Times have changed.
Once upon a first-round series, the Miami HEAT’s choices in covering Carmelo Anthony punched their ticket to the conference semifinals and, eventually, an NBA Championship. With New York’s scoring savant hitting jumper after jumper in 2012, Erik Spoelstra elected to have his defensive wings sit directly in front of Anthony in the post and force opposing guards to throw the ball over the top. As was the HEAT’s primary directive in those days, forcing a higher degree of difficulty on entry passes to a star player created turnovers, turnover fed transition, transition fed efficiency and efficiency won games.
Once enough of those turnovers came to pass with Miami’s big men swarming the back line of defense, sandwiching Anthony as he tried to make a reception, New York’s guard became reticent to even attempt the play. The offense stagnated, Anthony had to catch the ball farther and farther away from the basket, and Miami won. A few series later, Spoelstra employed the same strategy against Kevin Durant and the Oklahoma City Thunder.
What worked yesterday doesn’t always work today. Adapt or die, as they say.
Now, with much of Miami’s defensive system having undergone more than just superficial changes, the team has a different approach to Anthony. There’s still some fronting, as Dwyane Wade did last night, but the primary look was akin to what teams like Dallas and Chicago once used against Miami in the playoffs. Instead of outright denying the ball, give Anthony the catch and make him read a second defender.
There wasn’t any settling in, either. Miami went right into overloading the strong side of the floor right off the bat.
First, with Hassan Whiteside forcing a quick pass.
“[We were] just trying to get Melo to get the ball out of his hands,” Whiteside said. “He’s a great scorer. We just want to get him passing the ball.”
The next time Anthony caught the ball in the post, Whiteside was again on his way over to zone him up. Doing his part, Luol Deng – a longtime practioner of this style of defense during his time under Tom Thibodeau – angles his body to cut off the middle of the floor, forcing Anthony either to the baseline or a jumper.
“You know [your teammate] is there, so you don’t want him to hit a jumper on you,” Deng said. “My whole thing is if he drives, you have help. The whole key was to push him to the baseline.”
Anthony makes his move for the drive. Maybe he sees Whiteside, maybe he doesn’t, but a drive quickly becomes a jumper regardless.
Later in the quarter, we’re back in the same situation. Whiteside is still in the game, now defensive wunderkind Justise Winslow gets his turn at Anthony. Like Deng, Winslow angles his body so his feet and shoulders are essentially pointing North-South along the lines of the painted area. Gerald Green presses toward the left elbow. Go baseline, Miami is saying. Go baseline or go nowhere.
Anthony fakes once. Fakes twice. And on the third fake, Whiteside is there.
Revolutionary defense? This is no such thing. Miami played against this for years and plenty of other teams, including the Golden State Warriors, use the same tactics. The post-up is actually a solid counter to the overload, as opposed to attacking it face-on from the wing, because it gives the ballhandler a chance to find the opening in the defense from a good passing location.
Anthony has seen this coverage plenty, too, and he eventually recognized and reconfigured his approach. By the second quarter, as on this Bosh overload, he was finding Kristaps Porzingis.
And by the fourth quarter, those passes were being converted into points. But in between Anthony first, second and third shifts, Miami had taken control of the game with a 20-point lead.
“We talked about [the coverage] a little bit this morning [at shootaround],” Bosh said. “He’s one of the best scorers the league has ever seen. If you let him get a rhythm and give him the same look, he’s eventually going to tear it apart.
“I think we got him off balance, just for a little bit, and that bought us some time.”
Time was all Miami needed. With a sizeable lead, the HEAT threw a couple more looks at Anthony – such as Wade fronting – but generally trusted Deng and Winslow to defend him the same way Shane Battier was once trusted. Because by then Anthony was catching further from the rim.
That’s the story of one game, but Bosh mentioned the most crucial aspect to all of this. The coverage, though something Miami dabbled in the previous season, was something that was implemented that morning before the game. It was, Deng confirmed, the first time the team had tried to execute the overload this season.
Spoelstra said, in effect, ‘Let’s do this’. And the team did it, effectively.
“That’s the key, man,” Wade said. “We don’t have a lot of time to prepare for other teams, so Coach has to feel confident to be able to throw something in and we have to be able to pick it up. If you can pick it up more times than not in a quick shootaround and come out and it makes an impact on a team, man, you’ll be a good team. You can be a very good defensive team by doing that.
“I haven’t been on many teams – obviously our championship teams did – that had that capability to pick it up on the fly and it works.”
Wins are nice, this and any time of year. Being the top-ranked unit by defensive efficiency is even sweeter. But those can be fickle, fleeting achievements if they aren’t backed up by something real. By a firm, but flexible foundation.
Fortunately, Miami has been building just that over the past couple weeks. Spoelstra has found lineups that appear to work, as far as consistently supplying defense goes. Against a solid New York team those lineups showed they could also be molded to fit the situation.
The approach to those situations might be reversed from how things were a few years ago, but this isn’t a team holding on to the past. There’s no, ‘This is how we do things, and by golly we’re going to make it work’ to this group. Spoelstra’s toolbox includes everything that’s been used against him in the past, and the team seems to be showing it can be just as malleable as its coach.