The Atlanta Hawks don’t need to be told.
Some teams need a little time to learn how to best deal with Bam Adebayo, which is often to simply not deal with him at all. The Hawks play the HEAT four times a year, every year. They know. Trae Young knows. There’s a reason Young, who was No. 11 in the league this year with 593 total isolations, has only isolated Adebayo 12 times in the past three seasons.
The Miami HEAT don’t need to be told, either.
Some teams still adhere to an antiquated blueprint for how best to deal with Young. They’ll blitz him in pick-and-rolls, putting two on the ball in hopes of getting the ball out of Young’s hands and forcing the other Hawks to make plays. There’s a reason Erik Spoelstra, despite remaining one of the coaches most willing to use the most aggressive coverage, has only blitzed Young four times with Adebayo in the past two seasons.
What we got Sunday in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference First Round was a meeting of two teams that know each other. They may have only had about one night and one day to truly prepare for one another after the Hawks clinched their playoff spot Friday night, but they didn’t need to cram. These two teams have been dancing this dance for some years. There’s a reason Young didn’t isolate Adebayo a single time, nor did Adebayo blitz Young once. Miami knows their best option is their foundation, the switch. Atlanta knows their best option is to try and use that against the HEAT.
The first result was one of the worst games in Trae Young’s career, a 1-of-12, six turnover showing that marked just the third time ever that Young has failed to convert multiple field-goals. According to basketball-reference.com’s GameScore, it was the fourth-worst game of Young’s career. But it wasn’t for lack of trying to do the right thing.
On the very first possession of the afternoon, the Hawks didn’t go anywhere near Adebayo. Miami has players you can target on switches, but if you start playing that game too early then you’re playing right into the HEAT’s hands. They want to flatten out your actions. You have to at least try to run offense, and here Atlanta tries to set up a hammer screen for Kevin Huerter in the corner, ignoring that Young gets Max Strus on the initial switch. When that look isn’t there, with Adebayo planted on Onyeka Okongwu along the baseline, only then does Young seek out the mismatch – amusingly ignoring Okongwu as he instinctively tries to provide a screen.
Once Young draws Strus, watch what P.J. Tucker does.
Miami gives up the switch, but Tucker never strays too far as he fills the gap to Young’s right. To Young’s left, Jimmy Butler threatens to step up, playing high on the strong-side corner shooter in De’Andre Hunter. With Strus doing well enough in front of Young with an ally in the shot clock, neither Butler nor Tucker fully commits. They don’t need to. The job isn’t to get the ball out of Young’s hands, it’s to make sure the ball doesn’t get into the paint while in Young’s possession.
“Keep him in front,” Butler said, crediting Strus with strong individual defense. “He is constantly breaking down defenses and causing you to help. If you don’t help it’s a layup, it’s a floater. If you do help, he’s hitting the right guys every single time. I think we did a great job of not fouling and just moving our feet and staying in front.”
This is specific to Young, but it’s entirely in character for Miami. Spoelstra has designed his entire defense to create a shell around the paint. They allowed the fourth-fewest drives this season to go with the sixth-fewest direct paint touches, per Second Spectrum’s player tracking data. As long as that shell remains unbroken, mission accomplished.
Switching is the key, of course. Steamroll your actions, keep the ball moving side to side or not at all. But it’s about positioning, too. Attackers don’t, for the most part, drive through attackers. They drive past them, left or right. As on the possession above, Miami carefully places defenders on those sides, passively steering the ball like a cowboy herding cattle. Pressure the space.
Here’s what Young was looking at when he attempted an incursion on Spoelstra’s most prized territory.
“Showing bodies,” Kyle Lowry said “He’s going to make more than one shot. He’s going to have more than four assists. We just have to stay patient and stick with what we do. At the end of the day, he can make shots and we can get a little bit frustrated, but if we stick with the gameplan and he makes shots, you just go on and move forward.”
It’s not all that different from how Miami defends Giannis Antetokounmpo or LeBron James. Young is the more capable shooter, which requires a few alterations to the spacing, but the philosophy is the constant.
The third quarter contained the best example of what Lowry is talking about. Watch the bodies in front of Young and consider the options he had other than taking the shot he takes as Adebayo stays back to control the lob option and Miami squeezes the drop pocket.
Young had just eight drives on Sunday, his second-lowest total of the season, but again this is nothing new. In the last three years, Young has games with 11, 10, 10, 8 and 5 drives – not including yesterday. He averages 19 a game. Sure, Young has also has a 50-point game on the ledger against Miami back in 2020, but what happened in that game? He shot 8-of-15 from three and went 18-of-19 at the line. Miami adheres to Daniel Craig’s Layer Cake philosophy. Have a plan, stick to it. Keep Young in front. Don’t foul. If he makes shots, he makes shots.
Somewhat amusingly, there were a couple of early possessions where Young simply accepted the switch from Adebayo and then spaced the floor out to 30 feet while letting his team play 4-on-4. It worked once, but that’s a tradeoff Tucker says the HEAT are happy to make.
"At that point, you take the best player on their team away from the game," Adebayo said. "I feel like that's a great scheme for anybody. [Think about if] Steph Curry passed the ball and just stood at half-court. That's a plus for us, in my opinion."
“We switch so whatever they’re trying to do it doesn’t matter,” Tucker said of Atlanta trying to move Adebayo around the floor. “We got to trust in all our defenders. We’re still there to help in iso situations. We still have our formation where we want to help guys.”
Atlanta ran 70 screens on Sunday. Miami – running their press-zone with Adebayo off the floor as Tyler Herro took Caleb Martin’s place alongside Gabe Vincent as the pressure men up top – switched 32 of those. Out of those switches, the Hawks generated just 0.64 points-per-possession, per Second Spectrum. Of the 21 screens switched with Young handling, Atlanta got 0.77 points-per-possession. Not trying to go directly at Adebayo, Young only drew Adebayo on a switch a total of seven times.
With the HEAT both sharp and physical during the competitive portion of the afternoon, Atlanta had zero answers. That’s to be expected when one of the league’s highest usage players has one of his worst games. To a degree, there’s no chance that continues. Even if Young has a poor overall series by his standards, the chances of him repeating his Game 1 performance again are slim to none.
Young might make shots, or he might figure out the scheme well enough that Spoelstra has to make a few tweaks. Young is too good not to make an impact, and nobody needs to tell that to those on Miami’s bench.
Regardless of how the proceedings proceed, the HEAT are going to keep showing bodies, because that’s what they do.