In their loss to the Indiana Pacers, the Miami Heat held the Pacers to just 93 points on 41.1% shooting from the floor. While this looks good, the one number that stuck out to me is points in the paint. The Pacers scored 38, or 40.8%, of their 93 points in the paint. Hoopdata.com tells us that the Pacers shot 55.1% on their 29 shots from inside 10 feet.
There are two main reasons why the Heat struggled defending the paint. First, the Heat bigs just didn’t bring help in a timely fashion or at all:
As the Pacers swing the ball back to the top of the key, Brandon Rush gets a pin down screen from James Posey.
As Rush gets the basketball, Posey’s man (Chris Bosh) and Dwyane Wade show at the basketball. As this happens, Posey rolls to the basket. Zydrunas Ilgauskas is responsible to help on this roll, but he has his head turned.
By the time Ilgauskas gets his head turned around, Posey already has the ball in the paint and is attempting a shot. Ilgauskas doesn’t help in time and Posey gets the lay-in uncontested. Here is the play in real time.
Ilgauskas has his head turned because he is returning to his man after showing on the first screen on the opposite side, which is just bad technique and this is what allows Posey to get an easy two.
Here, Chris Bosh is in the middle of the paint in help position. However, good help position is just one aspect of good help defense. As Brandon Rush attacks the rim, Bosh just stands there, not really committing to the help. This is the same thing that got him put on a Rajon Rondo poster. In this case, Rush just hits a jumper in his face.
After the Pacers run through their set here, Darren Collison takes advantage of Carlos Arroyo’s ball watching and cuts back door. Collison makes the catch along the baseline and attacks the rim. Again, Ilgauskas is late with the help and Collison is able to finish at the rim with ease.
In the above clip, the whole Miami Heat team gets in on the “no help D” act. Nevermind the fact that Roy Hibbert is able to cut backdoor on his man and get the basketball, but look at how the defense is situated as it is happening:
As Hibbert cuts backdoor, with the ball in the air heading towards him, look at the off ball defenders of Miami. Pressed up on their man, staring at them, an unable to help when Hibbert makes the catch, allowing an easy two.
In addition to the poor help from the bigs (and the Heat as a team), miscommunication was a huge factor in the Pacers’ success at the rim. What was really surprising about this was that it was Dwyane Wade largely responsible for the miscommunication:
After Tyler Hansbrough swings the basketball to the opposite side of the court, Brandon Rush is going to set a backscreen for him, allowing him to cut backdoor into the paint.
As Rush sets the screen, it is obvious that Wade didn’t call it out. If he did, Bosh wouldn’t have backed up right into it.
What makes this worse is that Wade and Bosh don’t know whether tor not they should be switching the screen. Bosh thinks that he should be switching while Wade stays on his man, leaving Tyler Hansbrough wide open in the paint for an easy two. Here is the play in real time.
In this case, Brandon Rush is going to cut across the paint and as this happens Josh McRoberts is going to trail the play and eventually set a screen for Rush.
This time the roles of Wade and Bosh are reversed (Bosh’s man is setting the screen while Wade’s man is coming off of it). Bosh is pressing up on his man, and the reason why is because he is trying to clear a lane for Wade to go under the screen.
However, Wade goes over the screen and that forces Bosh to try and recover but it’s too late. Rush gets the ball and finishes easily at the rim. Here is the play in real time:
Notice how Bosh presses up on McRoberts. This is a technique that some teams use to help allow the defender covering the man coming off the screen to get under the screen with relative ease. Unfortunately Wade doesn’t pick up on this and tries to go over the screen.
In this clip, we see another example of bad communication from Wade. Here, the pass gets made to the high post and Wade quickly doubles the basketball. He doesn’t get the double in time, and he allows McRoberts to easily find Brandon Rush (who cut as soon as Wade left him) to the rim.
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You have to give the Pacers a whole lot of credit for finding a strategy that would put pressure on Miami’s defense. With that being said, this has more to do with the Heat’s bad defense than the Pacers’ good offense.
This bad defense could still be the Heat players still getting used to each other, but I have my doubts about that (it has been 14 games, with practices in between). Either way, you can expect to see the Heat’s upcoming opponents use the Pacers’ offensive strategy (constant motion on offense, forcing the Heat bigs to move on defense, and a lot of off ball screens/backdoor cuts) until the Heat can figure this out.
