Over at SBNation I did a pretty detailed post looking at one halfcourt set, one SLOB set, and one BLOB set I expect to see each team run during the course of the series:
According to Synergy Sports Technology, the 2011 NBA Finals matchup between the Dallas Mavericks and Miami Heatfeatures the two best half court teams in the playoffs in terms of points per possession. The Mavericks have scored 1299 points in 1320 possessions (0.984 PPP), while the Heat have scored 1212 points in 1322 possessions (0.917 PPP). This means that we are going to see very efficient half-court offenses with a lot of interesting and effective sets from both teams. In addition to half-court offense, scoring from set inbounds plays (both from the side and from the baseline) is also very important.
Here, we are going to take a look at a set in each situation that you will probably see run during these NBA Finals:
If there has been one set that the Dallas Mavericks have run during the postseason whenever they were in trouble, it was the pick and pop with either Jason Terry or J.J. Barea as the ball handler and Dirk Nowitzki as the screener.
During their series against the Chicago Bulls, the Miami Heat trapped Derrick Rose hard coming off of just about every single ball screen. This wasn’t an adjustment that Miami made specifically for the Bulls’ series, instead, it has been the Heat’s defensive strategy all season long. So will the the Heat be willing to double/hedge hard on the ball handler when the Mavericks run the pick and pop with Dirk Nowitzki as the screener? Going through their two regular season match-ups, you see that the Heat will at least try to hedge hard on the ball handler, even when it is Nowitzki setting the screens:
During their playoff run to the finals, the Miami Heat haven’t seen much zone (only three possessions to be exact), but that is about to change in the finals as they get ready to match up against the Dallas Mavericks. While the Mavericks have played less zone in the playoffs than they did in the regular season (5.2% vs. 10%), you can definitely expect them to play zone, and stay in it. In their two regular season games, Dallas played zone against Miami 56 out of 179 halfcourt possessions (31.2% of total hc possessions). Miami scored on just 41.1% of these possessions, compared to the 44% success rate they had against Dallas’ man to man defense.
While these two teams haven’t even played in 2011, we can use their match-ups to give us an idea of how the Heat will try to handle their zone (they had pretty much the same zone offense all season long). When they are having success with their zone offense, the Heat like to run the set and try to do two things out of it. Either work the middle on a flash by a big, or screen the top of the zone:
Here, you see the Heat flashing a big to the middle of the paint with the goal of getting him the basketball. Once you get that ball in the middle of the zone, the defense becomes very vulnerable. In this case, it allows Chris Bosh (and Joel Anthony once) to make the catch and operate in space, where he can hit the jumper or pump fake and go.
When Mike Brown got hired as the head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers, the decision left a few people scratching their heads. While coach Brown has a reputation as a defensive coach, his reputation on the offensive end is quite the opposite. In my opinion, that isn’t really fair to Mike Brown. While he is deserving of criticism at times, in actuality, coach Brown’s offense is better than the general public’s perception of it. In fact, during coach Brown’s final two seasons, the Cavaliers had the 4th best offense in terms of offensive efficiency (points scored per 100 possessions). Now, the response to that statistic is that Brown had LeBron James. Well, that’s true, but in Los Angeles, you have a player just as good (or better, depending on who you ask), and I think that is where you need to start when looking at coach Brown and how his offense will translate to the Lakers.
One of the biggest advantages of the Triangle Offense was that it created terrific spacing, giving Kobe Bryant opportunities to catch the ball with a lot of room to operate. How will Bryant get his opportunities under Mike Brown? I think looking at how Brown set up LeBron James in Cleveland could help us determine what sets Brown will use – and have success with – in Los Angeles.
For the most part, I am going to be looking at Brown’s offense during the 08-09 season, the last season John Kuester was on Cleveland’s staff. Kuester was the de facto offensive coordinator of those Cleveland teams and with rumors that he will be fired by Detroit and that Mike Brown wants to add him to his staff, it makes sense to focus on this season.
Post Up Opportunities
Outside of isolations (which were 30.3% of Kobe Bryant’s possessions), highest percentage of possessions used by Kobe Bryant (14.8%) came in post up situations. While LeBron didn’t have a reputation for having a strong post up game, he did post up 113 times in the 08-09 season, with Mike Brown running a few different, yet simplet, sets to get him the basketball on the block.
Post off of a Downscreen
Aside from a straight post up, this might be the simplest post set that Brown ran for LeBron James. As you can probably guess, it involves LeBron James posting after coming off of a downscreen:
After an incredible comeback, the Chicago Bulls found themselves trailing the Heat by three points after two Chris Bosh free throws. With no timeouts left, the Bulls had to take the ball the length of the court in 16.8 seconds and get a clean look at a three point shot. However, they were unable to even get a shot to the rim, with Derrick Rose getting blocked by LeBron James:
In my opinion, it looked like the Bulls were trying to run Korver off of three screens away from the basketball, but he started a little too early, and it ended up being just a simple pindown from Taj Gibson. Gibson whiffs on the screen (in part because Korver does a poor job using it) and this forces Korver to make the catch with his back to the basket then taking a dribble away from the basket. He gets caught picking up his dribble, is forced to give it to Rose, who gets a screen, but with Haslem hedging and James recovering, the shot gets blocked. Even though Korver ran the play wrong (starting early and not using the staggered screen that was being set for him), I just think Korver had too much area to cover with his run (we have seen this be a problem in the past), and it would have allowed Miller to recover either way.
After their failed play with about a minute left, the Thunder were actually able to cut Dallas’ lead back to two points with about 40 seconds left. This gave the Mavericks the basketball with enough time left on the clock that the Thunder didn’t have to foul and could play straight defense, hoping to get a stop and a chance at the tie/win. The Thunder did a good job of playing defense initially, but as the shot came off of the rim, the Thunder failed to box out, and it probably cost them the game:
Picking up the play halfway through, we see that the Mavericks have isolated Dirk Nowitzki at the top of the key. Nick Collison is up on him (as he has been for much of the series), taking getting into his body and being physical with him.
With 1:14 left in game five and the ball on the side coming out of a timeout, the Oklahoma City Thunder trailed the Dallas Mavericks by one point. Unlike most possessions, the Thunder came out and tried to run an offense, however, it failed because of an issue that has been haunting Oklahoma City all series (and playoffs) long. No backside action/movement.
After James Harden inbounds the basketball to Russell Westbrook, Westbrook hands it off to Harden on the wing and then clears out to the weakside corner.
After losing in game three, Derrick Rose mentioned that he would like to see more isolation sets so he could avoid double teams. While this wasn’t the adjustment made by Chicago, they did make a rather significant change to their offensive strategy for game four. They were still running ball screens for Rose, but instead of running them up top, they moved Derrick Rose to the wing (either with the dribble or by moving him off of the basketball), and ran the pick and roll there. It was an interesting change that had mixed results. In my opinion, there are two reasons why the wing pick and roll made sense for two reasons it gave Derrick Rose another release valves, and it made the defense’s rotations a lot tougher:
One of the reasons why the side pick and roll works is because it gives Derrick Rose a release valve when Miami brings the double. That release valve? Splitting the double team. With Rose taking the screen on the wing, Miami’s bigs trap, but they do it with the goal of preventing Rose from getting over the top, where he can penetrate through the middle of the lane. This creates a gap, and lets Rose get into the paint where he created scoring opportunities.
In addition to creating opportunities for himself, the wing pick and roll also created opportunities for the rest of the Bulls by putting the Heat in positions where it was simply hard to rotate over:
With just 7 seconds left on the shot clock and 2:51 left in the game, the Miami Heat had the basketball on the baseline with a 2 point lead. Looking to get a good – but quick – look, the Heat decided to run a set play from the baseline. The result is one of my favorite set plays of the season:
The play starts with the Mismi Heat getting in a box formation, but instead of starting the bottom players on the blocks, they are up towards the elbow. As the ball goes to the trigger man, LeBron James, Mike Miller uses a screen set by Udonis Haslem to get to the corner. Because Miller was knocking his shot down this game, this action really draws the attention of the defense. Not only does Derrick Rose trails Miller over the top of the screen, but Carlos Boozer strays away from Haslem to beat Miller to the corner and take the pass away.
One of the biggest criticisms that I have for Thunder head coach Scott Brooks, is that he doesn’t really run any sets late. There have been far too many examples of the Thunder relying on Kevin Durant or Russell Westbrook ability to create for themselves when they need a basket in the final seconds, and that is part of the reason why they struggle in late game situations. We saw a perfect example of this with 38.6 seconds left and the Thunder holding a two point lead:
Here, Kevin Durant gets a pindown screen, but this screen isn’t designed to put him in a catch and shoot situation. Instead, this pindown screen is designed to get Durant the ball on the wing and let him work out of an isolation situation. The result is Kevin Durant starting too early, skipping a pass to Thabo Sefolosha, who misses the three.
While in my opinion, this was a poor coaching decision by Brooks (letting Durant work isolation instead of running a set), the next Thunder possession (where they had the ball with 6.4 seconds left and the game tied) Scott Brooks actually tried to run a set for Kevin Durant.
