Giannis Antetokounmpo

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Couper Moorhead

1. It shouldn’t have been surprising if you’ve been paying close attention to this team over the years.

Down Jimmy Butler, Terry Rozier and Josh Richardson from the rotation, Miami came right out the gate throwing fireballs against a Milwaukee team working on the second night of a back-to-back, Nikola Jovic – getting the start – and Duncan Robinson hitting early and often, combining for 31 through two quarters plus another 13 from Tyler Herro, to earn a quick double-digit lead that ballooned out to 17 by the end of the half.  Milwaukee hung around for a bit thanks to their downhill drive, Miami unable to keep Giannis Antetokounmpo (19 first-half points on 9-of-11 shooting) out of the paint, but while the threes kept flowing – Miami’s 12 threes, on 21 attempts, marked their season-high for makes in any half – it was the opportunistic approach to the paint, always working inside-out, that pushed them to a 138 Offensive Rating. And with the turnovers low while Milwaukee struggled with sloppy passing, it was effectively a perfect half on the scoring end, one not too different from some of the halves they had against the Bucks in the postseason last year, only minus Butler.

Milwaukee came out firing in the third, finding their range behind two deep pulls from Damian Lillard, to get back within single digits before the midway point of the period even as Miami continued to create workable separation on any Bam Adebayo screen. The HEAT’s offense proved more sustainable, especially with Jovic finishing play after play, banking in a few on the right side and hitting another corner triple. Four minutes after Milwaukee’s 14-4 run, Miami was back up 20 after Robinson drained another hand-in-face three.

The Bucks would never threaten again, their starters removed from the game midway through the fourth as the lead flirted with the 30-point mark. A feel-good night all the way through with no silver linings for the other side as Robinson (23 points on 12 shots), Herro, Jovic and Kevin Love (19 points on eight shots) combined to hit all 19 of the HEAT’s threes through the competitive portion and Adebayo completed his seventh career triple double. Miami takes it with aplomb, 123-97, as they held Milwaukee to a 96.0 Offensive Rating, a game in Philadelphia looming Wednesday before the All-Star break.

2. New Milwaukee coach Doc Rivers has spent much of the early stages of his tenure discussing his team’s defense, and after a convincing victory over the Denver Nuggets on Monday night Rivers spoke at some length about how much better his group was at not getting picked, at fighting over the top of screens and contesting shots. While that certainly was true against the reigning champions, tonight any Adebayo screen was almost always followed by an open look.

If Adebayo set a screen for Herro or a handoff for Robinson to run off, he was stonewalling Milwaukee’s guards to the point that either Herro or Robinson either had a clear three against Milwaukee’s traditional drop coverage or a clear path to getting deep in the paint, where a big inevitably had to make a choice to help or stick to Adebayo’s roll. It was an untenable situation for Milwaukee, one that Miami was happy to repeat over and over and over again, getting on such a roll that by the time the Bucks’ guards were able to manage some good contests, Robinson was in such a rhythm he hit shots with a hand in his face anyways.

That’s how it went all night for the HEAT. They had to make the shots, sure, but they were generating them with such ease. At one point in the first half, Herro got a standstill, wide-open three when Milwaukee sent an obvious double at Kevin Love just one pass away. In the third quarter, Robinson drew three defenders on a drive which left Jovic wide open in the weak corner, no defender in sight. Also in the third, Love stepped back off a routine double screen during an inbounds play and had time to test the wind before firing. Good process, a commitment to movement and spacing, is going to beat bad process more often than not, and you don’t get many better examples than this. Nights like this might seem like magic, but the reasons behind them are rooted entirely in reality.

3. While Miami eventually ran away with this one, and then some, after Milwaukee’s brief third-quarter push, with veterans like Robinson, Herro, Adebayo and Love all turning in excellent evenings while Jaime Jaquez Jr. put in some of his better minutes since returning from a groin injury, it was Jovic, back in the starting lineup, who was the first surprise of the night.

One of the first things you think of on night’s like this, Jovic coming out firing with zero hesitation, is how much confidence Erik Spoelstra and his staff pump into their young players when the opportunity is staring them in the face. You’re here to do the things you do well, we know you can do them well, so go do them, one can imagine them saying. And so Jovic goes from being out of the rotation to starting on the road against one of the best teams in the Eastern Conference, taking advantage of every glimmer of advantage he could find, taking the first shot of the game and never hitting the brakes from there. We’ve seen Jovic have some good shooting nights before, his five threes tonight a career-high, but he also mixed in some finesse finishes, getting downhill and softly dropping the make in off the glass, on his way to a career-high 24 points on 8-of-13 shooting. Time will tell how Jovic factors into the rotation once Miami starts getting some options back off the injury report, but whenever the minutes come these are the kind of games that stand as a touchstone on a player development timeline.

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Coup's Takeaways: Miami Dominates In Milwaukee Behind Career-High From Nikola Jovic And Triple Double From Bam Adebayo

1. There aren’t many teams Bam Adebayo is more important against than the Milwaukee Bucks and their unique offensive talent, but with Miami’s starting center sitting due to a hip contusion the HEAT had to go back to their shorthanded gameplan – they did get Josh Richardson back in action – against a team that has made a few changes to their roster.

Instead of Jrue Holiday running point – he’s now in Boston, as we just watched on Friday – it’s Damian Lillard. Instead of Mike Budenholzer on the sideline it’s Adrian Griffin. With Adebayo this would have been a nice preview of how differently the HEAT might have to defend Giannis Antetokounmpo when he’s paired with the over-the-top threat of Lillard. Without him, it was Thomas Bryant getting the starting call and Orlando Robinson getting backup minutes. While Bryant started strong with eight early points, Antetokounmpo (33 points on 21 shots) ran off Milwaukee’s first 10 – including the rare three against Miami – as the teams played to an even 28-28 after the opening period.

A 34-24 second, leading to a 62-52 half, created a separation for the Bucks in what was partially a story of shot quality. The Bucks were getting downhill, either for layups or for open-three kickouts when the defense collapsed. Miami, meanwhile, subsisted in the in between zones, hitting 11-of-23 on non-rim two pointers – always necessary against Milwaukee’s size – behind Tyler Herro’s measure pick-and-roll management. But typically the other half of the formula is that you need some above-the-break threes to fall and the HEAT hit just 3-of-13 in the first half while generating just three attempts in the restricted area (albeit with 14 free-throw attempts).

Just a couple minutes into the third, after a scrambled, broken play led to a Lillard three, the deficit was 17. A few minutes after that, Miami going cold outside the paint, it was 21. Were it not for Herro it felt like the competitive portion of the game was gradually slipping away, but Herro had very little let up, a pair of transition threes keeping the game in the teens rather than the twenties. And yet Milwaukee’s combination of firepower and force was too much, the quarter ending with Miami down 24.

A late flurry of bench threes – including hits from Jaime Jaquez Jr. and Orlando Robinson, with Miami ending up at 38 percent from deep after hovering below 30 most of the night – kept Miami within reasonable chances, within 9 with under five minutes to play after a 13-2 run. Erik Spoelstra elected to stick with the young group, with Herro and including Nikola Jovic getting his first minutes of the night, that made the run while Milwaukee ran prevent offense. Shots kept falling, the Bucks kept hitting the rim, the lead down to six with 1:22 to go. Gas tank ran empty at that point as Milwaukee closed things out despite some odd inbounding turnovers against Miami’s pressure, 122-114 the final, but the younger players having a positive stretch (a 41 point quarter easily qualifies) to hang their hats on this early in the season is far from nothing.

2. One of the moments that has lingered in the mind since last season is Tyler Herro expressing, the day after breaking his hand, his disappointment at not being able to participate in that postseason run. Not only was Herro hungry for a chance to prove himself as a high-usage player on the biggest stage, he felt Milwaukee, with all their drop pick-and-roll coverage, was a series well-suited to his style of play.

A regular season game in October isn’t ever going to prove much, but at the very least this was a pretty strong piece of data in favor of Herro having a point. While Malik Beasley and Pat Connaughton put forth admirable efforts chasing Herro around screens high up the floor, Herro was calm and patient as he kept his defender on his back, snaking his dribble around to his comfort spots in the mid-range – where he shot 9-of-15 including the upper paint. Nobody has ever questioned Herro’s ability to hit short pull-ups, runners and floaters, tonight was just a constant barrage of those looks until he sprung free for those open-floor threes in the third. There wasn’t a ton going towards the rim – he did challenge Brook Lopez for a layup at one point – but that’s life against Milwaukee. Herro just happens to be very good at the things Milwaukee wants to force most players to do.

Ideally you want to balance out Herro’s production with a few more rim attempts by leveraging his gravity, but that’s something to think about next time around when Adebayo is available. Otherwise, tonight was about Herro punishing drop coverage – getting to the free throw line 10 times along the way – and he did everything that was required, finishing with 35 points on 21 shots.

3. While nobody is going to be using this game as a heavy source for previews should these teams meet in the postseason down the road, Griffin did do a couple of scheme-related things that are worth filing away for later.

First, Griffin immediately had Antetokounmpo defending Jimmy Butler from the opening possession. This isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison because Holiday was given the Butler assignment last year and Holiday isn’t on the team anymore – and Antetokounmpo was dealing with a back injury in that series – but Budenholzer nevertheless was often reticent to pursue that matchup despite having success with it during the 2021 series and Griffin leading with it almost felt pointed.

Second, with Butler and Kyle Lowry running early screens to get Butler the post mismatch with Lillard, the Bucks sent early and hard doubles to get the ball out of Butler’s hands – another choice the Bucks rarely made in similar situations in the past.

Finally, less a schematic thing than a personnel thing, but of course the greatest difference tonight was the presence of Lillard (25 points on 14 shots). Miami has rarely, if ever, gone to aggressive pick-and-roll coverages against the Bucks in the past because it was always more important to wall off the rim from Antetokounmpo. But with Lillard running screens, Spoelstra called for a handful of blitzes that led to pocket passes and 4-on-3 situations. That’s a decision every team has been grappling with for years with Lillard and Steph Curry, and it’s yet another new dimension to this series.

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Coup's Takeaways: Tyler Herro And The Bench Almost Complete 20-Point Comeback As Miami Falls To Milwaukee Late

Goddess, sing the rage of Jimmy ButlerDestructive, how it gave his opponents endless pain

Less than a year ago, Jimmy Butler missed what will go down as one of the most important shots in the history of the Miami HEAT. Down two to the Boston Celtics with 20 seconds left in Game 7, Butler sprinted the ball up the floor after a Marcus Smart miss and took a three off the bounce. It hit front iron. Miami lost. The decision was called into question by the countless talkers who talk about an NBA Eastern Conference Finals.

Was it the right shot? The wrong shot? The debate, as constructed, missed the point entirely. It was the shot Butler took because it’s the shot Butler takes. It’s in his very nature. Butler plays for wins. Right play? Wrong play? He’s the guy with the ball.

“He’s just such a killer,” Kevin Love says. “Lions like to hunt, man. They make their kill and they want to keep hunting.”

Butler has been on the prowl since the opening moments of this series against Milwaukee. In the first quarter of a 35-point Game 1, he took more shots than he had ever taken in an opening period with Miami. In a blowout Game 2 loss, he still put up 25 points on 12 shots. His 30 points on 19 shots in Game 3, blowing up Milwaukee’s coverages all night long, felt almost casual. Against the team that had led him down the path toward one of his worst postseason series two years ago, he had already been nothing short of tremendous.

Only regular tremendous, though. ‘That’s just Jimmy, doing his thing’ styled tremendous. On brand and, after so many gargantuan postseason showings including his previous all-timer scoring 47 to stay alive in Game 6 at Boston last year, almost expected.

What he did in Game 4, dropping 56 points on 28 shots – tied for the fourth highest scoring playoff game in NBA history – was something more. The game was fading. The Bucks were in control. Butler was already the only reason the game was as close as it was, low double digits in the fourth quarter rather than a deficit far great, as he went toe-to-toe, possessions for possession against a championship-level squad. Butler reached for something that most people only dream about and pulled back a fistful of immortality. This was fiction come to life. Pure cinema. Wyatt Earp, dodging bullets as he wades into the creek to confront Curly Bill. Terry Malloy walking back into work in defiance of Johnny Friendly. Aragorn leading the charge at The Black Gate. The Bride drawing blade against the Crazy 88, only in a theater that fits 20,000.

It was Butler writing his own script, scoring again and again and again in every which way he can, screaming ‘This is my s***' for the world to hear.

Consider the achievement, as it will stand in the history books and online databases. Butler set the franchise postseason record for points in a first quarter (22) and fourth quarter (21) in the same game. He became the ninth player in postseason history to score 50 points while committing no more than a single turnover. His career high GameScore of 48.2 is the seventh highest of all time in the playoffs. He made three threes, shots Milwaukee has been giving him, the game after shooting 4-of-4 from deep and hit 16 of his 20 shots inside the arc, including 5-of-7 on long mid-range jumpers and 8-of-10 in the upper paint. He’s now true-shooting 70.8 percent on a 34.3 usage rate in this series, scoring 36.5 a night.  All along in Game 4, he defended every position, contesting a team-high 14 shots. For a team that has featured the storied performances of Dwyane Wade and LeBron James, among others, Butler’s performance might be the cream of the postseason crop.

The Bucks, for their part, had all the answers a team could want to have. And yet they had none. Some of the best defensive players in the world on one of the best defensive teams in the league are on the other side. Butler wrought pain on each of them.

In a recent poll of the league’s players conducted by The Athletic, Jrue Holiday was voted the best defender in the league. Whether you agreed with that result or not, there was little doubt the position was fair. Holiday is that good, that undeniable at his craft. There have been times in this series where Holiday has appeared to defend Butler as well as anyone has ever defended Butler. Some of those battles Holiday has won, including a first-half strip on a perfect reading of Butler’s spin move that nobody else in the league makes.

“I will give him his props,” Butler said. ”He defends physical, plays hard, never takes a possession off. Those are the guys that I want to compete against.”

More often than not, it’s been Butler emerging victorious.

Holiday in his jersey? All net. Holiday stonewalling in the post? Get to the line. See space available in transition for the type of shot Butler never takes? Now is the time.

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Bucks Game 4: Butler vs. Holiday

“Jrue Holiday is one of the best defenders in the NBA and everybody says that,” Kyle Lowry said. “Jimmy is just a talented player. Jimmy goes out there and takes every assignment that the other team gives him, he tries to take that personally. Those two are just battling it out right now and I’m rolling with Jimmy at all times.”

While he’s hardly been shy about the matchup with Holiday, Butler has never been one to repeatedly bang his head against the same brick wall when other options are available. During the regular season, against less complete rosters, his modus operandi is to find the smallest, weakest defender on the other team and punish them for merely daring to exist. If you’re a small point guard, Butler is hunting that matchup relentlessly until that player is either removed from the game or the doubles are forced to come. Milwaukee doesn’t offer many such luxuries, nor do they send doubles – they haven’t sent a single one across Butler’s 41 isolations and post-ups according to tracking data. There are few obvious targets among these Bucks, but there are defenders who aren’t Holiday.

When the Bucks presented a switch, Butler took the switch. Khris Middleton repeatedly found himself involved and try as he did to stay in front, his efforts went unrewarded.

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Bucks Game 4: Butler vs. Middleton

When the Bucks tried to avoid the switch with a show and recover, he attacked right at the moment when the defense was most vulnerable.

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Bucks Game 4: Butler vs. Show Assist

And when the defense attempted to nullify his actions by going under and daring him to shoot, as Butler proved so often in Game 3 he was more than willing to shoot. Milwaukee’s entire defensive scheme is predicated on forcing you to take the shots that you don’t want to take. Butler has been more than willing, twisting and turning his opponent’s core principles against them with devastating force – as calm and composed as Ip Man in those moments, as fierce as one of the Deadly Venoms.

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Bucks Game 4: Butler Three vs. Under

Any coverage. Any defender. Even playing with the lead until they very much weren’t, the Bucks were in the 36 Chambers of Butler.

“He’s not dodging nobody,” Caleb Martin said. “Everybody is getting a piece of the 50. That’s the great thing about it. He’s going against their schemes, double teams, some guys are showing, some guys are switching, it just shows you his level of IQ on the court to be able to manipulate all the schemes to still be able to get to his spots and knock them down. It’s incredible.”

All game you could see Butler manipulating the floor, moving his teammates around the floor like pieces on a game board. Perhaps that analogy is overdone at times, but it’s nevertheless how Butler conducts his business. You go here and you go there so I get can to my spot.

“He’s highly intelligent,” Spoelstra says. “He’s one of the most intelligent basketball players in this association. You can’t do what he does on both ends of the court just by running around and trying to figure things out. He understands what we’re trying to do and he understands what they’re trying to do. They’re a very good team. It’s not as if you can just find a bunch of mistakes that they’re going to make. They’re well-schooled, well-coached, well-drilled and have a bunch of experienced players. You have to access a lot of different parts of the menu. He’s really developed his game over the years, really over the past three years, to be able to go to different things when we need it.”

There’s always the matter of Milwaukee’s interior, especially with Giannis Antetokounmpo back on the floor alongside Brook Lopez. Butler has been surgical in picking his spots with all the space being afforded him in the middle of the floor, shooting 57 percent in the upper paint and mid-range through four games and 75 percent in Game 4, but he hasn’t forgotten to occasionally push for more. It’s always a bit surprising given his brute force, shoulders-first style of play, but he can dance, too. The Bucks couldn’t follow the steps.

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Bucks Game 4: Butler vs. Bigs

When Milwaukee, so devoted to pushing Butler to his left – Butler drove to his left 17 times in Game 4, his highest total of the entire season, producing 1.36 points-per-drive – miscommunicated for just a beat, Butler went right through the two-time MVP.

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Bucks Game 4: Butler Dunk On Giannis

“That was the icing on the cake,” Bam Adebayo said.

Antetokounmpo had been spinning his own brilliance for much of the night, throwing darts through the teeth of Miami’s defense as well as he ever has. In those fateful final minutes, as Miami mounted a 13-0 run, Butler discarded Antetokounmpo’s own greatness with a few flicks of his wrist.

This HEAT season has been a bit of a mess, by their standards. Not in the sense of a fractured locker room or massive roster overhaul like some other teams have dealt with. They never quite found themselves, their rotation ever in flux as they toggled between schemes and styles. We knew what they were supposed to be, but the water kept leaking through the dam no matter how many holes they tried to plug. At times, the offense wasn’t good enough. At others, the defense wasn’t as good as it seemed. There were moments when the ship appeared to be going down, just as it did when they found themselves down double digits with five minutes to go in Game 4. But they always had Butler. Their rock. Their constant. Get to the playoffs, at least, and see where Butler can take you. He’s found a way to exceed even the highest of expectations in season propelled by them.

Miami’s miraculous comeback in the last five minutes weren’t on Butler’s shoulders alone, though he did somehow score 17 in that final frame. Martin hit two massive jumpers and forced another turnover. Lowry pulled the ultimate veteran move as he stole the ball while Antetokounmpo was trying to call timeout. Adebayo stopped Antetokounmpo on two crucial possessions. Duncan Robinson wisely pulled out of a contested layup attempt to ensure Butler would get the ball back. All of them should be mentioned. They just won’t be remembered, not nearly in the same way. Every player, on either side, who appeared on the court for Game 4, is now merely engraved in Butler’s legend.

The season, and whatever this postseason run is going to be, is far from over. Miami has a chance now to knock off a No. 1 seed and move on to the second round – if they can get to this point, they can keep going – and they’re in the midst of one of the best four-game stretches of shotmaking perhaps in playoff history. Wherever it goes from here, 56 is what we’ll think of first. Once again, Butler saved his finest for the minutes that matter.

It’s the type of performance, already becoming the type of memory, that makes an entire season worth it. Worth all the clutch games. Worth all the late nights and early mornings. It’s the type of performance you think about in December and January, the type you hope to be privileged enough to bear witness to. It’s the type of performance that will be brought up in bars, or whatever bar-like establishments exist by then, in 50 years when most of the details have long since faded. An old yarn to tell your grandkids.

Thousands of years ago, deeds such as Butler’s 56 would be spun into poems so that they may be preserved throughout history. Thousands of years ago, Butler’s 56, or the equivalent on a battlefield for which sports are merely a metaphor, would have had his name recited alongside those of Achilles, Odysseus and Perseus.

Thousands of years ago, the muses would have sung Butler’s praises. Today, our storytelling isn’t so different. On a Monday night in April, we all watched the creation of a modern myth. All you need to do is turn on your television, scroll on your phone or click on that link and you’ll hear it told. The muses are all singing the same song.

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Jimmy's Lyric: After 56 Points In Game 4, Butler's Myth Will Stand The Test Of Time

The Miami HEAT and Milwaukee Bucks are tied 1-1, with both teams leading the league in Offensive Efficiency (120+) during the playoffs so far. The HEAT have two homes games coming up starting with Game 3 on Saturday.

Even with Miami playing one of the smallest starting lineups in the league and assigning Max Strus to deal with Brook Lopez, the Bucks couldn’t figure out how to take advantage of that matchup in Game 1. Not only did Lopez attempt just seven shots in his 35 minutes, four of them coming inside the arc, but he had just six paint touches, below his season averages even with Giannis Antetokounmpo leaving the game with an injury.

In other words, the Bucks let Miami off the hook with regards to the size mismatch inside. That’s not to say going to Lopez would guarantee success, but not going to him at all was allowing the HEAT to reap all the advantages of their space-the-floor lineup without being presented with a bill on the other end.

Early in Game 2, the debt came due. While the night, and the extended margin, was ultimately defined by Milwaukee tying the single-game postseason record for made threes with 25, only three of those makes came in the first quarter. What did come were nine paint touches in those first 12 minutes alone for Lopez, three more than he had in all of Game 1, which produced 12 points, 1.33 points per possession.

“I just feel like we were not protecting the paint,” Jimmy Butler said.

How they did it was almost less interesting than how they didn’t. There was once a time when the vast majority of NBA teams would see such a massive size difference like the one between Lopez and Strus and simply send Lopez to the block for a post-up. There was once a time when zone defense and soft doubled teams – strong-siding the paint with help without committing to a full double – weren’t allowed by NBA rules, so those post-ups generally worked. But over time as smallball because more and more popular and rules changed, the teams going small began to welcome those possessions. Now able to send help in more creative ways and play two on or near the ball during the post-up – often after denying with a front, in Miami’s case – teams used those smaller defenders as bait on a line. If the big went for a post-up, they were already on the hook. The points-per-possession numbers, assuming the defense was aligned as designed, generally favored the smaller team.

Milwaukee didn’t take the bait. Rather than dipping into the often-shallow well that are static post-ups, they asked Lopez to move around more often and employ his physicality. First, with seals…

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Bucks Game 2: Lopez Paint Touches

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Bucks Game 2: Lopez Roll

“He does make a difference when he’s aggressive,” Adebayo said of Lopez. “When he’s not involved, it’s one of those things we try to take advantage of. Tonight he took advantage of having smaller guys on him.”

Lopez typically sets about 35.5 screens per 100 possessions. With Milwaukee playing sans Antetokounmpo for the moment, Lopez is setting 46.6 screens per 100 – 69 over two games, 17 more than even Adebayo – and after those screens produced just 0.95 points-per in Game 1, they skyrocketed up to 1.18 on Wednesday. Some of that comes from the major disparity in three-point shooting between the two performances, but note also that 40 of Milwaukee’s 52 points in the paint came in the first half, 26 in the first quarter alone.

“Regardless if Giannis was in or not, we realized we had an advantage in the paint on both ends of the floor and that was just a focus for us tonight, just to establish the paint,” Lopez told The Athletic’s Eric Nehm. “It’s great to see because, you know, you can see the opposing team kind of just crash in when you cut to the paint and to see guys kick out for 3s.”

Is there an obvious solution here? Miami can theoretically play bigger, but putting Cody Zeller in the starting lineup brings up all the usual spacing issues we’ve discussed for years and Kevin Love isn’t a defensive answer on his own outside of taking charges. Any such move would detract from the spacing that, as we’ll get to below, is working for the HEAT so far. The answer, then, might be to just do what they’re supposed to do and do it better than they did. On many of Lopez’ interior touches, as Strus was trying to front or be physical the help behind him was either late or it didn’t come at all. Milwaukee is smart to drive the ball first to create better passing angles for Lopez rather than risky over-the-top adventures, but they can’t do that if you don’t give up the drives in the first place, shrinking into the lane from the wings as they’ve done for years. Putting Adebayo on Lopez – and not switching – instead of Portis is also an option, but that lineup might not exist by Game 3.

“We’ve got to figure that out,” Spoelstra said after the game when asked what can be done to better limit Lopez’ touches.

Milwaukee is only going to get bigger when Antetokounmpo returns. So far, Spoelstra has determined that his team’s best shot at this series is to play with as much shooting and spacing as they can get on the floor at once, at all times. Considering the state of the series, it’s probably been the right bet. The HEAT just need to clean things up same as the Bucks had to do so after Game 1, a night that was filled with just as many busted coverages on the home team’s end.

If there was a silver lining to how the second matchup played out, it was that both Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo continued to Pac Man all the real estate available to them in the middle of the floor.

Butler has been nearly perfect. During the regular season any Butler touch inside the arc but not at the rim – about 18.3 per 100 possessions – was worth 1.17 points-per-touch to the HEAT. In this series he’s getting even more of those touches and producing a staggering 1.34 points-per-touch. Again, some of that is Miami’s own shooting around him, but even on possessions where Butler doesn’t pass (a shot, a foul or a turnover the outcome) he’s scored 21 points on 17 touches (1.24 points-per). For context, a Nikola Jokic touch in those zones this season, even factoring in assist opportunities, was worth 1.29 points-per.

Put it this way. Butler just had what was probably the most efficient season of his career, with a true-shooting percentage of 64.7 on a 25.6 usage rate. In these two games, he’s true-shooting 63.9 on 31.2 percent usage, with a effective field-goal percentage even higher than in the regular season (he’s missed some free-throws). Yes, his rim attempts are down a bit, but he’s also 12-of-13 in the restricted area and 7-of-11 in the upper paint, and he’s still getting to the line.

Butler has been great after he struggled during the 2021 matchup between these teams. That’s a positive sign. Granted those struggles came with Antetokounmpo defending him on nearly half the possessions in the series, but Budenholzer has yet to play, or be able to play, that card.

As for Adebayo, it’s tough to expect too much more. He’s come out firing against Lopez – each game started with what was more or less a pindown for Adebayo to get a catch at the elbow, and he looked for his shot – and his usage rate is up to 32.9 from 25.2 in the regular season, on 55.9 true-shooting. Two years ago against the Bucks, his usage was 23.8, with 49.4 true shooting. This has been a different Adebayo than the one who took part in that sweep. He’s not just settling for the mid-range jumpers either, even if those are shots he’s going to have to make. He’s picked his spots for going right at Lopez, either accelerating around him for a finish or going right into his chest for a dunk.

“We’re going to need that from Bam, probably a lot more of that as well,” Butler said about Adebayo’s approach with Lopez through two games. “But it’s not just going to be on Bam, it’s on everyone who is attacking the rim.”

The math is still going to math with these two. While they’re working in the mid-range, the Bucks are getting to the rim and shooting threes. That’s just the nature of this particular beast, same as it was two years ago when neither could get much of anything going. This time around they’ve found an early comfort level and rhythm that gives the HEAT much more of a night-to-night foundation within their offense, one that allows them to better enjoy the fruits of some shooting variance as they did in Game 1.

Antetokounmpo changes the geography of the floor and alters the shot profile whenever he returns. There are no guarantees moving forward. But two years ago the HEAT were in a much tougher spot with their offense. Through two games at least, the Bucks have allowed 1.22 points-per-screen with Lopez in drop coverage – two years ago that number was 0.70 across the four-game series. With Adebayo and Butler playing like this, even in a Game 2 loss, there’s more reason to believe that wins are still on the menu.

The offensive theory of this season, that this team was building a better playoff offense despite taking a step back in efficiency, is holding strong enough.

Even as Milwaukee changed up their scheme a bit this year to help limit the number of threes they allow, staying home on shooters more often and defending the pick-and-roll with two men, they still like to identify an offensive player they can put Giannis Antetokounmpo on to allow him to play to his strengths, with his length, and roam defensively. Last year the Bucks did that to Caleb Martin – also having a very good series thus far, scoring 30 points on 15 shots – regularly leaving him open from three which led to Martin scoring a career-high 28 points on six makes from deep during a regular season matchup.

In this series so far, the Bucks had identified Gabe Vincent as the place where they want to stash their second big man. Antetokounmpo starting Game 1 on Vincent while Bobby Portis opened Game 2 on him. They haven’t been sitting back and leaving Vincent wide open like they may have done in the past, but the message is still pretty clear when they have a big on a point guard – especially when you consider that Budenholzer has so far resisted the opportunity to place those same bigs on Butler as he opts for Jrue Holiday instead.

The easy thing to do would be to simply ask Vincent to space the floor, to be content with pulling a little more size away from the rim. But that would be giving the Bucks something they are clearly comfortable with rather than trying to actively punish them for their choices. The punishment for putting a big on a ballhandler is often making those bigs navigate screens.

And when you know Lopez is still going to be sitting back in his drop, getting a big like Portis hung up on a pick means creating a sizeable pocket of time and space for someone like Vincent to operate in. Without Tyler Herro’s services, Miami needs Vincent to capitalize on those opportunities just like he did during the regular season when he dropped 28 and 27 in consecutive games against the Bucks when they were without Antetokounmpo.

Sure enough Vincent, ever comfortable against the drop, has scored 31 points on 18 total shots, shooting 11-of-18 from three, with 11 of those attempts coming off the dribble.

Is it complicated, running screens into drop coverage and shooting of the dribble? No. But it’s been effective.

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Bucks Game 2: Vincent Pull Ups

That last possession was particularly notable even if it was a miss. You could almost see Vincent thinking in real time that they couldn’t just two-point their way back into the contest as he snaked his dribble all the way back around to the arc.

Through two games Vincent has run 28 pick-and-rolls, fourth-most of any player on either team, and has helped produce 1.50 points-per-screen. He’s been paired with Adebayo for 15 of those actions.

Is Vincent going to keep up an effective field-goal percentage of 69.6 on jumpers throughout this series? Probably not, though anything is possible is small sample sizes. The same would be said of Herro if he were available, and that’s the point. Vincent is giving you Herro efficiency and shotmaking at lower volume right now, with just three turnovers across two games. There isn’t much more you can ask than that, and given his comfort working against the drop there’s also no reason he can’t continue to generate the same looks.

Milwaukee didn’t quite know what to do with Kevin Love in Game 1. For all their strengths, they’ve always been somewhat susceptible, due to both scheme and personnel, to stretch fives taking them a bit out of their comfort zone – a trait they share with almost all non-switch heavy teams. The Bucks switch more often than they used to, but they still prefer to find ways not to switch Lopez out on the perimeter where he can’t protect the rim and force long two-pointers. A stretch five, by nature, pulls him out of the paint anyways.

After Love hit a couple threes in the first half of Game 1, Mike Budenholzer did something he’s very rarely done this season, literally only 30 possessions all year, which is call up zone coverage. The idea being that with the zone you can account for Love’s shooting while keep Lopez where he’s best utilized. Miami quickly adjusted, tossing Butler into the middle of the zone where he could either attack with momentum or playmake if the defense collapses. The HEAT never missed a bit.

No zone in Game 2 for the Bucks, but surprisingly Budenholzer still matched up Lopez’ minutes with Love rather than going with someone a bit more mobile like Bobby Portis. Lopez still had to check Love out to the arc, but instead of asking him to recover to Love as he popped out into space on a screen or leaving him one-on-one with a downhill Butler, Milwaukee firmed up with something in between.

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Bucks Game 2: Delay Switch Love Pops

This is essentially a late switch by design. Jae Crowder still fights over the top of the screen to force some urgency from Butler’s attack, and he even begins to recover full to him and crowd the ball. But as soon as Butler looks back towards Love – inevitably wide open with Lopez dropping down in his usual coverage – Crowder peels off and goes for the closeout.

The pass is almost always going to be faster than the closeout, but when you know it’s coming it’s much easier to meet the ball at the shooter and contest or flat out deny the attempt than if you’re scrambling out of base coverage.

Budenholzer didn’t invent this counter coverage, and when Jrue Holiday is involved he's still fighting through or outright going under the screen, but it’s still a creative way to keep the pieces where they want them on the board. Milwaukee sure looked more comfortable doing this than they did playing a zone that they had hardly used at all.

-Milwaukee now has at least a partial share of both the regular season and postseason records for threes in a game, and both of those performances were against Miami. Back in December of 2020 the Bucks hit 29 threes as part of a 144-97 victory in Miami – something of a revenge game after the HEAT ousted them from the bubble playoffs – and their 25 in Game 2 tied them with the Cleveland Cavaliers, who hit that mark during their title run in 2016. It’s not particularly crazy given that the Bucks have historically shot a ton of threes and Miami always allows them at or near a league-high rate, but it remains quite the coincidence.

-Milwaukee’s half-court defense has allowed 110 points per 100 possessions (without factoring in offensive rebounds) in this series so far. That would have been the worst in the league, by far, during the regular season. Miami’s half-court rating is healthier largely because so many of the Bucks’ Game 2 threes came in transition, as tracked by cleaningtheglass.com. Miami was No. 23 in halfcourt offense this year, and Milwaukee was No. 3 in halfcourt defense, so the offensive results on the HEAT’s side have been as close to a best-case scenario as you could imagine. Again, there’s extreme shooting variance at play here, for both teams.

-Both teams were excellent at limiting rim attempts during the regular season, and the schemes have played out so far. Milwaukee and Miami are shooting just about 21 percent of their shots in the restricted area. Phoenix was last in the league this year at 25.9 percent.

-We mentioned before this series that the Bucks were one of the best teams against zone – albeit with Antetokounmpo – but with Miami playing almost exclusively zone in the fourth quarter on Wednesday the Bucks managed just 0.95 points per possession across 22 trips down the floor. Wouldn’t read too much into that because the Bucks started the quarter up 30 and were clearly just running the clock out, missing open threes along the way, but it’s worth noting just in case Spoelstra uses the zone going forward.

-If you were looking for an under the radar red flag on Miami’s part, it’s that the Bucks are turning the ball over on just 11.7 percent of their possessions, a rate that would have tied for best in the league in the regular season. Their shooting, from three and in the middle zones where they’ve converted on nearly half their shots, are keeping their offense more than afloat, but historically they’ve struggled when going long stretches without forcing many live-ball turnovers. The same goes for their defense, this season at least.

-It tracks that Milwaukee’s drives are slightly down without Antetokounmpo, but they’re scoring 1.15 points-per on drives that end in a shot, foul or turnover. If you factor in their drives that end in passes, and thus threes, that number jumps up to 1.35.

-For what it’s worth, Adebayo has only switched seven screens in the series so far and Miami is switching five fewer screens per 100 possessions than usual. Defense boils down to ‘They’re switching too much’ far less than you might think.

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The Series So Far: Milwaukee Targets Their Size, Bam And Jimmy Raise The Floor, Gabe Vincent Steps Up And A Pick-And-Roll Adjustment Avoids Larger Changes

These teams can’t get out of each other’s way. Each time they meet, the Bucks have been the favorites, which is why it was such a surprise to some when Miami knocked them off their No. 1 seed perch in only five games during the Orlando Bubble. When the sequel came along a year later, Milwaukee restocked with Jrue Holiday, it was a clean sweep – only Game 1 was competitive with wild shooting performances on either side.

Now the HEAT get another shot at what may be the prohibitive favorite. The No. 8 seed has won before, the 2007 Golden State Warriors took down the 67-win Dallas Mavericks and the 2011 Memphis Grizzlies beat the 61-win San Antonio Spurs. Both those teams entered the playoffs with a bit more pedigree than this HEAT group – Memphis had a Net Rating of +2.5 while Golden State was around +2.0 after acquiring Stephen Jackson and Al Harrington before the trade deadline – that has been outscored by half a point per 100 possessions.

There’s little doubt that a HEAT victory would constitute one of the greatest upsets in league history were it to happen. For that reason, nobody is going to pick Miami and understandably so. It’s nobody’s ideal position to be in, maybe, but it’s also one that allows for a degree of freedom. Miami has a blank check here, free from producer’s notes and budget constraints. This is their Babylon – or, judging from reports, their Beau Is Afraid – to make, their vision to live by absent expectations. Everything from here on out is pure upside, and there are plenty of players in that locker room who are familiar with what it takes to topple the Bucks. If this season of Miami basketball has taught us anything, it’s to never expect the expected. This team finds ways to surprise you, at least as far as all roads somehow leading to the same clutch situations with five minutes to go. All they need is a couple of those close games to be in business.

Even if Giannis Antetokounmpo didn’t play – he only played in five of a possible 16 quarters against the HEAT this season – January 12 was a significant game in the developmental story of Bam Adebayo. After slowly adjusting to and progressing against deep drop coverage over the past four years, maybe the two most aggressive scoring months of Adebayo’s career culminated in nine shots made in the paint with Lopez acting as the closest defender, according to player tracking data from Second Spectrum. At the time, it was the most paint shots anyone had ever, in nearly 360 games, hit against Lopez in a single game.

How Adebayo did it wasn’t much of a mystery. There were no complicated schemes or adjustments involved. Whether he caught the ball in the post or in the paint, he ate the space that Lopez, prioritizing the rim as ever, offered up. Against a team that has managed to pull off the difficult two-step of being Top 5 in preventing shots both at the rim and from the arc, finding success meant scoring in between and Adebayo made 9-of-14 shots in the upper paint en route to a Miami victory.

Just do that four times and win the series, right? It’s not that simple. Take a look at these images from different HEAT-Bucks games this season.

They’re the same picture. An Adebayo unencumbered. &nbsp;Milwaukee is able to shut off the water in the two most efficient zones on the floor because they drop all their length back as their many guards chase shooters over the top of screens and handoffs and push them off the arc while shutting down passing lanes elsewhere with tight coverage. That means the pick-and-roll often becomes a two-on-two affair, and the pocket is empty. In theory, this is a series tailor made for the Tyler Herro and Adebayo connection. Of the 73 players who faced at least 300 possessions of pick-and-roll drop coverage, Herro was No. 22 producing 1.07 points-per-screen. When it was Herro and Adebayo together against drop, that number rises to 1.12 points-per.

(In the past Milwaukee has sent more help into the paint, often leaving a shooter open as a result. That’s how Caleb Martin scored his career-high 28 last year, with the Bucks daring him to beat them outside and Martin hitting 6-of-8. The Bucks have changed things up a bit this year, but this is still in their wheelhouse.)

It’s no secret that Miami’s offense, at No. 25 overall, struggled to maintain much traction this season. Most of the attention has gone towards the sizeable dip in three-point shooting across the board, but there was also a refocusing of the offensive approach by Erik Spoelstra. After the scoring flat tire that was the Eastern Conference Finals – when the HEAT were highly reliant on forcing live-ball turnovers to juice their own scoring – Spoelstra sought to build an offense that could sustain in the postseason without relying as heavily on shooting. Part of that shift was a determination to get Adebayo in scoring positions rather than Adebayo beginning most possessions looking to free up his teammates. Any Adebayo pick-and-roll – particularly those with Herro through the early and middle parts of the season until Butler’s post All-Star usage went up – produced solid offense, and on possessions where Adebayo got the ball and shot, drew a foul or turned the ball over, Miami got 1.11 points per possession. Not an elite number, but a good, reliable one in a season where the HEAT needed all the consistency they could find on that end. Need to keep the train on the tracks? Find Adebayo with a pocket pass.

The other side of the coin is that the most common result was an Adebayo jumper – he took more upper paint jumpers (184) than anyone in the league, with only Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (163) even coming close. Adebayo shot 52.2 percent on those shots, 49.7 percent on all upper paint shots (600 attempts), with the jumper falling off a bit outside of 10 feet. Good, workable numbers overall, just not the most valuable shot on the floor if it’s going to be your primary objective. As good as Milwaukee is, they have the eighth fastest defensive pace – they don’t grind out defensive possessions up against the shot clock – in part because teams often take the first shots available to them in the drop.

Back to the photos above, of which there are plenty more examples. Even with Adebayo now more willing to take those shots and make them at a good clip, Milwaukee rarely played him any differently. Maybe Lopez would take a step or two up, contesting better than many might give him credit for, but they rarely altered their overall philosophy. If Adebayo was going to hurt them with two-point jumpers, so be it.

Is that going to continue to be the case? Is the pocket going to remain as empty as it was before? The last couple of months especially have been defined by team bringing over a third defender to disrupt Adebayo’s upper paint catches, leading to his attempts per 100 possessions dropping from 22 pre-March to around 18 since – coincidentally the same period when Miami’s offense was trending closer toward league average with all those bodies in the paint.

Milwaukee can do what all those other teams, including Atlanta and Chicago in recent play-in games, did if they want. They even had Antetokounmpo dig in on Adebayo a couple times in February. It’s just not typically in their DNA to commit extra bodies just to prevent a non-rim attempt.

If the space is there, then, and the help doesn’t help, many possessions will flow through Adebayo into the shot that has become his calling card.

“Shoot my shots, get to my spots, and live with the results,” Adebayo said of his plan against Milwaukee’s coverage.

Miami’s run to the 2020 NBA Finals, which went through Milwaukee, had the unfortunate side effect of giving other teams some ideas when it came to dealing with Jimmy Butler. Granted some of this had to do with Adebayo being injured for much of that series, but the Los Angeles Lakers put Anthony Davis on Butler, having Davis go under screens and use all his length to absorb Butler’s typically bruising, shoulders-forward drives. LeBron James defended Butler for 181 touches in that series. Davis defended him for 176. Nobody else had more than 59 possessions. Butler still managed to put up two of the better games in Finals history through sheer brute force, but Miami’s offense, free flowing as it was that season, was as labored as ever.

That same postseason, Giannis Antetokounmpo only defended Butler for 20 possessions across five games while Wes Matthews was the primary on 171 touches. In the sweep a year later, even with P.J. Tucker on the roster, Antetokounmpo took Butler for 147 possessions – double that of anyone else not named Tucker – including the very first possession of the first game. Mike Budenholzer wasn’t about to waste any time waiting to be forced into an adjustment and Butler, for really the only time in a HEAT uniform, struggled as he shot 29 percent from the field on his way to 14.5 points a night. Even if Miami managed to shed Antetokounmpo with a screen, Butler’s downhill path would be blocked by the presence of Brook Lopez while Antetokounmpo recovered in the rear-view mirror.

Fast forward to the one game where both teams were healthy this season, February 2, and Antetokounmpo only defended Butler for five touches – these numbers aren’t exactly perfect when you watch the clips, but they’re accurate enough at the highs and the lows – while Matthews and Holiday took the brunt of the assignment.

So the question going into Game 1, then, is whether Budenholzer was playing possum for the regular season, ready to spring Antetokounmpo on Butler the moment the games started to really matter. We’ll find out soon, but even if it’s not the move from the jump it’s always one in Milwaukee’s back pocket – and when and if it happens how Miami tries to get Butler to his spots without relying on too many 15-foot-and-out makes will be a major storyline.

The case used to be that Miami defended Antetokounmpo better than any team. Similar to how the HEAT had previously given a very different player in Trae Young absolute fits, of the 11 games with a GameScore under 10 on Antetokounmpo’s ledger since his first MVP season, three of those belonged to Miami. During the 2019-20 season, an Antetokounmpo drive alone was worth 1.10 points per possession. In the series against Miami, during which he scored just 22 points a game on 50 percent shooting, that number dropped to 1.03. Even in the sweep the next year, when Miami lacked a true power forward next to Adebayo, Antetokounmpo only shot 45 percent overall.

The story was typically repetitive. With Adebayo anchoring the heart of the defense, Miami would build a wall, early and often in transition, as well or better than any team in the league, taking charges and stone-walling drives, forcing Antetokounmpo into kickouts and/or jumpers – the latter of which always played right into the HEAT’s hands. Over the last four years, Antetokounmpo is shooting an effective field goal percentage of 41.9 across 1,780 jumpers. Against Miami, that effective rate drops to 21.3. Only Boston and Golden State held him to a lower effective field-goal percentage overall than Miami’s 50.6. The blueprint wasn’t exactly a secret across the league, the HEAT were simply among the very best at executing it.

Things have started to change in the past couple of seasons. Antetokounmpo grew more comfortable making the right reads and getting off the ball earlier when he drew help. He started setting more screens, an effort aided by Holiday’s arrival – Milwaukee no longer having an Eric Bledsoe that Miami could ignore at the arc was also a major shift in this dynamic. And of course the HEAT’s personnel changed year to year.

This year Miami is playing smaller than ever, going with Max Strus and Tyler Herro in the same starting lineup – effectively putting Butler at power forward – while playing Kevin Love as a five-out backup center. Even replete with players willing to step in and manufacture a charge, The Wall, such as it is, is as small as it’s been. In the one complete game Antetokounmpo played against Miami this year, he put together probably his best performance against the HEAT – it was, by GameScore – posting a 35-point triple double on 19 shots and finished a +19 in an eight-point victory. It all looked rather effortless, at least in the context of a matchup that had always made his efforts look particularly laborious. When the HEAT lost to the Bucks it was supposed to be because they took away Antetokounmpo’s bread and butter and made the rest of the Bucks beat them, preferably from the outside. That one game in February was worth a raised eyebrow.

What’s the answer now? It’s no different. Adebayo has to shoulder the bulk of the burden – which is often going to leave smaller players to deal with Lopez, given the current rotation – and he’s going to need his teammates to shrink the floor with pinpoint timing and precision. You don’t want to give up threes to a team full of ready and willing shooters, but there are no other options in the game of you have to give up something. There’s no clever scheme where you give up driving lanes and free rolls. You have to help, and you have to be razor sharp with your closeouts when Antetokounmpo – with whom the Bucks’ rim frequency goes up a full 11 percentage points, the highest On/Off difference in the league – passes into the space you vacated. At the very least, you have to find him in transition. Milwaukee has the fourth-highest transition frequency off live rebounds, as you would expect from a team with a freight train in uniform. The HEAT will probably need to be careful and selective when crashing their own offensive glass – the Bucks are already the No. 2 defensive rebounding team – even if that’s something they sometimes rely on.

The first two games of this series will be telling. Whether or not the Bucks win their home games, keep an eye on Antetokounmpo’s process. If he’s still taking the occasional jumpers and not getting to the rim as often as it seems he should, that’s a win. You’ll take that process if it takes Milwaukee shooting lights out from three to win, and it leaves the door open for Miami to capitalize on their own opportunities from deep with some variance games. But we shouldn’t take for granted what the HEAT used to be able to do. This roster is different than it was four, three or even two years ago, and Antetokounmpo is a different player.

-This is a big one, but relatively simple so it won’t get its own section. As you know, the HEAT played the most zone (1,379 possessions) in recorded NBA history this season. Milwaukee, however, faced the second most zone (439 possessions) of any team this year, and they scored 1.23 points per possession against it, second best. That doesn’t guarantee the Bucks success moving forward, but it’s safe to say they won’t be caught off guard.

-No team limits corner threes from opponents better than Milwaukee, while a large part of Miami’s uptick in shooting after All-Star was due to getting up to 41 percent in the corners.

-By that same token, Milwaukee led the league in shooting from the corners after All-Star, where the HEAT have given up the most attempts, by frequency, in the league.

-Milwaukee was the No. 3 half-court defense this season, and best defense against the teams with Top 10 Offensive Ratings.

-The Bucks were only No. 14 in half-court offense, but since Khris Middleton returned to the lineup – mostly for good, but with some absences as they managed his usage – on January 23 they were No. 4.

-Miami deserves credit for Chicago only pulling in five offensive boards on Friday after what happened with Atlanta, but keep in mind that the Bulls crash their misses far less than the Hawks. There weren’t nearly as many possessions with two or three Bulls chasing misses as there were in the first play-in game. The good news is that despite their size the Bucks don’t tend to attack their own glass unless Bobby Portis and his boundless energy is on the floor. That said, this is the sort of thing coaches can easily toggle on or off. Prior rebounding initiatives are not guaranteed to repeat themselves in a single series.

-When the Bucks have had Holiday, Middleton, Antetokounmpo and Lopez on the floor this season, across just 300 possessions due to various injuries, they’ve outscored teams by 19.5 points per 100. That’s the second-best four-man group in the league behind the Golden State Warriors starters.

-Middleton was a full participant in Thursday’s practice, so pending the official injury reports it’s looking like the Bucks are going to be whole for Game 1.

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HEAT vs. Bucks Preview: The Saga Continues With A Focus On Defensive Tactics For Bam Adebayo, Jimmy Butler And Giannis Antetokounmpo

The Miami HEAT are 29-25 after finishing a 1-3 road trip, with -0.1 Net Rating. They are No. 26 in Offensive Rating and No. 5 on defense. They one home game coming up before Thursday’s 3 pm Trade Deadline, and then four more games after that until the All-Star Break. Here’s what we’ve been noting and noticing.

After a disappointing two-game stretch against the Milwaukee Bucks in January, the HEAT finally got to see them closer to full strength with Giannis Antetokounmpo and Khris Middleton available.

Milwaukee has always been a bit of a litmus test for that season’s roster. After acquiring Jae Crowder and Andre Iguodala before the trade deadline in 2020, the HEAT proved to have the requisite personnel to contend with Antetokounmpo as they upset the Bucks in the second round. After Miami lost Crowder in free agency and the Bucks added Jrue Holiday, fortunes reversed and the Bucks swept the HEAT out of the first round. Then the following season began with a resounding 42-point opening night victory with P.J. Tucker flanking Bam Adebayo in the starting group.

That’s why it’s always preferable to see the best of what your opponent has to offer in the regular season. It’s the only way to get a sense of what you have and how it might work in the playoffs. We need to see how this iteration of the HEAT can contend with Antetokounmpo’s length on Jimmy Butler. We need to see how Adebayo will handle some of the most severe drop coverage in the league, against which he scored more paint buckets with Brook Lopez defending than any player had during Milwaukee’s Lopez era.

We also need to see how this roster is going to deal with one of the league’s all-time freight trains. Typically, Miami has had the answers. Over the past four seasons, playoffs included, only the Warriors (46.8) have held Antetokounmpo to a worse effective field-goal percentage than the HEAT (49.5 percent). Considering the two-time MVP has averaged an eFG north of .580 in those seasons, that’s nothing to sneeze at. Even in the four-game sweep of 2020-21, Antetokounmpo’s effective field-goal number was merely .456.

How the HEAT have done it is no secret to anyone. Build a wall in transition, make Antetokounmpo see and consider the threats of multiple bodies at all times, take charges and employ one of the best defenders in the league in Adebayo. Miami’s base scheme is always to shield off the paint from all comers, even at the cost of giving up some threes – particularly in the corners, where they allow the most shots in the league – and against the Bucks they just dial up their natural tendencies. Antetokounmpo averages 18.4 paint attempts per 100 possessions over the past four seasons. Against the HEAT that’s dropped to 15.2, third lowest among all teams.

So they keep him out of the paint, even at the cost of letting him take just about any jumper he wants. Speaking to those jumpers, are you ready for a real mind breaker? In four years and two postseason series against Miami, Antetokounmpo’s effective field-goal percentage on all jumpers entering Saturday’s contest was 21.4. That’s 15-of-91 shooting – the worst he’s shot on jumpers against any team in the league. Is some of that luck? Probably. Of those 91 shots, 27 have been completely uncontested according to Second Spectrum tracking data. Of those 27, he made five. Even as Antetokounmpo has struggled with his jumper over the years – in some regular season games he appears to be taking them just as a developmental project, or to prove a point even if other things are working fine – those are sub-bad numbers for anyone.

Good thing we waited until today to mention these statistics, then, because you can’t say they were a jinx after the game Antetokounmpo had on Saturday. The good news is he shot just 1-of-5 on jumpers, the bad news is that it didn’t really matter who Miami put on him or how and from where they brought help. For the most part, Antetokounmpo – shooting 12-of-14 on non-jumpers to go with 11 assists – made all the right plays. He busted through the wall when it was late, he found shooters over the top when the wall was there early. He took the help, stretched it out and found the open man. He screened for the ball to get himself going downhill and, perhaps most strikingly, he didn’t commit a single offensive foul against a team that has always taken pride in stepping front of him.

In the Butler era, playoffs included, Antetokounmpo had just one game with a Game Score of 30+ against the HEAT. Against all other NBA Teams, he had 64. He also had three games with a Game Score in single digits against Miami. Against all other NBA Teams, he had six. So when we say his Game Score on Saturday was a best-ever vs. Miami 34.6, it’s no small thing.

The question going forward is whether this is an aberration or not. Miami has had their own encouraging moments against the Bucks this season, with Butler, Adebayo and Herro all looking plenty comfortable in the mid-range against drop coverage in all three games, but Antetokounmpo looking like he did on Saturday was worth an arched eyebrow or two.

We’ve looked at Bam Adebayo’s increased offensive load every which way possible this season. Career highs in usage and scoring on his way to a second All-Star selection. More isolations. More pick-and-rolls. Fewer handoffs. More upper paint shots than anyone not named Shai Gilgeous-Alexander in the league as Adebayo makes a living at the dotted line. It’s all becoming quite commonplace for Adebayo as his 30-point showings cause your eyebrows to raise a little lower on your forehead each time they happen.

Even so, Thursday night in New York looked a little different than the different we’ve come to expect. It was tough to put it into words as it was happening, but fortunately we have numbers to substitute where words weren’t getting the job done.

For starters, Jimmy Butler’s usage rate in that nip-and-tuck fourth quarter was just 5.3 percent. Even as Butler has been prone to some deferential nights along the regular-season path, he’s almost always played a significant role in Miami’s late-game offensive package. During his first two seasons in Miami, Butler only had one fourth quarter with a usage rate in single digits. Last year, he had three. This season, he’s already up to six. Last week we dove into how Miami’s clutch offense is slowly improving, and how that may prove beneficial come the stylistic shifts of the postseason, but whether it’s small-sample noise or not the HEAT are clearly diversifying their menu and leaning more on actions between or centering on Adebayo and Tyler Herro.

Butler wasn’t absent, either. Spacing can get a little awkward at times when he’s off the ball, so he went ahead and became a screener for Adebayo down the stretch, trying to draw a switch for Adebayo in the same way Kyle Lowry does is for Butler.

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Notebook 43: Butler Setting Screens

Butler’s 10 screens in this game were hardly a career high, but the two he set for Adebayo in the fourth tied for the most between those two players in a final period.

Bringing this back around to Adebayo, part of why his 30-point, 16-shot game looked unusual is because he was playing more like a star wing – bringing the ball up, working through the offensive progressions to get the right spacing for an attack – than ever before.

Here’s where numbers help. In Adebayo’s entire six-year career coming into New York, he had taken just two shots after 15 or more dribbles. Against the Knicks, he took two.

That possession against Isaiah Hartenstein was certainly the first time Adebayo had taken a 15-dribble shot in the fourth quarter of a close game, and his three 10-dribble shots – of which he now has 38 for his career – are the most he’s ever taken in a single game. For the sake of comparison, Adebayo’s four career 15-dribble shots are more than Nikola Jokic (2) and Joel Embiid (1). That doesn’t make him a better offensive player than those two MVP candidates, but even in tiny, tiny little samples it helps to illustrate how Adebayo is evolving into something unique.

Could Adebayo stand to get to the rim – the jumpers are great, especially in need-a-shot playoff moments, but they’re still producing less than a point per possession – and the free-throw line more, with both rates currently at career lows? Sure. Maybe those things come back, or maybe they don’t. But every hallmark in his development, no matter how small they may seem, are worth commenting on. Thursday in New York was certainly something new.

Erik Spoelstra dipped a little deeper into the arsenal against the Knicks for a couple of fun plays, running elevator doors first for Tyler Herro on the opening possession of the game and then later for Max Strus. Herro didn’t get the shot off, but Strus did.

notebook-43-strus-elevator-doors

Notebook 43: Strus Elevator Doors

This is hardly the first time the HEAT have used this type of set but it’s always fun to see it because it’s one of the more High School-ish plays run in the league. We say that because even though the Golden State Warriors may have popularized it thanks to the deadly efficiency of Steph Curry and Klay Thompson, the doors were used long before that. We used to run it on baseline out of bounds situations to setup a corner three and you could count on it working at least once per game.

If there was a play that could best sum up Miami’s elite but also weird and somewhat situational defense this season it happened late against the Cleveland Cavaliers. Adebayo switched out onto Darius Garland to keep the offense flat, as they’ll do plenty of despite the overall switch rate being lower this season, which leaves the paint wide open with nobody over 6-foot-7 around to help.

Watch what Butler, leading the league in steals for the second time in three years, does:

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Notebook 43: Butler Fingertip Steal

Spoelstra called this a “ridiculous steal” afterwards, saying it looked to him like Butler baited the pass from Garland. No way to know if that’s true or not, but it tracks with what we see. The only time Butler takes his eyes off Garland are when he peeks his shoulder to see what Evan Mobley and Donovan Mitchell are setting up behind him – otherwise he’s watching the eyes of the quarterback. If he stays where he is or moves with Mobley initially, Garland probably just passes to Mitchell. But because Butler slides a step toward the arc to cut off Mitchell, Butler gives Garland what looks like a clear passing lane. To Garland’s credit, it was a clear passing lane. It’s just that Butler has some of the best closing speed in the league when it comes to passing lanes, and he recovers for the deflection.

That’s sort of Miami’s defense this season in a nutshell. A brilliant defensive play from a brilliant defensive player, but fingertips were the only difference between a steal and a dunk for Mobley. We don’t need to belabor the point we’ve made multiple times about how the team is one of the best in the league at forcing turnovers but much less effective against possessions that end in shots or fouls – this is just the razor’s edge the team is living on defensively. Against the Knicks a couple of nights later, Butler and his teammates took some early risks in the passing lanes and it cost them a couple of stops.

-After Tuesday’s win in Cleveland, the HEAT are now 47-5 when shooting 45 percent or better from three since Butler joined before the 2019-20 season.

-Drop coverage is always relevant when you play Milwaukee, much less the Bucks and Cavaliers in the same week. It feels like, behind the development of Adebayo and Tyler Herro along with the off-dribble capabilities of guys like Gabe Vincent, Kyle Lowry and Victor Oladipo, that this might be the most well-equipped HEAT roster in recent memory for dealing with drop coverage.

For whatever reason, however, the numbers aren’t adding up. As a team, Miami is scoring just .982 points-per-screen against drop, per Second Spectrum, No. 20 in the league and the lowest mark of the past four years. You might think that’s affected a bit by the across-the-board drop in three-point shooting, but even on possessions only used (shots, fouls, turnovers) by the two primaries in the action, the ballhandler and the screener, they’re producing just 0.94 against drop, also the lowest of the past four season. Herro is still one of the best drop killers in the league, No. 10 among all ballhandlers with 300+ reps (1.10 points-per), so it’s odd that the numbers aren’t quite adding up especially when you consider how well they’ve scored against the Bucks until yesterday.

-Tyler Herro had his jersey retired at Whitnall High School outside of Milwaukee on Friday night and was joined by the majority of his teammates and the coaching staff.

-Adebayo earned his second All-Star spot on Thursday night, which was more than well-deserved considering he’s literally been everything and everyone for the team this season. &nbsp;While we don’t get voting results from the coaches vote like we do most everything else, it’s pretty likely that Adebayo and Butler split the vote, in a sense, as it was unlikely that Miami – or anyone else, given that’s it’s probably more difficult than ever to get two reserve All-Stars in the play-in era with so many teams contending for playoff spots – would get two names called for Salt Lake City. “As for me, I’m happy I get a vacation,” Butler told media following the loss in Milwaukee.

Giannis Antetokounmpo

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Coup's Takeaways: Tyler Herro And The Bench Almost Complete 20-Point Comeback As Miami Falls To Milwaukee Late

Jimmy's Lyric: After 56 Points In Game 4, Butler's Myth Will Stand The Test Of Time

The Series So Far: Milwaukee Targets Their Size, Bam And Jimmy Raise The Floor, Gabe Vincent Steps Up And A Pick-And-Roll Adjustment Avoids Larger Changes

HEAT vs. Bucks Preview: The Saga Continues With A Focus On Defensive Tactics For Bam Adebayo, Jimmy Butler And Giannis Antetokounmpo

Coup's Notebook Vol. 43: The Greek Test, Bouncing Bam Adebayo, Elevators, Drop And Jimmy's Fingertips

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