HendrixFan
Diamond Member
- Oct 18, 2001
- 4,646
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I'm gonna assume you haven't watched a Heat game this year, and based on your recap of last night's game I'm gonna assume your analysis is based on the Sportscenter highlights.
More than anything, last night's game was a reflection of poor FT shooting. Anytime you miss 14 FTs and lose in overtime, that is the simplest and most direct thing to fix going forward.
In direct response to your critique, Lebron bites his nails in blowouts so that has nothing to do with choking. Wade was there to "bail him out" even though a 26-11-7 statline isn't exactly something in need of a bailout. Lebron was great on D as were the Heat, they held the Warriors to 40% shooting, 33% from 3, and got 30 fast break points out of their D.
If you had watched the game, you would see that much of the night Lebron was playing weakside as the Heat trapped the ball. The Warriors played up from the top of the key and on picks the Heat would aggressively trap the ball, sometimes before the screen was even set. The big man coming up to trap would rotate back to the paint to pick up the guy that rotated over from the paint to pick up the screener. Defensively this puts on huge ball pressure, especially given the short guards the Warriors have, and has the players nearby fully covered.
Of course, you can't trap the ball without leaving someone open right? Well that is where Lebron was most of the night. You could see him on the weakside near the painted area "guarding" the corner 3 man and the wing/elbow man. If the ball was tossed crosscourt to evade the trapping pressure his length and quickness would mean a steal. If the ball is rotated to the weakside he is again fast and long enough to recover, while an additional Heat defender races to the corner man.
It is a more aggressive variation of the defense the Lakers used when they won their recent two titles, and the defense the Celtics won in their title season. The Heat play it far more aggressively as they have guys who can recover much faster than those Lakers or Celtics teams. That is why the Heat are getting so many fast break points this year, and why they are shooting at such a high percentage. Their ball pressure turns into easy points in the paint.
If you need I can pull up some screen shots to show what I'm talking about, but simply watching the game this should all be pretty clear.
Edit: I'd also like to add that this hybrid man/zone defense that elite teams play was literally impossible to do back in the Jordan era. Morons who don't understand the game yet somehow have landed commentator or analyst status in print or TV keep talking about how Jordan did so much when hand checking was allowed and how he would kill in today's hand check free game.
Please.
Back then you couldn't leave your man for just about anything without it being considered an illegal defense. You could trap ball screens but you couldn't double a player until he got the ball. ISO a guy up, pull the rest of the team back, then toss him the ball. He has a second or two until the double arrives which is an eternity in basketball. Worse, the other guys can't rotate around to the free man until he has the ball. It was so stupid.
The Bulls had 4 elite defenders with length who could switch ball screens and still guard their man effectively. That was the key to the Bulls' championship run, their D. On offense they didn't have to worry about teams throwing any kind of defensive wrinkle at them, because they couldn't. Jordan as a great one-on-one player and the league didn't allow teams to do anything other than watch. The team defenses of today's game (if they are good) are much better than anything we saw in the 90s.
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