammates. I guarantee Amare will struggle in NY w/o Nash, not only because of his passes, but because he draws defenses with his 3pt shooting ability.

  • Sebastian Pruiti

    Alright guys, lets keep the top player debates out of the comments and try to keep the discussion on topic please? Thanks guys!

  • Andy

    I think the heat are gonna be practicing against the zone most of the time in their practices. This is due to the fact that they are going to need to know how to shut it down and they already have a since what they can do to teams if they go man up. That’s not even going into how their practices are going to be the most competitive in the league.

  • peter

    Zone in NBA does not work, because:
    a) wider court
    b) ‘defensive 3 sec’ rule which does not allow static defence.

    Maybe teams will use zone in some plays, just to take some risks during crunch time, that’s all. It’s just not so effective as a man-to-man defence is.

  • Jaffe

    celtics have been playing zone for the last 3 years, think its been pretty effective

  • Rex

    The Peter and Jaffe posts raise an interesting question. How do the Celts play D? It seems that they start with man-to-man, then use a lot of help-and-rotate that creates a zone-like look, followed by a scramble back to man-to-man if the offense keeps moving the ball around or gets an offensive board (grrr, stupid Lakers). But that’s just an impression.

  • John

    As a Celtics fan who has watched 80% of their games the last 3 years, I can assure you that I have never seen them play a zone defense. Never. Thibideau’s scheme is hedge and recover, and almost never a zone. The teams in the NBA who I’ve seen run most are probably the Heat and the Suns.

  • Kamron

    @ohsnap
    It wasn’t supposed to be a zing, retard; if Pruti really thinks this, then maybe there’s an interesting discussion in it somewhere. But apparently he’s not interested in that sidetrack.

  • justin

    @jaffe
    i literally laughed out loud when i read your boston zone comment. apparently the subtlety of it was lost on our friend John the celtics fan.

  • Dan

    Phoenix ran a zone for long stretches against the Lakers during their playoff series. It seemed like a good match against the triangle offense.

  • troy mcclure

    >I know that the teams playing against them are better than Greece, and Argentina,

    Keep saying it often enough and you can forget the past decade pretty easily.

    I still remember AI and the National Team sh**ing their pants in 2004 when they saw the greek fans (who were about 80% tamer than the regular insane fans who follow clubs)
    that they couldnt beat the greeks.

  • John C.

    I agree with Sebastian with the zone idea. Using Lakers as an example, zone was effective against them because they lacked a killer shooter, had Kobe dribbling the ball too much, and quickly double teamed the bigs. However, LeBron and DWade are scary as hell when it comes to slashing towards the basket, and if either penetrates into the key I guarantee there’s going to be a good look either near the rim or a wide open shot from a pass.

  • finzent

    The Mavs played some zone pretty regularly last season in order to hide their s****y defensive backcourt. In general it usually kind of worked, but, consistent with Sebastian’s point, only for some minutes at a time. There were some occasions, though, when the opponent just didn’t figure it out and the Mavs kept going on and on with the zone, against Atlanta for example. But I guess the Heat will counter the zone faster and better than others because a) they’re good b) Spoelstra is a good coach and c) they probably will see it more often than other teams.

  • luxxray

    well..well..since the big three of miami heat already experienced playing together at the olympics 2008..for sure they already built their own strategies when playing against the ZONE D’S counterparts..maybe the only other team can defend them is the team using PF as center most of the game since 3′s is illegal in the NBA..so that the PF can move around as man to man def to BOSH as the other using 2-2 def’s. but the question’s is can they handle WADE & JAMES using 2-3 zone?hmm..so excited to smell the first victory of HEAT this season..can i expect PERFECT WIN @ HOME??HMM LOL I HOPE SOOO..GO HEAT!!
    BEAT CELTIC’S RAJON RONDO & L.A LAKERS!!