Khris Middleton

Couper Moorhead

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 first play of the first game of the first rematch between the Miami HEAT and the Milwaukee Bucks looked almost exactly as expected.

Starting in the left corner, Duncan Robinson flew off a series of staggered screens, receiving a handoff as he curled around the final pick set by Bam Adebayo. As he slowed his momentum and squared his body to the basket, there wasn’t a single soul in front of him. Every remaining section of Milwaukee’s defense had two feet below the free-throw line.

So, finding himself wide open for more than the split-second he needs, Robinson fired up his first shot and thunk’d it in off the back of the rim. For those first 20 seconds the proceedings looked just like the last time these teams met, those summer days when Miami’s shooters hit shot after shot after shot.

The rest of the game did not look so familiar.

On a night when both teams had nearly equal shares of positive and negative takeaways from a two-point game decided on a fading Khris Middleton jumper in the closing seconds of overtime, there were two Milwaukee defensive coverages – one expected, one less so – on which Miami’s offensive hopes may hinge.

But whether or not Miami solves those coverages, both directly related to their stars, one thing was abundantly clear: this isn’t last year, when Miami played the part of the permanent aggressor on their way to a decisive 4-1 series victory.

“It’s definitely going to be a cage fight,” Bam Adebayo said.

When Robinson wound up for that first three, the reason he was so wide open was because Brook Lopez was exercising the most extreme variation of the art form known as The Drop.

In other words, he stood in the paint and didn’t move.

Now as that happened – we’re getting in to the dangerous territory of paraphrasing Twitter as a single entity, but allow it for just a moment – there was a certain sense of “They’re Doing That Again?” going around. After all it was just last September that Miami’s cadre of shooters, including Robinson, Goran Dragic, Tyler Herro, Jae Crowder and Kendrick Nunn, seemingly punished the Bucks over and over for conceding all that space in the middle of the floor. One jumper after another fell, each one making Milwaukee’s base defensive scheme look more specifically suited for regular-season play.

But as we discussed prior to this series, that style of defense did what it was supposed to do. Miami essentially never got to the rim, and it was more through a variety of other defensive mistakes – doing the drop with small lineups, an inability to switch, losing track of shooters, fouling – that Milwaukee’s defense broke down. Brook Lopez protecting the rim is a part of the team’s identity. They were always going to show the same look.

“Their base coverage I think is what’s unique,” Erik Spoelstra said in the week before Game 1. “There aren’t a lot of teams that can do what they do in terms of protecting the rim and protecting the paint.”

So while Robinson was springing free at his heart’s content…

…the Bucks had already baked in the possibilities of those shots falling into their thinking. There would be no kneejerk adjustments.

“We knew going in that’s what we were going to see,” Robinson said. “That’s what [Lopez] does, he’s one of the best in the league at it, protecting the rim. They do a good job of keeping him back there and bullying and muscling through screens, trying to slide under and make it tough on guards. It’s give and take. If he’s going to be back there, there’s going to be opportunities for guys to come off.”

Eventually the Bucks did as Robinson says, muscling through screens to contest more of those threes as the game wore on. That Miami eventually settled on a franchise-postseason high 20 makes from deep was more a testament to their own shotmaking, and ability to make plays in random offense, than any looks the Bucks were outright conceding. All the while, the HEAT took just 16 shots at the rim (making six). Forced into 33 non-rim two’s, and those shots not falling (10 makes), Miami finished with an Offensive Rating of 97.3. It was their worst offensive night in over month.

“We missed a lot of easy ones, mid-range shots, that definitely hurt us a little bit,” Dragic said.

Most notably, gone were the cuts and lobs that so often sustained the team’s offense through the dry spells of the season. If shooters were run off the line, Miami’s playmakers could attack as much as they wanted – to a degree. There was still Lopez, perched under the rim and unwavering in his stance, inviting shots of lower expected value.

“We had stretches where they didn’t go in, but you try not to get too caught up in the results,” Robinson said. “We know what they want to do, it’s protect the paint and force those tough twos.”

“You miss shots. You got days like that. That’s ok. You just have to bounce back,” added Butler.

The HEAT have the shooters to take advantage of those opportunities, regardless of whether or not they’re the shots Milwaukee wants them to take. They proved as much last year. And even if Lopez eats up the cuts and lobs, there are still ways the HEAT can use their off-ball movement to get the Bucks in rotation. Toward the end of the first half, a designed Robinson cut seemingly had nowhere to go, but he took the ball baseline and found a shooter as the defense collapsed.

There’s more of that gold to be mined. The HEAT can’t afford to stop moving. Stagnation is strangulation for their offense.

“They’re not going to all the sudden give easy baskets at the rim,” Spoelstra said. “You’re going to have to do things with pace and purpose and move them.”

Lopez does have a man he is defending. He doesn’t get to just sit under the rim all day long picking daisies. This is where Adebayo factors in.

We don’t need to fully relitigate Adebayo’s offensive role. We talked over that plenty a month ago. It doesn’t have to be a commentary on his entire career track every time he struggles against a team that drops into the paint and protects the rim – and he did struggle in shooting 4-of-15 for just nine points. Those 15 attempts were third on the team, by the way. It’s not like he wasn’t putting the ball up.

“I just have to make the shots,” Adebayo said, keeping his commentary short and to the point. “I didn’t make shots today.”

Truth is, Adebayo has a ton of responsibility creating shots for others. The only way for most of his teammates to take advantage of Lopez playing deep drop is for Adebayo to set a screen or deliver a handoff. It’s a pick-and-roll coverage, after all. Every mid-range shot he takes is an open look his teammates don’t get. Adebayo has to make sure everyone gets fed, for the good of the team.

And yet there’s a balance. If you’re never attacking the space given to you, you’re letting the defense off the hook. Just as Adebayo asks his teammates, across the spectrum of defensive capabilities, to Guard Your Yard, they ask him to Attack The Block.

“I feel like he needs to be more aggressive,” Dragic said. “I’m not saying to take that mid-range shot, but he got that ability to put the ball on the floor and be more physical and try to challenge him at the rim. I know Lopez is big, but I think Bam has that quality that he can do it many ways against him.”

In the end, it’s not all on Adebayo to beat Milwaukee’s drop coverage. The team needs, collectively, for just enough to fall. They made their threes and tough two’s at elite rates last year and games were still nip-and-tuck affairs. Even on a poor shooting night for Adebayo and Butler, they were two makes away from a 1-0 series lead.

“We probably, in this game, didn’t need to have great shooting nights from different guys,” Spoelstra said. “Just make one or two more that were in your wheelhouse. It’s not like we’re trying to get a certain percentage for an entire season. These are small game samples.”

In other words, whether it’s open threes or tough twos, make what you need to win.

While the drop coverage was expected, where Milwaukee surprised out of the gate was in having Giannis Antetokounmpo defend Jimmy Butler from the start.

This was a bit of a sticking point for the Bucks last year. Coach Mike Budenholzer appeared to be reluctant to put Antetokounmpo, one of the league’s premier help defenders, on Butler even as Butler was running rampant through fourth quarters with nobody capable of stopping him. Eventually they did go to that matchup, but with Antetokounmpo picking up Butler beyond the arc the HEAT were fairly easily able to screen him and get Butler going downhill. Milwaukee threw down their ace in the hole. Miami had the spades.

This time around, Budenholzer didn’t hesitate. Instead of Antetokounmpo trying to defend Butler as though he were the size of Jrue Holiday, Milwaukee adopted a blueprint put forth by the Los Angeles Lakers. Like Anthony Davis before him, now Antetokounmpo was, often though not always, going under the screens. And if the HEAT attempted to use a smaller player to force a switch, the Bucks would have the small defender show out onto Butler and hold his position for just a beat to allow Antetokounmpo to find ideal recovery positioning.

Not only did Budenholzer use a creative Los Angeles strategy to stymie Butler’s downhill motivations, that style of switch avoidance is exactly what Miami used to avoid getting defenders like Robinson, Herro and Dragic caught on an island with LeBron James. The HEAT may have knocked them out of the playoffs, but the Bucks were paying attention.

If you were wondering why Butler took nine three-point attempts, one off his career-high, there’s your answer.

“Taking what they’re giving,” Butler said. “I may shoot nine next game as well. They’ll fall, I know that. Get in there, work on some touch. Touch was a little bit off. I’m cool. I think we’ll all live with that.”

The good news is that while this is a far more creative solution for Butler than any Milwaukee tried last season, it is not infallible. The Lakers won Game 4 of the Finals largely off Davis going under on Butler’s screens, but the HEAT adjusted and through a series of screen manipulations and timed attacks were able to spring Butler loose on his way to 35 points in a Game 5 victory.

Going under sounds all well and good, but to go under a screen you have to know when and from where the screen is coming.

Butler had one of his worst shooting nights of the season going 4-of-22 – one off his high for attempts in a HEAT jersey – with just four attempts at the rim, but as was once carved into a picnic table south of the border by one Ms. Connor, there’s no fate but what you make for yourself.

“I think that’s on me,” Butler said. “I have to do a better job of attacking downhill, forcing some help and getting the ball to the perimeter. Bam as well. Goran as well. That’s been our jobs all year long, Maybe we got away from it a little bit. But back to the drawing board. Watch some film. Go through some things and get back to that.”

Depending on who you ask, both teams have something to feel good about one game in.

Fans of the HEAT might say their two best players shot a combined 8-of-37 and they only lost by two points. In overtime at that. A little progression to the mean and they’re just fine.

Fans of the Bucks might say their team shot 5-of-31 from deep, their worst shooting game of the past two seasons, and they still won. A little progression to the mean and they’re just fine.

Both sides would be correct. But there’s another layer to this. The Bucks shot poorly from three but they weren’t getting a ton of open looks. Per Second Spectrum, their Shot Quality of 49.6 (expected effective field-goal percentage) on three-pointers was their second-worst mark of the season. They only created one lonely uncontested three all game.

Meanwhile the HEAT, despite generating a ton of open jumpers, themselves had their second-worst overall Shot Quality of the season at 48.7 because they weren’t getting any high-percentage two-point shots.

Both teams have better offense in their futures, but both teams missed their shots for good reason. The swing factor will probably be whether or not Miami’s defense on Antetokounmpo, who scored 26 points on 27 shots, is as real as last year. The HEAT weren’t able to build a wall in the same way as before with Antetokounmpo being used less as a blunt object this time around, but they still swarmed his dribble and played him with their own brand of physicality. Nothing we saw on the court Saturday guarantees one of the league’s most efficient players any level of future success, but there’s seemingly also a little more breathing room this time around.

For the moment, all of this favors Milwaukee. They have the series lead, and the threes they missed are more valuable than Miami’s mid-range twos. It can’t be a bad thing for them that Saturday looked more like a hard reboot of the series, complete with cleaner and more effective switching, than a sequel.

But the thing about moments is they don’t last very long if you don’t let them.

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HEAT-Bucks Game 1: Enter The Cage Fight

The Miami HEAT beating the Milwaukee Bucks in the Eastern Conference Semifinals last season was only a surprise if you didn’t watch the games. On paper you see that the No. 5 seed knocked off a No. 1 that had been on a 63-win pace and think, ‘Oh, that doesn’t happen very often.’ And on that you would be correct.

But in the games, where records don’t matter, the HEAT looked like the better team. They were sharper. They were more physical. They presented more unsolvable problems. They looked comfortable. They had Milwaukee on their heels. For anyone watching, the surprise would have been if the HEAT lost.

Fast forward from there, through an NBA Finals run and an incredibly short offseason, through all the Health and Safety Protocols and condensed schedules, and we’re right back in the same spot. The HEAT are again the lower seed, coming off an inconsistent regular season, trying to knock off a team with clear championship aspirations. They are, again, dangerous.

In less than a year, so much has changed on both sides that we can’t just play the hits. The HEAT want to build on everything that worked in their favor to make this is a classic sequel (and not like Aliens, which rules but is a rare breed in Sequel Town). The Bucks want to flip the script and remake the entire nature of this matchup.

Only one team can have it their way. Let’s look at some things that matter.

Coming into The Bubble a year ago, the Bucks were the No. 1 defense in the league. They had size and length across the board and they ran a conservative system that sealed off the rim at all costs, dropping bigs like Brook Lopez and forcing teams to operate in the in-between areas with Giannis Antetokounmpo lurking as a help-side defender. They gave up a ton of threes in the process and didn’t force many turnovers, but night-to-night the system wore teams down as the math worked out again and again. Teams either hit their jumpers on Milwaukee, or they lost.

Then they got to the playoffs and the Bucks did the same thing. The same one thing.

It’s a bit of a misnomer to say that Milwaukee’s defense “didn’t work” against Miami. It actually worked exactly as intended. With all that length protecting the paint, the HEAT only took 23.3 percent of their shots at the rim in that five-game series – a mark that would have ranked dead last by a wide margin during that regular season, where San Antonio was No. 30 in rim frequency at 28.6 percent. Milwaukee’s defense had a clear priority, and it succeeded in meeting that goal.

“I’m still of the belief that last year our defense held up in that series,” Pat Connaughton said this week.

The issue was that 82-game math isn’t the same as 7-game math. The HEAT may have been pushed away from the rim, but they made 47.7 percent of their non-rim paint shots, 42.5 percent of their mid-range jumpers and 40 percent on above-the-break threes. Outside of the corners, if it was a floater or a jumper then it was going down at an elite rate.

And for long stretches of the series Miami was getting those shots whenever they wanted them.

When it comes to Lopez, who can devour the entire restricted area by himself and cut off both the lobs and cuts that Miami often thrives on, we’re going to see more of the same. Even with Miami raining makes, the Bucks had a defensive rating of 108.4 when Lopez was on the floor. Just fine. When Lopez was off the floor and Antetokounmpo split the frontcourt minutes with now-retired Marvin Williams, that number ballooned to 114.3.

The way the league has gone, with smaller and smaller lineups over the past decade, most teams have also shifted toward switching screens to capitalize on the added mobility. That was one of Miami’s big adjustments last season post-trade deadline. They swapped in Jae Crowder next to Bam Adebayo and started switching everything, which they still do today, as often as the Houston Rockets teams that almost switched the Golden State Warriors into an early postseason exit.

But when Milwaukee went small last year, they were still in drop. Gone was the size and length of Lopez, now the HEAT had Williams, or even Wes Matthews, as the only resistance between them at the basket.

In the 36 minutes Williams and Antetokounmpo shared the floor during that series, the Bucks were outscored by 18.8 points per 100 possessions.

Milwaukee rethought their approach and started switching more often, but it wasn’t something they had built up positive habits and instincts on. It showed.

The numbers on this can be a little finnicky because of how the cameras pick up blown switch coverages like those shown above, but Miami scored 1.09 points per pick-and-roll when the Bucks switched. That’s better than the league-leading Dallas Mavericks pick-and-roll last season which landed at 1.05, and the Utah Jazz which hit 1.06. With handoffs, it looked even better for Miami.

In short, the HEAT forced the Bucks into an adjustment they weren’t ready for. Coach Mike Budenholzer, for his part, did what all coaches do after a playoff loss. He reassessed. Clearly making defensive flexibility a point of emphasis, Budenholzer took a team that practically never switched the season prior and made them do it at a league-average rate. Since they acquired P.J. Tucker, the key switching cog for those Houston teams alongside Miami’s Trevor Ariza, they switch with a Top 10 frequency per Second Spectrum data – about as high as they’re going to get considering Lopez still being a major piece of their defense.

It hasn’t always looked perfect. Even when the Bucks were up double digits on Miami last weekend there were still plays like Kendrick Nunn – a looming threat given his three-level scoring package – forcing a blown switch and getting right to the rim for a free dunk. But it’s part of who Milwaukee is now. Along with making some other changes to their perimeter coverage, stunting help like the Utah Jazz as players like Duncan Robinson come around handoffs, not to mention employing players like Holiday who are incredible at chasing players around screens, the Bucks have set themselves up to be a more dynamic and flexible defense.

Milwaukee still has to prove the changes can work when it counts. The HEAT aren’t going to allow for any sort of easing in process. With just about every shooter rounding into form over the past six weeks, along with plenty of guys who can pull-up at range, Miami has plenty of options to punish drop coverage. Switching can flatten the HEAT out, but they know how to beat it – Hello, Bam Adebayo slip screens – without getting forced into late-clock isolations. There are certainly switch matchups the HEAT can chase should they choose to.

“With the switching, we’ve built so many habits off of being guarded different ways, if we see a different coverage we can adjust,” Adebayo said. “It’ll be beneficial to me because if they’re switching, the pocket pass [is there] and I get to make plays.”

The Bucks might not be quite as comfortable in what they do right off the bat this time around. Miami will want to keep it that way.

We don’t need to spend too much time rehashing The Wall. It wasn’t unique to last season. Years ago Erik Spoelstra, among other coaches, took a defensive scheme once built for LeBron James – thank San Antonio – and made it their own to use against Antetokounmpo. Whatever the cost, keep the force-of-nature out of the paint. If he shoots it, he shoots it. Make or miss.

Nowadays that wall is practically Miami’s base defense regardless of opponent. If the ball threatens the paint, they shrink the floor and bring some pesky arms with veteran hands attached into the gaps. Whether they’re playing a true zone or not, it’s a shell drill. If the ball ever breaks the seal in the hands of someone who knows what to do with it, something went wrong.

There’s a bit of a question as to who starts off with the Antetokounmpo assignment, it being Crowder’s job last year but it could be Adebayo or Ariza this time around, but the two-time MVP shouldn’t have any easier time getting right to the rim.

Milwaukee knows this, and again they’ve made some small adjustments. They made a huge leap three years ago when they acquired Lopez and went to a full five-out offensive system, maximizing the space Antetokounmpo would have to attack the rim. It worked. Wonderfully so. Those MVP’s didn’t come by mistake. But as more and more teams started to lock in to Miami’s, and Toronto’s to their credit, defensive style all that space being created on the interior wound up working against Milwaukee in a backwards sort of way. With nobody to defend inside, teams had all the more bodies to cover driving lanes. The paint could be made null and void.

Look at this spacing from the series a year ago. In clearing out the paint, the Bucks only gave the HEAT more bricks for the wall.

The adjustment has been to put players, including but not limited to Lopez, in the dunker spot along the baseline. Or, as the HEAT used to refer to it during their battles with the Indiana Pacers, The Bird Box. An affectionate name for where Chris Andersen was stationed on the floor as the steady release valve for James and Dwyane Wade when they could draw the attention of Roy Hibbert.

Here’s what it looked like last weekend at the moment the HEAT stymied Antetokounmpo with another wall.

Notice the gap in space between Donte DiVincenzo in the right corner and Bryn Forbes on the left wing. That’s a massive entry point to the paint for Antetokounmpo to drives into, and a longer gap for Kendrick Nunn and Robinson to close as they pinch in. The result of this play was Antetokounmpo swinging it to Forbes who, after ducking a long closeout from Nunn, hit a three. In essence, by taking a piece out of the perimeter the Bucks can stretch the defense out to a breaking point. Sure, now Adebayo is in the paint if Antetokounmpo does break the shell, but that’s the decision Milwaukee has made.

It also makes them a better offensive rebounding team simply because they have a player stationed near the rim more often.

“They’ve surrounded Giannis with really good shooters and playmakers in Holiday and Middleton, but they also get extra opportunities at the basket with their spacing, whether that’s on cuts or spacing on drives or offensive rebounds,” Spoelstra said. “You have to account for them on the baseline where you tend to lose sight of them.”

How is this new spacing going to play out in this series? That remains to be seen. The Bucks clearly had offensive success against Miami this season as they posted Offensive Ratings of 120 or better on two separate occasions, setting the all-time record for made threes (29) in a game in one of those, but Jimmy Butler didn’t play in any of those games and Butler is one of the best, if not the best, weakside defenders in the league. All those passing lanes Milwaukee has opened up are also potential passes Butler or Ariza or Andre Iguodala can take the other way.

All we know for now is that it’s going to look different. Considering Milwaukee scored just 100.4 points per 100 possessions against Miami with a force like Antetokounmpo on the floor during that series, they’ll take any different that they can get.

The fact that Jimmy Butler didn’t play one minute against the Bucks this season isn’t just important because he’s very good. It’s because he’s also very good specifically against the Bucks.

Butler used 26 isolation possessions against the Bucks during last season’s playoffs. Care to guess how many points he scored out of those?

Typically, if you can score one point on average for every isolation, you’re doing just fine. The most prolific isolation player in the league this season, Julius Randle, scored about 1.02 points per isolation.

Against Milwaukee, Butler scored 36 points on those 26 possessions for a whopping 1.38 per isolation.

Butler scored 40 points in a Game 1 comeback, including 27 in the second half and 15 in the fourth quarter. He hit the game-winning free-throws in Game 2. Added another 17 in the fourth quarter of Game 3. He got to the line for 54 free-throws in five games, making 46. And he added 5-of-11 shooting from three just because.

Mid-series there was the notion that Budenholzer should put Antetokounmpo on Butler and try to contain him with length. That wound up playing right into Miami’s hands as they easily screened Antetokounmpo – a defensive monster but not the fleetest of foot for fighting around picks – 20 feet from the rim and got Butler a mismatch or a lane.

Butler might not have sustained his scoring rate from the first game, but that performance had a ripple effect on the entire series. It forced Milwaukee to be the first to adjust, and those adjustments didn’t pan out.

Now the Bucks have Holiday, one of the league’s best and most versatile defenders. Wes Matthews had his moments, but Holiday will immediately be the most versatile option Milwaukee has had to deal with Butler, including ball denial, and he won’t be easily screened.

“Definitely my type of guy,” Holiday said of Butler. “I’m a big fan of Jimmy Buckets.”

There isn’t much more to say on this, given that we have yet to see the two of them match up. How it plays out will be relevant to this next section.

Upfront, answers are not readily available for this one.

Here is what Miami’s fourth quarter Net Rating looks like over the past two seasons.

2019-20 Regular Season: -5.8 per 100 (Rank 28)
2019-20 Playoffs: +19.6 per 100 (Rank 1)
2020-21 Regular Season: -5.3 per 100 (Rank 28)

If you slice it down to only Clutch Minutes, up or down five points in the last five minutes, the results are pretty much the same. Miami has flat out not been very good in fourth quarters during the regular season, and then they blew teams out of the water during the postseason at a historic rate.

Some of that was Butler. We’ve covered that. Some of that was Adebayo running roughshod over the Boston Celtics to clinch that series. Those two will have to have moments of greatness to win close games, to be sure.

It’s Miami’s series-defining fourth in Game 3 against Milwaukee that may be most illuminating. The HEAT were trailing by double digits through three, with Milwaukee looking like they were slowly gaining some traction on the offensive end. Then Miami ran off a 40-13 quarter and went up 3-0.

Butler and Adebayo combined for 27 in that period, but it wasn’t a takeover from either of them. There was plenty of random offense. Steals that they took the other way. Off-ball movement. Offensive rebounds. Big threes from Dragic, Crowder and Herro. It was what so many HEAT runs have looked like over the past two years. Not always pretty or full of highlights, but through sheer force of play everything went their way.

One number that might carry relevance here is this: when the HEAT shot the ball on a touch lasting less than two seconds in that series, they shot an effective field-goal percentage of 61.3. Between two and six seconds? 50 percent. Over six seconds, which accounted for about 14 shots a game, the percentages fell to 41.1 percent. Those are consistent, if more dramatic, with the regular season. They can get bogged down, and the game is never slower than in the fourth. They don’t need to play fast, but having a pace to their half-court execution has always been to their benefit.

Can Miami’s sudden late-game effectiveness in the postseason be fully explained? Probably not. Maybe they were just in better shape. Maybe it was a mental thing. Or maybe it’s just small sample size, with all those close game representative of a smaller margin for error that still exists. Or maybe, with a player like Butler who raises his game in the postseason in a non-talking point kind of way, they’re built for the style that comes out in the playoffs.

I can’t fully explain the plot dynamics of Frozen 2, either, but that doesn’t mean it can’t still be good.

Handoffs are still a major part of Miami’s offense. But while they are No. 13 in handoff volume, they were No. 7 a year ago. The efficiency was elite back then. This year it fell just below league average. The actions keep the offense flowing and the bodies moving. It just hasn’t been quite the weapon it was before.

Considering how important those handoffs with Adebayo were, this hasn’t affected anyone as much as its affected Duncan Robinson.

“There’s not a team that will let him come off a handoff or some kind of pindown cleanly anymore,” Spoelstra said in March. “Those days are behind him. He’s not going to get those days ever again in this league.”

Those adjustments started even before the playoffs. Every once in a while, a team would throw at new wrinkle at him. Toronto. Utah. Top locking. Help. The rest of the league would catch it on film and suddenly every other opponent is running the same coverage.  Even against the drop coverage, the Bucks were physical with Robinson, making it as difficult as possible for him to round the corner clean. He only took 7.4 shots per game against the Bucks in the playoffs, and that number has remained consistent against Milwaukee this year.

Spoelstra made two significant tweaks. One was to put the ball in Robinson’s hands even more. Let him run pick-and-roll with Adebayo. Let him attack. Against the Bucks there could be plenty of dribble-jumpers available to him when they stay in drop. If they switch and jump him, he’s proven adept at hitting Adebayo with those pocket passes he mentioned earlier. We went in depth on this a few months ago.

The other change has been to change the playmaking angle for Adebayo, along with Butler, by putting them in the post. Neither is what you would call an elite post scorer, though they can more than get theirs against the right matchups, but they have been absolutely top-shelf creators.

“It’s just a slight adjustment,” Spoelstra said. “[Adebayo] spent a lot of his time at the elbow and high post area last year and the year before. This is just getting a little bit lower and then we’re continuing to put him in both spots.”

While Adebayo and Butler hold in the post, an angle inside the teeth of the defense that proved beneficial to James and Wade all those years ago, the HEAT run dozens upon dozens of variations on off-ball screens to free up shooters and cutters. Time and time again, Robinson or Ariza springs free as defenders overplay the threat of the spot-up three. Time and time again, it’s a layup.

The most efficient post-up team in the league? The HEAT, producing 1.12 points per post counting assists per Second Spectrum tracking data.

“How active they are definitely makes them tougher than other teams,” Holiday said. “They’re active, they never stop moving and they have shooters. It makes it tough.”

Miami’s offense has been trending in the right direction. No. 5 since April 1, in large part because the shooting of Robinson, Dragic, Ariza, Nunn and Herro all hitting the upswing. To that, there’s no doubt. Yet it’s these cuts, and all the offense they create off their defensive stops, that sustains them.

If the Bucks are going to switch, the HEAT can work their playmakers in the post if they play with the right halfcourt pace. The adjustment to Milwaukee’s adjustment is already baked in.

I don’t know. We’re all just guessing.

Last year there was a more than ample case for how Miami could knock off the Bucks, and that case proved more than convincing.

Both sides have made changes. Milwaukee is ready to put a more flexible defensive scheme on display. Their offense has tweaks built in to let Antetokounmpo’s game breathe again. They’ve added an All-Star and some helpful veterans which unlock more dynamic lineups. They’re better than last year.

The HEAT have leaned further into the style that took them to the Finals. We haven’t even mentioned the blitzing they’ve brought back into style from a decade ago. They’re aggressive. They’re a little bit mean, in a good way. The numbers don’t exactly scream out that they are better than last year – if they made the Finals again they would do it with the lowest Net Rating (+0.0) since the ABA merger in 1976 – but they’ve evolved into something more. Their numbers didn’t jump off the page last year, either. Didn’t seem to matter then.

Spoelstra and his team have been here. Their schemes are built on the shoulders of decades of work. They know how to gameplan. They know how to adjust. All the tools are still there, even if some of the names on the jerseys are different.

That doesn’t mean they’ll win, but this isn’t at all far from where they were at the same stage last season. They can beat anyone. It’s no mystery which boxes need to be ticked each night. They just have to do everything the hard way.

“You can’t expect a series to be easy,” Spoelstra said.

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