The Miami Heat managed to steal a game in the infamous altitude against the Denver Nuggets and even the NBA Finals at a game apiece. I’m sure you heard about it. Game Two was a classic, and will be remembered by those who watched it long after the conclusion of this series. Nikola Jokic, surprise surprise, was incredible yet again, putting up 41 points on 28 shots while displaying his trademark, lumbering grace and pillowy soft touch. And the shot-making displays weren’t exclusive to the Joker. Miami and Denver combined to make over 44% of their 3-pointers, serving up reminder after reminder of the unfathomable talent on display in the NBA.
The eyes of the basketball world are trained on the Finals. Obviously. And we all have the same 48 minutes of game-tape to analyze and over-analyze. So, unique observations, at this point in the season, are few and far between – with that said, here are a couple of Game Two tidbits I found to be both interesting and key to a Heat victory.
Zone Defense
Ah yes, the infamous Miami zone vs. Denver’s unstoppable offense. Whether you believe zone defense at the NBA-level is an affront to professional sports or not, this was a matchup hyped up by the nerdiest among us. The Heat have played the most zone defense in the NBA in both this regular season and post-season. Zone is part of their Dark Magic, concocted in Pat Riley’s sunken living room.
Denver meanwhile…well, I’ll just borrow the words from CBS Sports writer Jack Maloney: “In the regular season, [the Nuggets] were second in the league in zone offense, scoring 1.156 points per possession, and in the playoffs that mark has jumped to a stunning 1.385 points per possession.”
This is less of a mystery, of course. The Nuggets are led by a lab-designed zone-buster, a 7-foot-tall wizard with soft hands, sharp vision, and a lethal mid-range jump-shot. Step one: Put that guy in the middle of your zone offense. Step Two: Profit! This, prior to the series, was much of the discussion around Miami’s zone defense and how Denver might counter it: “Well, they have Nikola Jokic, so, yeah.”
While excellent analysis, that misses one thing: The Heat do not play your run-of-the-mill zone. When you hear “zone defense” in the NBA, you imagine a red-faced head coach so perturbed by his team’s effort that he says “[expletive] this, just play some 2-3. You guys remember that from high school, right?” Well, that is not Erik Spoelstra and the Heat.
Spo’s squad change their zone, seemingly, from possession to possession, but a principle often prevails. Deny dribble penetration in the middle without sacrificing corner threes. How? Have your weak-side guards flock to the ball-side, no matter where they are. An obvious but difficult challenge, one that places heavy onus on the wings of the operation. Here’s a possession from the first half of Game Two, one that ends with an Aaron Gordon three:
That’s an outcome that the Heat will surely take. Rather than have Jamal Murray fire up a corner 3-pointer, a below average shooter in Gordon is taking one, lightly contested. That play exhibits the general structure the Heat rely on when going zone in these playoffs, specifically vs. Denver’s bench units.
But in the fourth quarter, they trotted out a zone agains Nikola Jokic & co., and boy did it make my brain hurt. Well, me and the Nuggets:
Gabe Vincent does a hell of a job fronting Jokic in the first clip, which was the tenet of Miami’s zone concepts in the fourth quarter. On a subsequent possession, Denver decides to let Jokic handle it up top, a much easier path to getting the ball in his hands. Welp, that results in Vincent applying extreme ball pressure and forcing a (questionable) charge.
What even is that zone? I’m damn near tempted to call it the world’s strangest-looking box-and-one, though in reality it’s more of a 2-1-2 where the ‘1’ is interchangeable. Just take a look at this possession, where Caleb Martin and Vincent switch the Jokic assignment mid-possession:
Zone defense, once you get past the high school level, is polarizing. And I get the argument; it feels almost cheap to remove the sanctity of guarding your man and taking pride in shutting him down from defense. “That ain’t basketball at its purest,” the detractors shout. But even the haters have to admit it’s a beautiful thing to watch the Heat maintain their core principles no matter what kind of funky zone they’re throwing out there.
Here, the Nuggets get creative with it, and screen for Jokic after he catches it off an inbounds, but the Heat snuff it out:
If any other team had the otherworldly gall to play zone against Nikola Jokic and the Nuggets, then their center certainly would’ve stepped up on that creative ball-screen from Denver. But Bam Adebayo and the Heat scoff at the notion. Why, so Jokic and Gordon can essentially run their famous inverted pick-and-roll? Or so Jokic can hit a devious back-cutter as the rim protector vacates the area? Nope. Erik Spoelstra’s guards are going to prevent dribble penetration – even when Jokic is on the floor, whether that means fronting him or not – and his wings are going to handle their business (although Kyle Lowry’s job here is admittedly made easier by Jimmy Butler’s recovery.)
I’ll say it. It’s a treat to watch the Miami Heat play zone defense, even on the biggest stage. Especially against one of the most fearsome zone-busters this game has ever known.
One more thing, really quick. As important as Miami’s zone defense was (a huge reason the Nuggets’ offense hovered around a pedestrian 111 offensive rating with Jokic on the court), their outside shooting was far more crucial. 49% from deep on 35 attempts? On the road? Especially when, per Cleaning the Glass, a minuscule 14% of their shots came inside the restricted area, meaning they were entirely reliant on jump-shooting? As boring as this may sound, there cannot be an explanation for Miami’s victory that doesn’t start with, “They shot the hell out of the rock.”
There are a few reasons why that happened, other than the pure shot-making talent 8-seeds are now dripping with. I tweeted a cut-up of all their 3-point attempts…
…and surmised, among other things, that the Heat successfully targeted Michael Porter Jr and Jamal Murray. You can draw your own conclusions, but it’s clear that Miami challenged those two to talk through countless screening actions and make long closeouts. Neither one did either task successfully. Aside from Bruce Brown, perhaps, the whole Denver squad was sloppy rotating and closing out to shooters. There’s a reason Jeff Green and Head Coach Mike Malone each ripped their team’s effort in postgame pressers.
But, to give the Heat some credit here, I thought they forced sloppy closeouts and missed rotations by paying careful attention to their spacing. Miami’s shooters consistently spaced multiple feet beyond the arc, and it caused problems for the Nuggets. Roll the tape:
Spacing farther away from the line not only creates longer closeouts for defenders, many of which various Nuggets botched repeatedly in their Game Two defeat. It also creates more opportunities for shooters to move without the ball – I don’t mean sprinting around screens like Steph Curry, the most commonly recognized form of off-ball-movement.
Rather, I’m talking about the art of subtly relocating, an art that Miami’s role players have perfected: Just look at Max Strus in that first clip. Relocating along the perimeter is about reading two players at once, and instinctually moving to a spot that makes the defender’s job harder but the passer’s job easier. Stus & co. did a great job of that in Game Two, and it was the cherry on top of a…Poop Sundae for Denver’s defenders. When the Nuggets weren’t busy closing out to shooters recklessly and jumping at every ball-fake, they were losing their assignments before then, unaware of perimeter relocations.
Yes, the Miami Heat shot the lights out, and that is the reason they were able to tie the series against the rightfully favored Nuggets. But don’t lose sight of the fact that Erik Spoelstra’s squad did all the little things right, executing their offensive and defensive game-plan on Sunday night. Whether they were setting up 3-point bombs or falling back into zone defense, the Heat certainly sweat the small stuff in Game Two. And it was beautiful to watch.
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