In my preview post looking at Miami’s pick and roll defense, I said that I expected to see Miami in their hard hedge/trapping style defense to start but abandon it later in the game. I was incorrect as the Heat started in their usual defense, and played it all the way through, committing an extra defender to the ball handler on 23 of the 32 pick and rolls that the Dallas Mavericks ran during the course of the game (including 5 out of 7 pick and rolls in the 4th quarter). Much like in their series with Chicago, the Heat made their adjustment on the backend of the pick and roll defense. Miami was really focused on keeping the basketball out of Dirk Nowitzki’s hands (and if he did make the catch, they wanted to turn him into a playmaker rather than a scorer). Despite Dallas performing better in the pick and roll in game one vs. the postseason (0.9374 PPP tonight vs. 0.92 playoffs PPP), it is my opinion that Dallas left scoring opportunities on the table. The main reason why I feel this way is because Dallas (and Dirk Nowitzki especially) seemed prepared for the Heat’s defense.
When the Heat trapped the ball handler coming off of the screen, they were committing a third defender to the roll/pop man. When it was Dirk Nowitzki, he was able to make the catch and make the right decision:
Here, Nowitzki sets a screen for Jason Terry and pops out towards the corner. This is by design as it forces LeBron James (the third man being sent to Nowitzki) to come from the opposite corner to make sure Nowitzki doesn’t get a clean look off. Instead of panicking, Nowitzki makes the catch, surveys the area, and spots the open man, hitting him with a pass. In this case, it is Shawn Marion, who makes the extra pass to Jason Kidd, who hits the shot as the defense attempts to rotate back to him.
LeBron James’ dunk with 2:47 left in the game pretty much sealed the game as it took the Heat’s lead from 7 points and stretched it out to 10 points (after the foul shot). While it looked like just your average isolation set late in the game, showing yet another example of a coach choosing the easy way out over a set play, looking at Miami’s previous two possessions shows you how the Heat and their coaching staff were able to set up Dallas’ defense for the dunk:
The two times down the court, the Miami Heat ran the same action twice in a row, with LeBron James bringing up the basketball, handing it off (or at least trying to) to Dwyane Wade and then letting Wade work off of a pick and roll. The Heat were actually looking to run the same action, but with the defense anticipating it, James was able to attack the rim:
As LeBron James crosses half court, he starts to take the basketball to Dwyane Wade, who is cutting towards James looking for the dribble handoff. Which is exactly what they ran two possessions in a row now.
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.
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 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.
In the first half of game three, LeBron James picked apart the Bulls’ defense, accumulating six assists in the first two quarters of play. With James looking to pass rather than looking to score and playing a cerebral game, coach Tom Thibodeau went into the half, looking to make an adjustment. That adjustment came while Joel Anthony was on the court. Starting in the third quarter, whoever was covering Joel Anthony (Carlos Boozer except for one or two possessions) basically just left him, effectively playing a zone (In fact, after the first possession, the announce crew couldn’t figure out what to call the defense). I started calling this a reverse box and one, because instead of four guys playing zone with one playing man, the Bulls had four players playing man and one playing zone.
It was an interesting strategy and one that makes sense, considering that Joel Anthony struggles to catch and score in the paint, even without a lot of defensive pressure. So did it work? It is hard to say, mainly because the on the fly nature of this adjustment lead to some confusion and negated whatever effectiveness the defense could have. Looking at the numbers, Joel Anthony was a +2 when he was on the court during the third (he was also a +2 in the first half/+4 for the game), with a lot of baskets coming from failed rotations:
This is the first offensive set of the half for the Miami Heat, and the first time they are using their new defense. You can see that there is a little confusion, as Carlos Boozer leaves Joel Anthony and forces LeBron James to make the catch farther out on the block. As Boozer leaves Anthony open, Noah rotates over to Anthony, leaving Chris Bosh open. James does a great job of spotting Bosh and hitting him for the open jumper. You can say that Noah is protecting the rim, but the whole strategy is to leave Anthony open, so Noah’s rotation shouldn’t have happened.
So far this series, Joakim Noah has really given the Miami Heat’s pick and roll defense a lot of problems by using his passing ability to break down the help at the back end after the Bulls trap Derrick Rose coming off of ball screens. Over at Hoopspeak.com, Brett Koremenos (you should seriously check him out on Twitter, great follow) did a great job of breaking things down.
Once again, in game three, Noah’s passing ability started to pick apart the Heat’s defense yet again. This time, instead of just allowing it to continue, coach Erik Spoelstra and the Miami Heat made a defensive adjustment in the fourth quarter, changing how they played the pick and roll.
Before we get to the adjustment, let’s look at how Noah was able to pick apart the Heat’s defense here in game three:
On this play, Noah is the screener, setting a pick for Derrick Rose and then rolling/popping out to the foul line. As the ball goes to him, Dwyane Wade rotates over, stepping up top him, determined to take away his space.
With Wade rotating over as Chris Bosh recovers to Noah, Keith Bogans is left wide open. Noah does a good job of spotting the open man and hitting him.
One big factor in Pacer demise against a 3-man Heat team? Tyler Hansbrough. Three terrible first half shots & two huge second half travels 15 hours ago
James and Battier came over to remind Wade that Battier wide open from the corner is a better option than Anthony finish at the rim. 15 hours ago
