When you talk about the Dallas Mavericks and their defense, you can’t help but bring up their zone defense.  This is because they ran the zone 10.5% of the time, and had so much success with it, holding opponents to just 0.881 points per possession when they went up against Dallas’ zone.

Also, I am bringing this up because you should expect to see some zone tonight, because in each of the three games against the Lakers, the Mavericks have played zone, specifically, the Mavericks played 21 possessions of zone.  We all know about the Lakers’ struggle against the zone last year in their series with the Phoenix Suns, but the Lakers are a decent zone team, scoring 0.968 points per possession against the zone during the regular season.  In fact, against the Mavericks’ zone, the Lakers have been even more successful, scoring 28 points in those 21 possessions, good for a PPP of 1.33.

In my opinion, one of the reasons why the Lakers were so successful against Dallas’ zone is because they always seemed prepared for it, not getting caught of guard, and not having many possessions of simply passing it around the outside (which is what happened against Phoenix last playoffs).  So what was Los Angeles’ strategy?  The wanted to get the ball in the paint (the underbelly of the zone), and to do so they used cuts off of the basketball, with most of them coming out of their triangle offense:

The end result of all of these plays are shots in the paint.  This really goes to show you that when the Lakers are determined to run their stuff, no matter against zone or man, they can have success.

Even when the cut doesn’t result in a basket, it is still purposeful against the zone:

Here, the cut takes place, forcing the zone defense to sink into the middle, so when the pass gets made to Bryant on the outside, the zone defense is out of position.  This means that when Bryant makes the catch, Jason Terry (playing the top of the zone) has to challenge hard, giving Bryant a clear driving lane.

This doesn’t mean that the Lakers will score every single possession against the zone.  The zone can still work against the Lakers, and it will if there is no cutting and the ball ends up getting passed around the perimeter:

On these two plays, the Lakers have no cutters, instead opting to pass the ball around the outside and then look for a driving lane.  This type of ball movement can work against a zone, but if there are no cuts along with it, the only thing the defense has to worry about is rotating with and loading up to the side of the basketball.  That is what happens in each of the two plays as the Mavericks are able to have two defenders in the paint on dribble penetration blocking a shot and taking a charge.

I think game one is going to be important for Dallas and their zone defense.  At some point in the first half, they are going to throw out their zone and see what the Lakers do against it.  If they cut and score a few times in a row, the Mavs will take off the zone and not play it much the rest of the series.  If they keep the ball on the outside, the Mavs are going to stick with their zone and you might see it more often as the series progresses.