When I wrote my series preview, I had thought that the zone was going to play a big factor in this series. While it was used from time to time during the first five games, it wasn’t played all that often. The came game six. The Dallas Mavericks played zone 15 times, including 8 times in the first quarter. The Heat did fairly well against Dallas’ zone, scoring 17 points on 15 possessions. Looking at those numbers, it seems like the Mavericks’ zone was a failure. It wasn’t, and all you need to do is look at the first quarter to prove otherwise.
After a Chris Bosh jumper midway through the first quarter, the Heat stretched their lead to nine, scoring 20 points in the first 5:41 of the game, and putting them on pace to score about 40 points. Despite the Heat (and especially LeBron James) hitting jumper after jumper, the Dallas Mavericks went zone on the next possession, and played it for the remainder of the quarter. The Heat scored just 7 points the rest of the quarter.
If you have ever played organized basketball at any level, you undoubtably heard your coach (no matter how good he is) say something to the effect of:
“Don’t leave your feet unless you know what you are doing with the basketball.”
Your coach was right about that, you never want to jump without knowing what you are going to do with the basketball because it forces you into rushing decisions because you need to let go of the ball before you hit the ground. Rec league and high school players aren’t the only ones breaking this “rule,” as we saw in the finals, NBA players have a tendency to trust their athletic ability and leave their feet plenty of time:
In my preview post for SBNation, I talked about Miami’s need to go back to their pick and roll defense where they trapped the basketball after allowing 49 points on 33 pick and rolls in game five (where they really went away from their trapping pick and roll defense). Miami did just that during game six, trapping 17 of 32 pick and rolls, allowing just eight points on those pick and roll possessions:
On of the main reasons why trapping the pick and roll worked is because it kept the basketball on the perimeter. On all of those clips, you see the ball handler getting trapped and the only option they really have is to kick the ball out to a man on the outside rather than trying to penetrate or hit the roll man. The ball gets into the paint a grand total of 0 times on all of those plays. The one time they try to hit the roll man, they go from Terry to Kidd to Ian Mahinmi instead of going straight to Mahinmi. The result is a turnover.
Ever since the Dallas Mavericks introduced their “staggered ball screen” set in game two of the Finals, I have been fascinated with play (and the Heat’s inability to stop it) and have talked about it just about every chance that I have gotten. Due to my fascination with the play, I have noticed just about every time they have tried to run it. During game 4 with Brian Cardinal in the game for Dirk Nowitzki, the Mavericks tried to run their staggered ball screen using Cardinal and Chandler as the two screeners. As you probably guessed, with Cardinal not being the same kind of threat as Nowitzki, the play wasn’t even close to being effective.
Going into game 5 knowing that he needed Brian Cardinal to steal minutes on the court, he came up with a way to make his staggered ball screen effective with Nowitzki on the bench. The adjustment was effective, leading to 7 points on the 3 possessions where Brian Cardinal was involved in the staggered ball screen:
Jason Terry brings the basketball down the court along the sideline as Brian Cardinal and Tyson Chandler get in position to set the staggered ball screen. Once both bigs are set, Terry comes back towards the middle of the court, using the ball screens.
One of the biggest plays of the game took place with about 2:30 seconds left in the game with the Dallas Mavericks leading the Miami Heat by three points. After a pick and roll for Dwyane Wade, a tremendous cut by LeBron James, and a collision in the restricted area between LeBron James and Tyson Chandler, Joey Crawford made what seemed to be the incorrect call. However, upon closer examination (and referring to a little known/used rule) we can see that Crawford made the correct call given the situation:
The play starts with Chris Bosh coming up and setting a screen for Dwyane Wade, with Wade actually using the screen. Off the ball, LeBron James sits in the corner, being covered by Jason Kidd.
So far this postseason, LeBron James has been one of the best ball handlers in pick and roll situations, posting a PPP (points per possession) of 1.0, ranking him 7th among all players this postseason (2nd among all players with at least 20 PNR possessions). He’s been better than Dwyane Wade (0.934), J.J. Barea (0.961), and Derrick Rose (0.828) just to name a few. When you think about it, it makes sense, a player like LeBron James getting coming off of a screen is a scary thought.
However, in game four, James went from being an aggressive force coming off of ball screens to being an extremely passive player, and that really hurt his game (the numbers show that). According to Synergy Sports Technology, LeBron James was the ball handler for 12 ball screens, scoring just 6 points (for a PPP of 0.5). James’ production was cut in half due to his passive play.
One of the biggest problems that I had with LeBron James and his pick and roll play is that he was often dribbling away from the rim when coming off of screens. Dribbling backwards and not looking to attack. With the defense not worried about James attacking, it made their rotations everywhere else much easier:
When the Dallas Mavericks broke out their staggered ball screens in game two, it game the Miami Heat a world of trouble, as they were able to score 8 points in 4 possessions on 75% shooting. While we didn’t really see the play in game three, the Dallas Mavericks used it again in game four, and it is obvious that the play is still giving the Heat trouble. In my post about Dallas’ pick and roll adjustment, we saw that the Mavericks ran their double staggered ball screens twice, scoring 5 points. When rewatching the possessions, you can see that Miami is still searching for a way to stop this set:
The play starts with Dirk Nowitzki and Tyson Chandler setting screens for J.J. Barea. On this particular possession, the Miami Heat try to hedge off of the second screener (Nowitzki in this case) as Barea’s man (Mario Chalmers) fights over the staggered ball screens. The problem with hedging off of Nowitzki is that you don’t want to leave him and give him too much space. So instead of the hard hedges you normally see from Joel Anthony and the Miami Heat, Anthony just steps out in the hopes of keeping Barea from getting around him.
For much of the first half of game four, both the Miami Heat and the Dallas Mavericks really struggled to score the basketball. However, for a brief stretch in the second quarter the Heat found themselves a play that worked, and they went to it three straight times, coming away with 6 much needed points. What was interesting about this set and how Miami used it was that the Heat got three different looks by running the same double cross screen action three times, showing you what a simple, yet effective, set can do to a defense:
The first time the Miami Heat ran their double cross screen set, it came off of a SLOB situation. The play starts with the ball going Chris Bosh at the top of the key as LeBron James sets up on the elbow.
Once James makes the catch, Dwyane Wade gets a double cross screen set for him, with one screen being set by Mario Chalmers and one screen being set by Joel Anthony.
Trying to figure out what is wrong with LeBron James and his play, Hoopspeak’s Beckley Mason gathered some of the best basketball minds (and yours truly), and hosted a roundtable trying to figure what was wrong with LeBron and how the Heat can get him going. A part of my contribution to the roundtable:
When looking at what the Heat (and coach Erik Spoelstra) can do differently to get LeBron James going is something that they have done in the past and it is something that usually leads to tremendous success. However, for whatever reason the Heat shy away from it in late game situations. The set/quick hitting play I am talking about? The pick and pop with Dwyane Wade as the ball handler and LeBron James as the screener…
Going into game four, the Dallas Mavericks were using Dirk Nowitzki as the primary screener whenever they were running a pick and roll when he was on the court. For whatever reason (maybe it was because Nowitzki was sick, maybe it was because they noticed something on tape), the Mavericks decided to go away from that and run pick and rolls with Nowitzki not involved, standing away from the action. The results were exactly what the Mavericks wanted:
As you can see, the Mavericks ran 21 pick and rolls with Dirk Nowitzki on the court. Nine (42.8%) of those pick and rolls were with Dirk Nowitzki as the screener, with Dallas scoring just two points off of these pick and rolls. On the other hand, during the 10 (47.6%) pick and rolls where Nowitzki was not directly involved in the pick and roll action, the Mavericks scored 16 points (I’ll have more on the staggered ball screens in a future post).
So why were these pick and rolls where Nowitzki wasn’t setting the screen so successful? There are two reasons why. First, the defense has to respect and pay attention to Nowitzki and the pick and roll at the same time. Nowitzki is drawing attention to himself instead of the pick and roll taking place:
