As Erik Spoelstra walked into the interview room following Miami’s Game 82 overtime victory over the No. 1 seeded Toronto Raptors, he sat down at his podium seat with a wide smile on his face.
“Is there any other way but the hard way with this group,” he asked nobody in particular.
That was the best way to sum up what was a remarkably tense regular season for the team on the court, where they played a league-leading 53 games that were within five points in the final five minutes a year after missing the playoffs by a tiebreaker despite a 30-11 second-half of the season. Nothing was ever easy, and so its only fitting that their postseason draw is a team that is entering the postseason with the longest winning streak, at 16, in league history going into the playoffs.
Not that the Philadelphia 76ers, having averaged just under 19 wins a year for the past fours seasons before exploding for 52 this year, are used to the easy way. The status of their own All-World center, Joel Embiid, is unknown for the early parts of this series as he recovers from an orbital fracture and they only just got No. 1 pick Markelle Fultz on the floor a few weeks ago.
And that’s what makes this series a perfect match. Both of these rosters have been through the grinder and it’s reflected in the way they play. They’re gritty, they’re well coached and they earn their way with defense. These teams deserve each other and the fight they’re about to endure – and relish, knowing their coaches.
All table setting aside, this series also promises to be especially fertile for lovers of schemes and strategies. Miami’s players have a great deal of respect for the work Brett Brown has done in building his program up and getting them to play they way they do, defending consistently and leading the league in passes per game.
“They have a great coaching staff,” Dwyane Wade said. “They’ve been underrated for a long time because they haven’t won 50 games. If you’ve played against them, if you know the game, you know that they have a great staff.”
But it’s Erik Spoelstra who might have the most fascinating decision(s) to make in the series, and that’s how to defend a 6-foot-10 wunderkind rookie point guard. So let’s get down to the nitty gritty.
Ben Simmons the player is as unique as they come. He can throw darts between a fly’s wings all over the court, finding open teammates who don’t even know they’re open. He can freight train his way through a smaller defender and quick his way past a larger one, taking a rebound full-court for a dunk with grace and oomph. He could be, by all accounts, a generational player.
In the words of Goran Dragić, “He’s a big dude.”
But Ben Simmons the basketball problem, the one opposing defenses have to solve in order to stop what’s been one of the league’s elite offenses since adding shooter Marco Bellineli and Ersan Ilyasova, has precedent. Because Simmons almost literally does not shoot. He’s a monster in the paint, but outside of it he takes just barely one shot per game.
That type of player, in general terms, Miami has both faced and enjoyed the labors of. This season alone they’ve had success asking defenders to sag well off the likes of LeBron James and Giannis Antetokounmpo, offering soft, paint-focused coverage in pick-and-rolls to deter drives and encourage jumpers. And they’ve had James on their roster when the San Antonio Spurs utilize the same coverage. There are little variations applicable to each team and player, but it generally looks like what James Johnson is doing here.
But unlike those aforementioned stars, Simmons doesn’t want or need to shoot. Even with a sagging defender and help pinching into the paint whenever he puts the ball on the floor…
…Simmons and the 76ers find success in their own way – a way that reminds Spoelstra of a slightly smaller opponent.
“It’s a very similar concept to the old Boston Celtic teams with [Rajon] Rondo, but you’re seeing somebody who is 6-foot-10 doing the same thing. You play soft or you go under, he’s turning it into a foot race but he’s 6-foot-10 with a 7-foot wingspan and he’s one dribble and he’s at the rim. You’re not catching him in that race. You have to impact and meet the ball at some point. That’s what we’ll have to figure out is where that line of demarcation is for us.”
It might seem like the smallest detail, falling on the nerd scale somewhere near being emotionally invested in Roger Deakins winning an Oscar for Best Cinematography, but where that line falls could end up determining the result of the entire series. Whether it’s James Johnson, Justise Winslow or Josh Richardson, does Simmons’ defender sit back three feet off the ball? Five feet? Somewhere in between?
The 76ers have seen a wide variety of coverages and Simmons isn’t going to sit on the perimeter pounding the ball away in confusion. They get into their offense quickly and with purpose. Not just attacking a scrambled defense for threes in secondary transition but making you defend in the halfcourt, running Simmons’ defender into screens and handoffs until you’ve lost all semblance of that perfect spacing you had in mind. Play too close and Simmons might burst right on by. Sit too far back and Simmons could get a full head of steam going into and over your chest.
“Guys that you hang back on like that know you’re doing it,” Richardson said. “So they’re going to bring the game to your chest. A guy like Ben Simmons, who is very tall and athletic, it’s not an easy assignment. Guys like Giannis, LeBron, they’ve figured that out and mastered bringing the game inside. Ben is getting very good at it.”
And if you focus on that line too closely, narrowing your peripheral vision, you might get caught on a back-screen that the 76ers used in big spots three times on Miami this season.
All the while Philadelphia has a stable of shooters matched by few teams in the league. Miami’s defensive rules typically dictate that off-ball defenders keep a foot in the paint to at least feint at attackers, relying on smarts and effort to recover to the arc where they’ve been one of the best teams at limiting open looks. Any mistake that causes the ripple effect of displacing one defender can lead to a quick, and deadly, shot courtesy of one of the league leaders in spray passes.
“You want to try to make him shoot jump shots but he’s not going to” Winslow said. “It’s just how can you limit his super easy ones, the dunks and the transition ones and make him shoot some of those tougher floaters and hooks that he can also make.
“We can try to shrink the floor and limit Ben Simmons but also get out to shooters. We did that against Cleveland, we’ve done it against Golden State, we’ve done it against the best teams.”
We’ll see how the HEAT come out on Saturday and how closely they defend Simmons but chances are, win or lose, there will be adjustments made. And those adjustments, where they dictate the line of defense, could only be a half foot in either direction.
The second problem caused by Simmons’ size is that he isn’t Philadelphia’s only big player. Up and down their rotation they have long, rangy defenders capable of switching just about any action on the floor, even with Embiid – usually dropping back into the paint. Despite being hyper capable of switching, their defenders are individually strong enough and so adept at fighting through contact that they rarely are forced to switch unless they choose do to so.
Even on Dwyane Wade’s game-winner in the third matchup between these teams, the 76ers effortlessly switched over and over again to keep the ball contained to the perimeter.
What’s the solution?
“We have to run the actions crisper and more intentional,” Dragić said. “Focus on details. It needs to be good screens and of course with some motor. They have size but we feel like we have good ball movement. It’s going to be really crucial for us to have everybody involved.”
Richardson echoed the same, saying that ball movement, with purpose, will be key. Outside of Wade, the HEAT don’t have many players who focus on one-on-one scoring. In fact the HEAT and 76ers use the fewest isolation possessions in the league – close, end-game situations could be more set-heavy than your typical postseason affairs – so Miami won’t go chasing too many mismatches (a trap Philadelphia occasionally fell into with a size advantage, such as Richardson on Dario Sarić).
Instead, the HEAT will likely rely on handoff actions that have been fooling switching defenses all season – particularly when Kelly Olynyk visited Boston – and timing-intensive, bunch actions that force defenses to manage more than one switch at a time.
“Most teams that switch, we have triggers for that,” James Johnson said. “We have Erik Spoelstra as our head coach. I know for sure you give him two days, three days to prepare for any team and we’re going to be as ready as possible.”
There’s plenty more to consider in a matchup between two deep and versatile teams. When Embiid returns the 76ers will regain the services of one of the league’s premier post-up, and thus shot creating, players. The HEAT have been using a nine-man rotation lately, but which combinations of those players Spoelstra will use, and for how long, remain a mystery. Will Miami sacrifice a little shooting in order to player Johnson and Winslow on the floor at the same time? What is Fultz going to do off the bench, and will he be more willing to take dribble jumpers if the HEAT sag off his as well? Can Miami slow the 76ers down in transition and track their shooters off screens, as they did so well in holding Robert Covington and JJ Redick to 13-of-54 from three during the regular season? How often will Brown break out aggressive, trapping pick-and-roll coverage on Dragić, forcing him to give up the ball early? We could go on but this paragraph is already resembling the endless credits before getting to the stinger of any Marvel movie.
Whatever the answers are after Game 1, they might change by Game 2 and change again by Game 3 in ways we don’t fully notice. That’s the soul-feeding fun of the playoffs.
The only thing we know for sure is it’s not going to be easy.