In the 25 regular-season games they started together a year ago, Marcus Morris and Tobias Harris vexed opposing coaches for the matchup problems they forced. Stan Van Gundy hopes to press his advantage even further this season.
He didn’t have much time to fully exploit the edge last season when Harris came in trade from Orlando in February. His impulse was to move Morris to the power forward spot vacated by Ersan Ilyasova in the deal for Harris and use Harris at small forward. But Morris’ play suffered initially, so Van Gundy wasted no time swapping their roles to great effect.
This year, with ample preparation time available, he’s splitting time between the two positions for both players.
“It’s a matchup thing. We want them going back and forth,” Van Gundy said. “We did that in the Cleveland series based on the match and what we have in our package offensively. We want to be able to say, ‘You play the four; you play the three,’ because we can get to different actions. We want them totally interchangeable both offensively and defensively.”
Van Gundy thought Morris looked especially uncomfortable at one end of the floor with the switch last season, but only because he’d spent the first two-thirds of the season almost exclusively at small forward.
“I think it was more at the offensive end,” he said, “but we hadn’t done this from day one. Now it’s every day. Every time we come out and put something in and run through offense, he and Tobias play both spots.”
Both players are more than agreeable with the switch, grasping that it will play to their advantage – and, more critically, to the team’s advantage.
“It’s good. Getting good reps in at both positions defensively and offensively,” Harris said. “Me and Marcus, being interchangeable, seeing different plays where we can switch sometimes and then on the offensive end seeing different areas where we can create some mismatches. I think that’s going to be a big key for us this year for ways we can play.”
“We are interchangeable – there’s no ‘almost,’ ” Morris said. “It’s fully interchangeable. With Stanley (Johnson), too. We’re interchangeable and I think that makes our team 10 times better. You can’t look around the league and know three forwards from the same team that can switch at any time. That definitely gives you an advantage.”
Harris and Morris are both off to strong starts in camp, Van Gundy said. Morris was limited in a few practices last week after spraining the ring finger on his shooting hand, but he was back at it Monday.
“He’s looked very good,” Van Gundy said. “He’s ready to go.” And of Harris, Van Gundy said, “He’s played well. He’s a guy with great pride and a great desire to win.”
Van Gundy has even more flexibility behind them, too, starting with Johnson – but it hardly stops there. In fact, after initially using Johnson some at power forward – in addition to small forward and shooting guard – Van Gundy has reverted to keeping Johnson at the two wing positions, satisfied with the depth at power forward. Beyond just Morris and Harris, he likes what he’s seen from Jon Leuer, Henry Ellenson and Aron Baynes.
“There would probably be either Marcus, Tobias, Jon, Henry, one of ’em on the floor with (Johnson), so we’ll just keep him on the wing,” Van Gundy said. “He had a great practice (Monday), by far his best. He has been having turnover problems and we thought he’d been forcing his action. Today he just made solid, simple basketball plays and played really, really well.”
Marcus Morris and Tobias Harris gave opposing coaches headaches last season in a limited run. With everyone’s comfort level raised this time around, they’re going to cause a few migraines this time around.