Milwaukee Bucks

Couper Moorhead

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.

coups-takeaways-tyler-herro-bench-milwaukee-near-comeback

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

In a roundabout way, Game 1 went almost exactly as expected on Miami’s side.

Caveats galore, sure. Nobody thought Tyler Herro would break his hand or that Giannis Antetokounmpo would have to leave the game with a back injury. Nobody thought the HEAT would become the eighth team – all winners – to shoot 60 percent from three on at least 25 attempts in a playoff game. Heck, there aren’t many people who thought the HEAT would outright win. But it was the look and feel of the game that felt like rewatching a movie you’ve seen dozens of times.

What do the Bucks do? They limit shots at the rim. Miami took 15 in the half-court, about their average, but at nearly the double the rate when Brook Lopez was on the bench. They limit threes on volume. Miami took 25, about eight fewer per 100 possessions than their average. Milwaukee’s entire defense is predicated on forcing team to shoot in the in-between zones, where inefficient two’s sow creeping disruption to your offense. Miami took 41 in that area, almost ten more than they usually take but exactly what they usually take against the Bucks.

Milwaukee does all this well, but the reason so many games against them look the same goes beyond mere skill and ability. Their defensive shot profile is a direct result of how Mike Budenholzer chooses to move, or not move, his pieces around the board. They rarely deviate. Their process is consistent.

The results against that process went in Miami’s favor on Sunday. Dramatically so, in some cases. The question now is how can they attempt to replicate those results without the services of not only their best shooter, but the third head of their 20-point averaging King Ghidorah? Herro’s off the dribble, pull-up game is one of the best weapons in the league against drop coverage. Now it’s gone – 20.1 points, a 25 percent usage rate, 16.6 attempts, 33 pick-and-rolls and 10 handoffs a night wiped off the board.

“You can’t fully make up what Tyler has been for our team all year long,” Jimmy Butler said.

Some elements of the win just aren’t going to happen again. The HEAT shot an effective field-goal percentage of 102.4 – not a typo – on their 21 catch and shoot jumpers, the third-best game any team had this season on those shots. Their previous high was 85.2, and their average was 51.8. However which way you want to splice it, the chances of two games like that happening in a single series, for any team, is miniscule. It certainly won’t happen at the same time as Milwaukee making just a quarter of their own 45 three-point attempts, that’s for sure. The Bucks probably aren’t going to allow eight hit-ahead passes in transition again – one off Miami’s season high – and the HEAT aren’t going to shoot the third-best field-goal percentage (59.5) in franchise postseason history again, because that’s why it’s among the franchise bests. Nor, for that matter, is Milwaukee going to have the best shotmaking playoff game of the past 10 years, on two-pointers only, as far as actual shooting over expected percentages according to tracking data. But other elements are going to have to repeat if Miami is going to win this series, regardless of Antetokounmpo’s availability – there is reported optimism about him playing in Game 2 – going forward.

Namely, the other two heads of this particular kaiju are going to have to keep it rolling, with purpose, in all that upper paint space that Lopez wants to concede – where Bam Adebayo and Butler shot a combined 14-of-24, nearly a combined season high in both makes and attempts and cleanly a season high for combined paint makes overall. Their 45 total attempts, producing 58 points without even factoring in Butler’s 11 assists, were the most they’ve taken in the same game with the HEAT.

“If they’re going to keep playing that coverage and let us get to our sweet spots, I feel like we’ll live with those results,” Adebayo said.

We spent quite a few words on how Adebayo will need to approach Lopez’ drop coverage before the series because of the long developmental history, not all of it linear or particularly pretty, he has against that style of center. We’ll get to that in a moment. That matchup doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and if Lopez is dropping back off Adebayo he’s also dropping back off anyone Adebayo is setting a screen for. Without the possibility of spamming Herro-Adebayo pick-and-rolls like it’s an animation the video game developers are about to nerf, it’s the Butler-Adebayo connection – used 11 times in Game 1, more than the HEAT typically use it and the only combination with more than six possessions – that could become the centerpiece of this series.

bucks-game-1-jimmy-bam-pnr

Bucks Game 1: Jimmy-Bam PnR

They can get that whenever they want, and there are going to be high-leverage situations in this series where it’s going to be what they need. There were other ways Butler got downhill into Lopez’ territory, like this second quarter play where Butler shot out of a cannon on the weakside catch, with the defense temporarily bend the other direction, in the same way Donovan Mitchell did when he punched through the HEAT’s zone earlier this year.

bucks-game-1-jimmy-cannon

Bucks Game 1: Jimmy Cannon

We should note that Milwaukee’s defense wasn’t particularly good on an individual level on Sunday. Butler got a number of straight-line drives that will likely be reduced moving forward after the Bucks enact the Just Be Better adjustment. We know he can burrow his way into the paint all the same, or turn those drives into free-throw attempts when tighter defense comes.

Moving on. When the HEAT went five-out with Kevin Love – another sung hero from this game, with his four threes – the Bucks went to zone after using it for fewer than 30 possessions all year. The logic plays. If you don’t want Lopez to have to pull out of the paint against a shooter who has already hit a couple of shots, playing zone keeps him near the paint while offering a sturdier shell along the perimeter. Erik Spoelstra’s response? Put Butler in the middle of the zone and let him do his thing.

bucks-game-1-jimmy-vs-zone

Bucks Game 1: Jimmy vs. Zone

Otherwise, if Milwaukee was in man, Lopez stretching out to Love at the arc leaves defenders in positions where they aren’t used to being primary rim help.

bucks-game-1-love-stretch-5

Bucks Game 1: Love Stretch 5

“That’s just the luxury of having a big that can shoot it,” Love said, adding, “I haven’t been known for my defense, but just having to guard guys who can shoot the ball as a 4 or a 5, it’s really hard to guard. It just takes a rebounder, or like Brook a shotblocker, away from the basket.”

Adebayo didn’t start the game like Butler, who hit the highest first-half shot total (17) of his HEAT career, but that’s how he finished, holding off Milwaukee’s final run with all the same shots in this fourth quarter that he made against Lopez in January. Break it all down however you like, the results are all the same. Pocket passes. Isolations. Post ups. It all comes down to Adebayo shooting over the top of Lopez.

bucks-game-1-bam-over-brook

Bucks Game 1: Bam Over Brook

Those shots, admittedly made a little easier without the threat of Antetkounmpo’s help on the floor, are always going to be there. Miami’s offensive ceiling might be lower without Herro’s sudden kamehamehas. The floor, the foundation, remains.

Take away the crazy three-point shooting, the easy scores in transition and the straight-line drives, as either the Bucks or The Basketball Gods likely will soon enough. Adebayo and Butler just have to take and make those shots however they come.

“It may look different in different points of the game,” Spoelstra said. “Jimmy was able to be assertive throughout the course of the game, and then when we really needed some relief buckets, Bam was able to knock down some big ones down the stretch that kept that separation.”

The HEAT don’t have another Tyler Herro. They have players who can approximate his numbers in the way Max Strus – dropping off clean pocket passes to Adebayo in the latter stages of Game 1 – did against Chicago last week or Kevin Love did Sunday. Gabe Vincent scoring 15 points on six shots is one heck of a way to mitigate the damage of losing one of your primary playmakers, too. Ultimately, you replace players like Herro in the aggregate – albeit an unbalanced aggregate. A little bit more from everyone, a lot of bit more from two players.

Butler and Adebayo were more than game for the get-to-know-you-again stage of this series. Antetokounmpo’s status is the most important story of the next week, but as far as what Miami can control, this series might ultimately be decided by whether or not their two drink-stirring All-Stars, together, can keep punishing the Bucks for their own conscious and very purposeful strategies. Not either. Not or. Both.

coup-offense-tyler-herro-bucks-playoffs-jimmy-butler-bam-adebayo

An Explosive, High-Usage Game 1 From Jimmy Butler And Bam Adebayo Shows Us Where The Offense Goes Without Tyler Herro

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.

heat-bucks-preview-saga-continues-defense-bam-butler-giannis-antetokounmpo

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

Miami and Milwaukee split the season series, 2-2, with each side winning a pair of home games. Giannis Antetokounmpo only played in five of a possible 16 quarters, missing the two-game set in Miami back in January and only playing one quarter after the All-Star break. These teams have recently met in the playoffs twice, a five game Miami victory in 2020 and a sweep in favor of Milwaukee in 2021.

Game 1, January 12: The HEAT scored just 14 points in the opening period, Brook Lopez doing his part to keep them away from the rim while Jrue Holiday and Jevon Carter were pesky as ever getting around screens and hounding ballhandlers. An interesting contrast of styles, where the HEAT are typically the ones launching threes shorthanded they were largely pushed into the mid-range – attempting 25 non-rim two’s in the first half – while the Bucks took on that boom-or-bust identity, putting up 27 threes over the first two quarters. That dichotomy was partially responsible for Milwaukee going up by as much as 15 in the second quarter, with Carter hitting four of his first eight threes, and it was also part of why the HEAT were able to tie things up by the half when all their twos, spurred on by one of the better stretches of Gabe Vincent offense (13 points before the break) we’ve seen this season, started to drop. Milwaukee had just eight points in the paint at the half, with quite literally zero attempts at the rim.

By the third, the HEAT had their groove. More Milwaukee misses and turnovers, more chances to push in transition. The Bucks still hung around, but they were forced into a timeout just 45 seconds into the fourth after giving up pick-six and Victor Oladipo stepped into a three after Carter went under a screen to put the HEAT up 10. With Milwaukee on a back-to-back and missing their entire source of downhill movement in Giannis Antetokounmpo, the HEAT had more verve the rest of the way. Everything opened up. The Bucks, still hunting those threes, couldn’t get enough long balls to drop – they hit 22, but it took 57 to get there – and that was that as Miami rode that double-digit victory to the end, 108-102. Hopefully both teams are a bit healthier by the time Saturday’s rematch rolls around, but nobody who has watched Miami all season is going to complain about a rare semi-comfortable victory. Box Score

Game 2, January 14: Miami didn’t waste any time this go round. With the Bucks again taking a ton of threes without their primary source of paint points, and this time those threes weren’t falling at nearly the same rate, the HEAT just ran their stuff, followed the lead of a scorching hot Gabe Vincent (8-of-10 for 21 points in the first half) and jumped out to an early eight-point lead – stretched to as much as 15 at one point – which they carried right into the break. It wasn’t always pretty, especially when Bam Adebayo sat and the offense slowed to a crawl, as we saw some turnovers which are somewhat typical of a 1 pm start time.

A little bit more drama in the third as the HEAT couldn’t escape some second-half blues. Milwaukee closed it to three a couple of times, their offensive efficiency rising and falling based almost entirely on their three-point shooting, but Miami kept finding a way to push it back to six or seven. A three. A floater. An offensive board. With free-throws tough to come by for either side and Lopez still conceding space in that drop, this was as much a shotmaking game as the HEAT have had all year (season-best 11-of-22 from three). Not a perfect night in that regard. Who cares as long as you make more shots than the other team?

As was the case on Thursday, Milwaukee just didn’t have enough offensive verve to keep themselves in it in the fourth quarter. A dominant, 34-24, period that Jimmy Butler didn’t even have to play in thanks to a surge from Victor Oladipo, to clinch a 111-95 victory and a sweep of this two-game series. Miami may not have had to face the Bucks at their best, but you beat the team in front of you and they handled business as well as could be expected. Box Score

Game 3, February 4: There were at least three times in the first half where it looked like things might be slipping away for the HEAT. They were down 15-7 early, and they fought back. They were down 25-16 a little later, and they fought back. Then they were down 48-38 in the second quarter, only to tie things up at 62-62 by the break. With Giannis Antetokounmpo checking all of his own boxes (18 first-half points on seven shots) and the Bucks generating plenty of open threes, it felt like the HEAT were in survival mode until a strong close to the half by Tyler Herro (18 through two, eating up drop coverage as usual), but that’s what this team is good at. They survive. They only turned the ball over once, they crashed the glass and they took 12 more shots than the Bucks, who missed a handful of free-throws. It’s a very 2023 HEAT thing that they were tied at halftime of a game where they were being out-shot by six effective field-goal percentage points, but that’s what this season is.Bucks jumped out to another quick lead after that, and once again, you guessed it, the HEAT fought back and even took the lead. With Jimmy Butler (32 points on 21 shots) hitting everything he put up, including a corner three, no matter how contested or through how much contact he had to go. Bucks up five again, then Miami takes the lead again only to give up a corner three to lose it. Back and forth we went. This again, then that again. Another Bucks run as Butler and Bam Adebayo (16 points, 11 rebounds, eight assists) sat at the open of the fourth to go up seven had things on tilt.

Down nine with two minutes to go, Miami still managed to make this another clutch game as far as the official scorekeeping goes, but it was but a fleeting moment as the Bucks stayed in control for a 123-115 victory. The HEAT may have hit just enough of their two pointers, but the Bucks hit just enough of their threes (14-of-40) as Antetokounmpo led the way.&nbsp;Box Score

Game 4, February 24: Unfortunately the Bucks hit the dimmer switch on all the new rotation excitement in the first half as they dropped 42 in the first quarter – the most Miami has allowed in any quarter this season – and a season-high 73 in the first half for any HEAT opponent. Even with Giannis Antetokounmpo playing just six minutes before exiting the game with a knocked-knee injury, Milwaukee was generally getting most of the looks they wanted while holding the HEAT to mostly contested mid-range looks. It would have looked worse than 73-56 were it not for some fast-break points and offensive boards, because the Bucks shooting 55 percent from the field and 10-of-21 on threes was more the result of good process than the glow of Lady Fortune shining on their shooters.

It wasn’t much better after that. Miami couldn’t get any threes to fall and the Bucks rarely looked uncomfortable. The lead quickly stretched out to 20 and hung around there for most of the third with not much of note really happening. Milwaukee’s offense slowed down, at least, without Antetokounmpo around to get them downhill, but the HEAT’s frigid shooting prevented them from gaining any sort of traction in the half court.

Miami wasn’t the only team with a rough outing coming out of All-Star break, but a 128-99 loss is a 128-99 loss whichever way you slice it. Jimmy Butler dropped in 23 in just 21 minutes and Caleb Martin added 17 on 10 shots in his new bench role, but Milwaukee continues to offer matchup issues and when a very good team on both ends of the floor shoots 19-of-46 from three, you’re going to need one of your best games of the season to beat them. Box Score

the-season-that-was-vs-milwaukee

The Season That Was Vs. Milwaukee

At 35-years old, after a few highly potent runs with the Houston Rockets, Tucker was traded to the Milwaukee Bucks midway through last season and got his first bite. Playing 30 minutes a night, he reached the summit. That was it. His moment. The pinnacle of a decade-long career. An ultimate prize for setting well over 4,000 iron-clad screens and fighting through a thousand more than that.

For some, it’s that moment when the foot, perhaps unknowingly, starts to ease off the gas. As though it’s as difficult to simultaneously apply pressure and put on a championship ring as it is to pat your head and rub your stomach. Tucker waited for that sensation that never came.

“That might be the biggest lie I’ve heard,” Tucker said. “People say that once you make it, you just kind of get complacent, you’re just kind of like whatever. It’s actually the exact opposite. It makes you want it more. That’s why I get now why guys win it and they can’t go to bad teams. I couldn’t play this game and not fight for a championship ever again. There’s no way. It’s impossible.

“Once you hold that trophy up and you go through that, you reach the top of the mountaintop, there’s no other place to be but that. The hunger for that is like nothing else. I thought that I wanted one bad, and then you win it and you want it worse. It was just crazy. It makes sense, you think once you win it it’s like, ‘Oh, I won it, who cares.’ [Now] it’s like, ‘I want it again.’”

It’s tough to hear Tucker say those words, with the conviction he says them with, and not wonder how he and the Miami HEAT had never crossed paths before. “This has been a long time coming,” Tucker said upon signing his contract last summer, “I’ve always said I could play in Miami.” Maybe the basketball gods recognized how snug the fit would be and conspired to keep each party at arm’s length until Tucker’s mid-30’s. But once the Bucks opted not to re-sign him, there he was looking for work in the vastness of summer like a wandering samurai at the end of a long career of sheath-and-unsheath. It just so happened that the next village he walked into was also full of samurai. And they were all working together. Liquid Swords played in the background.

“I love P.J., man,” Udonis Haslem says, offering his rare seal of approval. “I’ll play with P.J. seven days a week and twice on Sundays. What doesn’t he do? He might lead us in offensive rebounds. He comes flying in. Giving us extra possessions. He’s taking charges. He switches pick-and-rolls. He accepts every matchup. He never complains about plays. He only complains about bad defense. That’s the kind of teammate that I want.”

The kind of teammate everyone wants, to hear it told by those sharing the locker room.

It’s December 4 and the HEAT just fell to the Giannis Antetokounmpo-less Milwaukee Bucks by 22 points, Miami’s third loss in four nights and the end of a week-long slide on the defensive end that coincided with the loss of Bam Adebayo to a thumb injury for four-to-six weeks along with a tailbone injury to Jimmy Butler. Tucker is asked how the team can get their man-to-man defense, which began the season at a historically stifling level, back on track.

“Just play defense,” he says, laughing. “I’m sorry, that’s a funny question. Defense is just playing defense. Staying in between your man and the ball. It’s getting ball pressure, it’s getting a contest on shots, it’s being able to stay in front of your man. That’s what defense is. There’s no other way to get around it.”

It's the sort of answer that isn’t all that uncommon among premier defenders, akin to Adebayo regularly boiling down defensive responsibilities to “Guard your yard” over the past few years. The better you are at something, the easier you can make it sound. Ask a composer how he writes music or a director how he storyboards an action scene out of nothing and you’re liable to receive some form of, ‘I just do it.’ Defense is what Tucker does, and he knows it comes simpler to him than to others.

“It’s what I’m good at and what I’m focused on,” Tucker said. “Just energy, effort, focus. That’s it. When you got that and you get five guys, I don’t care who it is, you get five guys on the same page with energy, effort and focus, they can get stops and they can win a basketball game.”

It’s far more nuanced than that. That’s the summary. The setup. As one of the handful of players in the league who can legitimately claim to defend all five positions – “There’s sometimes when I say that term, one-through-five, I wish I could have him guard all five guys,” Spoelstra says – and who has switched more pick-and-rolls over the past five years than all but Clint Capela, Tucker has to know the tendencies of every primary and secondary and tertiary option in the league. He does the work, digging into the film and the numbers as he collects all the information necessary to do his job well.

“It’s a little more to defending Giannis [than energy],” Tucker said, again with a chuckle. “It’s knowing your personnel, paying attention to detail, small things. Guys get in certain situations or spots on the floor, knowing when to help, knowing when to go back home. It’s so detailed to be able to stop a team like Milwaukee.”

Four days after the loss in Wisconsin, the Bucks come to town. Antetokounmpo plays, scoring just 15 points on 13 shots as Tucker stands firmly in the way in every way the two-time MVP approached the paint. It’s one of the worst games Antetokounmpo had played in years, according to Basketball-Reference.com’s Game Score, and one of Milwaukee worst offensive performances of the season.

p-j-tucker-vs-giannis-feature

P.J. Tucker vs. Giannis Feature

“His ability to take on all the big challenges,” Spoelstra said. “Whether it’s Giannis or [Khris] Middleton or sometimes with [Jrue] Holiday, we were able to keep our defense at bay at certain points during the game because of his toughness and savviness. You just can’t teach that. That’s just being a great competitor.

“And his voice, just constantly calling out schemes and where guys are supposed to be, encouraging guys, getting on guys in huddles. All of that, was 10x.”

It’s a voice everyone is used to by now. In huddles, in the game, at practice, shootaround, watching film. It’s ubiquitous. Haslem used the word complain earlier, but that doesn’t quite match Tucker’s purpose. His voice is correctional. Instructional. Guiding. A light in the dark.

Somehow he does it without being overbearing, threading the needle between forceful and rubbing people the wrong way. Let’s let the team tell it:

“Whenever he sees something, he shares it right away,” Duncan Robinson says. “Sometimes if you see something and hold on to it, it can get lost in translation in time. He’s not bashful about sharing his opinions, which is great because it gets everything out in the open.”

“If there’s something that he sees needs correction, he’s not going to wait until the next day or the next week. He’s going to correct it with that guy right then and there in real time on the court or on the bench. He’s the real deal,” Tyler Herro says.

“A lot of it is that realness and genuineness and rawness that he comes with. You already know it’s not from a bad place,” Gabe Vincent says.

“No bull****. Brutal honesty. He’ll say it to your face, say it straight up,” Omer Yurtseven says. “We know his intentions. He’s trying to help us out in any way we can.”

“Tuck is one of the loudest people in the gym. When he talks, everybody hears him,” Caleb Martin says. “You know he comes from a good place. When he says things it’s to benefit you and the team. He’s not saying anything to be malicious.”

“It’s just little technical things that he keeps his eye on,” Max Strus says. “He sees everything and knows where everybody should be at every point in the game. It [could be] just as simple as rotating and being on the help side. You got to be there. If you’re not there, he’s going to get on you. He just knows every single thing about defense and he’s always right.”

It would all be a lot – “You can’t be sensitive,” adds Dewayne Dedmon – if Tucker weren’t accountable to himself. If you ever want to know what HEAT Culture actually is, according to those who live it every day, accountability will always be the word near the top of the list. Strus may say that Tucker is always right, but the way he knows that is Tucker is just as hard on himself as he is on anyone else. That’s The Tuck Rule. Be willing to shoulder the blame. Point the finger at yourself before pointing it at anyone else.

“I’m not perfect, I f*** up all the time,” Tucker says. “But my thing is, if I mess up, I’m not going to do it again. You don’t do the same thing twice. It’s being able to know you’re wrong, take criticism and get better. That’s how you become a good defensive team.”

One of the odder numbers of the season is that Miami has a worse defensive rating with Tucker on the floor (108.1) than off (101.9), which may be as good a cautionary tale for using team numbers to describe individual performance as there is. Part of it is that teams are shooting better from three in Tucker’s minutes, and at the volume Miami allows threes – largely as a result of the extent to which they leave perimeter players to help on drives and seal off the paint – every percentage point makes a sizeable dent. Another chunk is that until Miami’s recent wins against Milwaukee and Chicago, Tucker’s smallball lineups hadn’t been effective on the defensive end. A full-time center for a stretch in Houston, Tucker was surrounded there by stout post defenders who could all hold up on a switch down low. When Miami is forced into playing Tucker at that spot due to a sheer lack of bodies, they don’t have the same switchable personnel to rely on.

You don’t have to look to far to know that Tucker is holding up his end of the bargain. Of the 26 players that have defended at least 50 isolations where the ballhandler did not pass out, Tucker is No. 6 allowing .71 points-per-iso according to Second Spectrum tracking data. He’s only defended 15 isolations where the ballhandler passed into an assist opportunity because the HEAT don’t have to send him help – keeping their defense at bay, as Spoelstra put it earlier.

Of the 85 players who have defended over 200 pick-and-rolls, Tucker is No. 26 allowing 0.91 points-per-pick. That’s four spots below Rudy Gobert and two spots below Antetokounmpo. Hilariously, the 6-foot-5 Tucker who switches onto every big in the league has only defended 16 post-ups all season, allowing 0.31 points-per-post. Everyone knows better than to try him.

p-j-tucker-iso-post-defense

P.J. Tucker Iso/Post Defense

And before you worry that the HEAT are having to rely on Tucker defending up in size too much in Adebayo’s absence, that there’s going to be a cost to pay come the postseason, here’s his perspective:

“The five is the easiest thing to play for me. I get to direct the defense, I get to talk and be who I am. I get to help out a lot. Five is easy for me,” Tucker says.

“It’s hard to guard Kevin Durant and pick him up and turn him and stay in front of him. That takes a toll on your body.”

The HEAT are not a traditional offensive team. They value rim attacks, but they average some of the fewest drives in the league. Instead, they pressure the paint with the pass, setting up a variety of screens for cutters or using the gravity of their shooters to draw two to the ball and letting their bigs play with an advantage.

When Adebayo is available, he is the key. He holds the ball at the elbow and waits for Tyler Herro or Duncan Robinson to create separation on a cut. He rolls off blitzing defenders and works the middle of the floor with the ball. He’s the one on the other end of the pocket pass or the lob. Miami isn’t as reliant on his playmaking this year as they have been in the past with Kyle Lowry on hand to set the table, but Adebayo’s steady presence as both a play finisher and play continuer still enables everything they want to be.

Without Adebayo and Butler – far and away the team leader in drives – Spoelstra has turned to his now-36-year old role player to be something nobody has asked him to be in years.

“That’s one of the things that we just wanted to give a vision to,” Spoelstra said. “Bam is one of the most unique players in this league, you just cannot put him in any kind of conventional box on either side of the floor. His versality is dynamic and unique. But P.J. has a lot of those qualities and we need that right now. We’ll use P.J. in a lot of the ways that we used Bam and he’s showing us that he’s capable of a lot of that. He’s a very smart player, I already think he’s one of the best screeners, if not the best screeners, in the league. Those kinds of guys you usually can put more on their plate and they’ll be able to figure it out.”

In eight seasons prior, Tucker averaged 1.8 screens per 100 possessions where the ballhandler passed to the screener for a shot or an additional pass. This season, that number is 3.6. Since the team lost Adebayo, the number is 6.1.

For comparison, the league’s preeminent short-roll playmaker, Draymond Green, is averaging 3.7 such plays per 100 possessions. At the absolute apex of the regular season Golden State Warriors in the Steph Curry era, 2015-16, Green’s short-roll number was 5.5.

Tucker isn’t just figuring it out, he’s becoming a legitimate playmaker as the HEAT are getting 1.26 points-per-pick when he gets the ball after setting the screen. Better yet, he has yet to commit a turnover out of those actions and he is somehow using four-dimensional math to make it look like he’s made more jump-stop floaters than he’s actually attempted (55.4 percent on non-rim two’s, a career-high to an absurd degree).

p-j-tucker-short-rolls

P.J. Tucker Short Rolls

“I think people forget how good P.J. Tucker was,” Lowry said. “He played overseas (Israel, Ukraine, Germany). He’s known for his defense but in college (Texas) that man was an automatic double-double. He’s always been, not put in a so-called box but he starred in his role, he was a screener, playing the five. Now we’re putting the ball in his hands a lot more right now with the situation that we’re in.”

“It’s just opportunity,” says Tucker, averaging a career-high 3.8 assists per 100 possessions, even throwing bouncers to backdoor cutters from the elbow. “Getting the opportunity and chance to do it. A lot of teams had me in the corner for spacing.”

These recent developments may be a pleasant surprise to the HEAT, but what they knew they would get was screening and spacing. For the latter is yes and then some, with Tucker shooting a career-high 44.7 percent from three – again, in his tenth season – while leading the league with 31 corner triples on a ridiculous 56.7 percent from the right corner.

Which leaves us with one of the most fun in-game parlor games this season: watching Tucker hunt for hammer screens. On any given possession when you see Tucker lingering in the dunker spot along the baseline, let your eyes linger there for a beat or two and leave the ball alone. Watch what Tucker is watching and enjoy when he crushes unsuspecting defenders attempting to scramble out to the shooter who is suddenly sliding into unprotected space.

p-j-tucker-hammer-screens-2

P.J. Tucker Hammer Screens

“P.J. is amazing,” Robinson said. “He doesn’t care about literally anything but that scoreboard. He’ll do whatever it takes to win. He’ll come up to me and say my goal is to get you 15 threes. He’s just unselfish like that.

“He has such a high IQ/ He’s been doing it for so long. He has a great feel for when to slide on the baseline, when to space out versus when to set a screen. For me, a lot of it is just listening to him and playing off of his reads.

Years ago you would have had to take our word for it that Tucker was one of the most prolific hammer screeners in the league. Now, we have the data. According to Second Spectrum, Tucker has set 81 off-ball screens along either baseline this season. The next highest is Fred VanVleet. He has 39. The league leader last season, Jae Crowder, set 83 screens in those two zones.

“He’s like a heat-seeking missile as a screener,” Pat Riley said earlier this season.

You know it when you see it with certain role players. The HEAT have been blessed with a handful of them over the past decade. Shane Battier. Luol Deng. Jae Crowder. Andre Iguodala. Just to name the wings who could all fill, in their own unique ways, the hybrid power-forward spot that has become so crucial in Spoelstra’s builds. You watch them each night, through blowouts and garbage time and Tuesday nights in January and primetime in May, and you grow to appreciate everything they do.

You know, from watching nights of screens and helps rotations and switches and deflections, this is the type of player any team would want. The type of player who, once they’re gone, the HEAT are going to have to do everything they can to find another one. Free agents are compared to them. Draft picks are assigned them as upside.

But you also know, deep down, that there won’t be another one. They’re as unique and effective in their roles as any max-player is in how he gets to twenty points. You can replace, not replicate.

Tucker was already as rare a player as you’ll find. The microball center who works better than most regular centers. Somehow, a decade deep into a career of service, of setting up and defending the best players, he’s been better, and more expansive, than ever. That’s worth your appreciation, and a watchful eye while he’s here for you to watch.

“He’s just a winning player,” Spoelstra said. “That’s probably the shame of it. To the average fan, unless we constantly educate people, no one will have any idea of how many things that he impacts.”

Enemies defeated, conflict settled, calm achieved, job done, the wandering samurai always walks out of frame at the end of the movie. You never know how long he’ll stay, but the village never forgets the days under his watch.

“Whether it’s a conversation, whether its advice, whether it’s a check-in, you can tell he cares,” Vincent says.

“It’s hard not to love him as a teammate,” Robinson says.

“The ultimate teammate,” adds Strus. “Great dude to have in the locker room, takes care of everybody, looks out for everyone, and he’s definitely our leader on the defensive end. He keeps us together.”

NBA locker rooms are many things, but they are rarely wrong. They know fake when they smell it, and to hear the players tell it, Tucker is as real as they come.

everybody-loves-p-j-tucker

Everybody Loves P.J. Tucker

Thursday night was about as good as the Miami HEAT have looked in just over a calendar year, a 42-point pièce de dominance that would have cast shadows over any night any of their previous season even with the defending champion Milwaukee Bucks missing key parts of their rotation. The HEAT had the juice, perhaps fueled by the playoff loss last season or the mere fact that it is no longer last season, and the Bucks did not. You couldn’t ask for a much better start to the marathon.

The game was out of question so quickly, so early, that it’s difficult to create any hard takeaways outside of Miami being, so far, as advertised. The defense was stifling, interestingly similar to the scheme the team used last year with plenty of help on the ball to keep it out of the paint – we’ll keep a close eye on how many threes the team is allowing in the early going – while on the other side of the floor the team was simultaneously quicker (111.0 pace in the first half) and more organized (five first-half turnovers, 11 in total) behind Kyle Lowry’s guidance. If you expected a 50-win caliber team coming into official proceedings, you came away happy.

With apologies to Lowry, Tyler Herro, looking more than comfortable as a sixth-man Nova Corps, and a revitalized Jimmy Butler, the early story of the season is Miami’s All-Star center and his coach who is changing the way he uses him.

Bam Adebayo (20 points on 13 shots in 23 minutes) and Duncan Robinson have been connected at the hip for the past two seasons, and their bond was never stronger than in the opening quarter. As opposing players were still stretching out their jerseys and firing up their leg cylinders, Robinson would come flying around an Adebayo handoff at Mach speed and, more often than not, nail an opening three or three.

The first half-court possession against Milwaukee was not that. Rather than Adebayo dutifully waiting for Robinson on the wing, Robinson crossed the paint and set a screen to set up an Adebayo post-up.

Post-ups can still be facilitatory actions, but watch Adebayo’s head. He first turns it partially to find Giannis Antetokounmpo, then turns it fully to meet his defender face-to-face. Even as Lowry screens for Robinson at the stripe, Adebayo is in score mode as he catches the reigning Finals MVP with his hands in the cookie jar.

A few minutes later, Adebayo fielded a pitch-ahead from Lowry and, instead of holding up on the wing to find a shooter, pushes into post position. Give it up, get it back from your point guard with the quickness, go to work on the move Adebayo says he spent the summer working on.

“My jab jumper,” Adebayo said of his offseason focus. “I feel that was one of those things I really improved on. And making easy reads in the open court. If I see a one-on-one matchup, attack the matchup and let the chips fall where they may.”

On a shortened evening, minutes-wise, Adebayo used 7.5 post-ups per 100 possessions as tracked by Second Spectrum. Last season that number was around five. If you isolate for scoring post-ups (ending in a shot, foul or turnover), Adebayo’s usage has doubled – a trend that was also present in preseason. The increase correlated directly to a drop in handoffs, with Bam using seven against Milwaukee (13 per 100) versus 12 per game a year ago (17.7 per 100).

Coupled with some open court pushes and pick-and-roll work, the size-depleted Bucks (missing Jrue Holiday and Brook Lopez, among others) couldn’t stop fouling Adebayo. For just the second time in his career, he took 10 shots and attempted five free-throws in the first half. The only other time? When Adebayo scored his career-high 41 in Brooklyn last season amidst Miami’s many COVID-related absences.

It’s a chicken-or-the-egg dilemma when it comes to Adebayo. Is he playing more aggressively because he’s being put in more scoring positions, or is he being put in more scoring positions because he’s playing more aggressively?

“I think this is just the constant evolution of a great player,” Spoelstra said. “Each year he’s added to his game. We continue to try to maximize all the different areas on the floor with him, as a playmaker, as a screener, as a post-up player, at the elbow, all of these things are going to help our team and add to the menu.”

“I feel like that was more my assertiveness,” Adebayo said. “I came back from the Olympics looking to work on my game, I’ve tired to improve every year. He’s one of those coaches that when he sees opportunity, he sees success, he doesn’t go away from that. He keeps feeding into it. He wants me to be the best version of me.”

A full answer to the Adebayo question might not matter much in the grand scheme if the endpoint is the same. He shoots more, he scores more, the rest his history. But it does hold interest from a forensic standpoint. Many, including his own teammates, have called for Adebayo to play more assertively, or selfishly depending on who you ask, with the ball in his hands. All well and good. It’s natural to want to see a young star continue to build on top of a rapidly accelerated development timeline. The context the conversation often missed, however, was the incredible balance Adebayo, as the central playmaking cog in Miami’s shooting-dependent offense, had to strike. Every shot he took was a shot he didn’t create for a teammate that needed a shot created for them. Treating Adebayo too critically in that regard always seemed the fool’s errand given the weight he carried on his shoulders.

With Lowry on board, much of that weight has been lifted.

“It’s really because of Kyle, in all honesty,” Adebayo said. “The way he pitches the ball ahead, the way he keeps the pace going, I feel like it’s a big part of Kyle. He knows how to get other people involved.

“I’m picking my spots more. Kyle gets everybody involved so me and Jimmy can focus on scoring and being aggressive.”

The good news is that Adebayo’s playmaking may not come at as much of a cost as it may initially seem despite his one lone assist in the opening matchup. Per 100 possessions, Adebayo’s potential assists were perfectly in line with last season’s numbers (15.1 against Milwaukee as opposed to 14.8 all of last season).

If there is a price to pay in the usage shift (31.5 usage rate after hitting 23.7 last year), it will likely be in the realm of efficiency. Post-ups and isolations (Adebayo used three last night, also above his career norm) are inherently sink-or-swim propositions. There’s nobody coming from some other floor in the building to help you out. You’re at your desk and it’s on you to figure it out, whether that means scoring or reading the defense to find the leaky spot in a helping defense. Growing pains will come in some form or another – Adebayo scored just .59 points per post-up in preseason, well below his usual – as they do for any player seeking to expand. The jab-jumper is a weapon, but it won’t be the only one required – something LeBron James learned a decade ago. Defenses will be creative with the volume and cadence of their help, an advanced education Adebayo embarked upon last season. As usage goes up, efficiency comes down if, and that’s ultimately the path toward All-NBA.

It’s a lot to say about a single performance, maybe, but it’s clear where we’re meant to be headed with Adebayo. He’s crafting a game that is well suited to the slowdown, switch-heavy, beat-your-man style of the postseason, he’s in lockstep with his coach and he’s got an elite ball-deliverer to set him up for success. It might not always look as good as it did against the defending champions, but for a player with unending talent, this is clearly the way.

the-spice-did-flow-as-the-heat-dominated-their-season-opener-bam-adebayo-showed-us-where-hes-going

The Spice Did Flow: As The HEAT Dominated Their Season Opener, Bam Adebayo Showed Us Where He's Going

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.”