NBA Postseason

Couper Moorhead

When he said it, at least one eyebrow was raised.

It’s a quiet early-January morning after a Miami HEAT shootaround and assistant coach Anthony Carter, perpetual smile-haver and lightness-bringer, is discussing his relationship with workout partner Max Strus, who Carter describes as “the type that gets in his own head sometimes.”

The topic of Joe Harris, the starting shooting guard for the Brooklyn Nets who missed a large portion of the season with an ankle injury, comes up. Both about the same height and weight, the player who spent the past five seasons shooting 45 percent from three seemed an appropriate blueprint for what the HEAT’s developmental program could try and turn Strus into. Harris was a dynamic, mobile shooter who could also get to the rim, either by putting the ball on the deck or cutting off his own gravity. And his somewhat stocky, thicker build allowed him to hold up relatively well in a defensive system that asked him to switch a ton.

If Strus, an undrafted guard out of DePaul University who joined Miami on a two-way contract in 2020 after being waived by the Boston Celtics and tearing his ACL during a stint in Chicago, could somehow become even a facsimile of Harris that would be yet another victory for a franchise on a never-ending heater when it comes to undrafted success stories.

“I think he’s already there,” Carter said. “I just think Joe is getting more minutes than him.”

Strus wasn’t exactly riding the pine at this stage of the season. With the team injury depleted and dealing with health and safety protocols, Strus started eight games in late December and early January and had the best stretch of a career that, to that point, had been brief both in time spent healthy off the court and playing on it. He scored a career-high 32 points against Orlando and kept running from there, hitting 47 threes over his next 13 games. There was clearly a real player there – that much anyone could see from how well Strus played at Las Vegas Summer League several months prior – but he still seemed to be just getting off the starting line. Being on the same level of a veteran like Harris was a few hurdles down the track.

Carter, matter of fact as ever, was ahead of everyone else that morning. Maybe even ahead of Spoelstra, under whom Strus’ minutes fluctuated in the coming months. Sometimes 13 minutes. Sometimes 20. Forty on one night, six a couple weeks later. Miami had more talented, playable players than could possibly be fit into a reasonable rotation, and like plenty of others Strus was sometimes on the outside looking in.

But after a four-game losing streak in late March that was one of the ugliest weeks in recent HEAT memory, Spoelstra swapped Strus for Duncan Robinson in the starting lineup and Carter’s statement months earlier began to look more prescient.

No longer an injury fill-in, Strus was now playing with the core group. Jimmy Butler. Bam Adebayo. Kyle Lowry. P.J. Tucker. This was the starting lineup that had championship expectations. One would understand if Strus felt any pressure.

“None,” he said. “I didn’t feel any.”

From there, the HEAT got back to winning and they’ve kept winning ever since. Miami closed the regular season on a 6-0 winning streak, only dropping a meaningless final-day game to Orlando when most of the regulars sat out, and have gone 8-3 over the first two rounds to clinch a spot in the Eastern Conference Finals. With Strus in the starting lineup, the HEAT are 21-5. He’s shooting 35 percent from three on 8.5 attempts per game, with all the gravity and spacing that comes with that volume. Better yet, the HEAT are plus-142 when Strus is on the court, with a plus-37.1 on-off differential, which leads all players in the postseason.

“I’m on Max so much, man,” Tucker said. “He’s gotten so much better from the time we started this year. He’s definitely our most improved. He’s really stepped up to be a guy we can count on.”

That the HEAT can count on Strus as a shooter isn’t a surprise. The system, which had already featured Wayne Ellington and Robinson in handoff-heavy roles and had one of the most selfless centers in the league on hand, was ready made for his skillset. Plug. Play. Boogie.

That they can count on him to be playmaker with the ball in his hands, to capitalize on the attention he draws on the perimeter and find his teammates – to produce 0.92 points per pick-and-roll in a pinch – has been slightly more eye catching only because it would be that way for almost any young player who doesn’t come into the league as a Day One playmaker. It was a development when Adebayo started whipping passes out of the paint to open shooters during his rookie season, and it’s a development when Strus ties his career-high with five assists in a closeout game on the road in the playoffs. These are not assists you just fall into swinging the ball around the horn:

But the real surprise is how far Strus has come defensively. Opposing teams have always called up the perceived weak links in Miami’s switch-all scheme. Tyler Herro (249) and Robinson (233) were No. 8 and No. 13 in total isolations defended this season. Considering Bam Adebayo, at 270, was just ahead of them despite being the player Miami wanted on all the best scorers tells you how other teams tended to gear their approach. Strus wasn’t too far behind at 211, but where Adebayo was at the very top of the list and Herro and Robinson both near the bottom in terms of efficiency allowed, Strus was smack dab in the middle. Of the 200 players who defended at least 100 isolations this season, Strus was No. 113, allowing 0.97 points-per-isolation. If you take assist opportunities out of the equation, which defenders have some but not entire control over since passing lanes open up if they get beat, Strus’ number drops to 0.88 points-per-isolation.

I bet you want to know what that number looks like during the playoffs, where players like Trae Young and James Harden have hunted for the Strus matchup. In 36 isolations, he’s allowed just 0.69 points-per without assists, 0.74 with them (44 possessions). Small samples are always finnicky, but for a reference point those numbers are right in line with Defensive Player of the Year candidate Mikal Bridges (0.75 on 39 possessions) and well ahead of actual Defensive Player of the Year Marcus Smart (1.18, though relatively meaningless on merely 17 possessions).

“[That’s] what he’s been showing us in practice,” Adebayo said. “He can guard. Max never backs down from a challenge. That’s why I love Max so much, he excels so much with challenges and he gets his fair share of one-on-one stops.”

It all passes the eye test, too. Against Young and Harden only, Strus has only allowed five points on 12 isolations (0.42 points-per). With Strus on the court during the playoffs, the HEAT are allowing 94.1 points per 100 possessions – the best mark on the team. It looks like this:

“Even if he doesn’t believe in himself, we believe in him being able to guard,” Tucker said. “[We’re] trying to make him do that a lot more so people can’t go at him.”

Maybe it wasn’t always the case, but it sure sounds like Strus is starting to believe, too.

“I take defense personally because people don’t think I can guard anybody,” he said. “I think I’ve been showing that that’s not true.”

The hunch was always that Strus had it in him to dial it up on that end, at least a modicum of defensive ability, because of his strength. He can move his feet and take a hit right in the chest and keep going. He does a decent job avoiding fouls, a Game 5 foulout aside, even against the league’s craftier foul-seekers. Spoelstra isn’t giving him the primary assignment by any means, but he’s proven that he can just be solid.

Is Strus suddenly a defensive stopper? That wouldn’t be fair to say, but the HEAT aren’t asking him to be. Even as they loaded up three players on both Young and Harden, with Strus always flanked by help in the gaps on either side, it hasn’t been much of a departure at all from their base scheme. The player on the ball is never on an island trying to stop an elite scorer on their own. Knowing that he has elite wingmen at his sides, Strus can focus on the trench run and not have to think about any pesky TIE Fighters. He can push up on the dribble and sit on a stepback or a crossover. To a degree, he’s protected from getting outright beat. Spoelstra’s system is putting Strus in position to succeed and Strus is doing his job.

“It’s been huge,” Strus says of Spoelstra’s confidence in him. “The most important thing he’s been saying to me is [about] my defense.”

It only gets more challenging from here. Even has he produces like a steady vet during his first real postseason run, teams aren’t going to stop calling Strus up because it’s still a better option than attacking any of Miami’s elite defenders. There are no rest days. In the postseason, as Adebayo has been saying for years now about his teammates being targeted, at some point you just have to “Guard Your Yard.”

This yard may not have a sign that reads BEWARE: MAX on the fence, but he’s proving to have more than a little bite in him.

maximum-overdrive-once-a-two-way-player-mighty-max-strus-has-become-a-critical-piece-to-miamis-championship-aspirations

Maximum Overdrive: Once A Two-Way Player, Mighty Max Strus Has Become A Critical Piece To Miami's Championship Aspirations

With just over five minutes to play in Game 4 and Philadelphia up only seven points thanks to a masterful 40-point performance from Jimmy Butler, James Harden has the ball. As the 76ers point guard Harden often has the ball, but in this case he really has it. After inbounding to Tyrese Maxey and getting it back with 16 on the shot clock, Harden proceeds to hold the ball for the next 14 seconds, doing nothing but getting the best switch defender in the league in Bam Adebayo switched onto him.

The clock is melting. Harden isn’t going anywhere, and neither is Adebayo. As we’ve seen so many times in this series already, Harden crosses over a couple times, jabs his right foot forward, steps back and launches a three. Adebayo is locked in the entire way. Hands up. Contest. Jump to the side to avoid the foul. He plays it as well as you can possibly play it.

With 1.4 seconds on the shot clock, the ball goes through. Before the game ends and the 76ers tie the series up 2-2, Harden hits two more three with under three on the clock. No team in the league forces more defensive possessions into the final five on the clickety than the HEAT, and when they do that, when the seconds are exhausted and the walls are closing in, they only surrender 0.82 points per possession. Elite, A-Number-One stuff.

In Game 4 the 76ers had 24 possessions – the seventh-most Miami has forced all season – go into the final five on the clock. You know what they scored on those? A whopping 1.72 points-per-possession. In Game 3 that numbers was 1.13.

“In those last five minutes,” Erik Spoelstra said, “they had probably a handful of possessions that went all the way down to the end of the clock and made some big shots.”

That’s probably putting it lightly, given the context. They weren’t just big shots, they were some of the biggest shots that have been hit against the HEAT all season. If you go through all 91 games Miami has played this season, the 34 points they allowed in the final five on the clock in Game 3 was a season high. And then that number was immediately topped by the 43 in Game 4.

You’ve probably heard the term Make or Miss League a few times in your experience watching the NBA. It’s either the most reductive or most accurate form of analysis, but sometimes it’s all you can say. Sometimes Dwyane Wade doesn’t make a three for four months before making two in the final minutes of a do-or-die game Charlotte. Sometimes Jimmy Butler hits four threes in a game against Atlanta after shooting 23 percent from deep during the regular season. It feels great when you win those. But sometimes Harden, who was shooting 32 percent on 40 postseason stepback threes heading into Game 4, sticks a dagger in you and there’s nothing you can do.

Maybe the shot-making is all it is. Maybe it’s all it ever is, really. Maybe the HEAT lost the last two games simply because they, the best shooting team in the regular season, shot 23 and 20 percent from deep in consecutive games while their opponent topped 48 percent on threes both nights. After posting their second-worst Shot Quality of the season in Game 3 upon Joel Embiid’s return, Miami’s looks returned to more normal-ish levels in Game 4. Shouldn’t the makes have followed?

“There aren’t any absolutes with that,” Spoelstra said. “In Game 3 we didn’t really generate enough good looks and our offense was really flat. I thought tonight we actually had some really good looks, we just missed them. That’s part of the game, part of the playoffs, sometimes you don’t make shots but you still have opportunities to grind out and get a win in the mud. We were able to do that tonight. We were close, we were banging on the door.”

The 76ers had the same gripes with the Basketball Gods after shooting 17 and 26 percent from three in the first two games, each semi-winnable without their best player.

“It just seemed like it kind of flipped,” Spoelstra said. “It feels like Philly was saying the same thing in two games in Miami. We’re saying the same thing here.”

“In Game 2 our composure was good,” 76ers coach Doc Rivers said. “We just couldn’t make shots. Now we’re making shots.”

Maybe it is that simple, the series will be decided by who makes more threes over the next two or three games and we can stop writing right here. It really could be that simple.

To start, despite what we said about the HEAT’s Shot Quality improving in Game 4, which it did, they only generated four uncontested looks – as they’re tracked by Second Spectrum – all evening. In the second half they only took one corner three, the best three you can get, after taking three in all of Game 3. There were good and open looks to be sure, but there are degrees to good and open. Are you facing down a hard closeout? Is someone trailing behind you? Did you have to dribble and relocate? Did you get a clean catch? Miami had the worst Shot Quality on threes this season largely because so many are either off the dribble or off movement, so they can make tough threes, but how many good, clean looks are the team’s best shooters really getting?

The key here is in understanding how Philadelphia is defending Butler. On one hand Butler has been brilliant these last two games, scoring 33 and 40 points and largely standing as the sole reason Miami has been able to hang within single digits when they have. But Butler has also had to be brilliant because the 76ers are defending him in the complete opposite manner to how the HEAT are treating Harden, Embiid and Trae Young before them.

It’s part of their base defensive scheme, but the HEAT have pointed at Harden and Embiid, wagged their finger side to side and said, ‘Nope, not you two.’ They load up multiple bodies into Harden’s driving lanes. They front Embiid – second in the league with 8.9 post-ups per game, he only has four total through two games in part because Bam Adebayo is putting on a fronting clinic – and have help always at the ready to swarm him when the pass is in the air. Here’s a quick look at two possessions, the first a reminder of what the floor balance looks like when Harden has the ball and Embiid is on the bench, the second how Miami tilts their entire effort towards the mere threat of an Embiid post-up.

While Shot Quality for Philadelphia has largely remained flat through all four games, that’s partially due to Harden’s particular brand of threes drag the overall number down like an anchor. It’s been pretty clear that the likes of Danny Green, Tobias Harris, Georges Niang and Tyrese Maxey have all benefitted from the tilt of Embiid’s gravity. Looking at only those four shooters, the 76ers’ three-point Shot Quality in Games 1 and 2 was 51.1, which would have ranked dead last during the regular season. In Games 3 and 4 that number rose to 53.2, which would have ranked a much healthier eighth.

We’re playing with pretty small samples here, but that tracks with possessions like this one (camera is messy on the second, but you get the idea with the help sucking in on Embiid in the middle):

On the other end of the floor, Philadelphia is playing things very differently. During each of the past two postgame press conferences, Butler has mentioned that he probably wants to pass the ball a little more than he has. The 76ers have engineered their defense to prevent that. While they are showing help off certain players – they’re well aware that Tucker is primarily a corner-three specialist, for example, so he’s not getting the same attention while running through other zones on the floor, and they’re playing off Butler when he doesn’t have the ball – if you’re Tyler Herro or Max Strus, both of whom are coming off incredible shooting seasons, Rivers is positioning his players so that their airspace is as minimal as it can possibly be.

Let’s play a little Where’s Waldo. Try to find Strus on this play, where Butler is coming off a Bam Adebayo screen and trying to get downhill against Embiid (he takes a jumper).

Where are Strus and Herro on this play, a Butler isolation on the left side of the court? Does this look different to you from how Miami is loading up on Harden and Embiid?

Where are Miami’s shooters here, when Butler is holding the ball at the free-throw line? Are there any immediate passing angles for him to generate three-point looks?

Alright, that one was a trick. Herro isn’t even in that screen grab, but he is on the court. You see Maxey off on the left of the image? That’s where Herro is, off screen. Note that there’s 12 seconds on the shot clock, so Herro isn’t coming down the floor in transition. Spoelstra is often asking Herro and Strus to space out as wide as possible to open up the middle of the floor, and Philadelphia is sometimes taking their scheme to a comical, though effective, degree.

So you can trust that we aren’t just stealing screenshots at the exact moment to help prove a point - which to a degree is unavoidable - let's look at a handful of possessions to show Philadelphia's focus in motion. You’ll notice a consistent theme, Butler or Adebayo are working together to attack a pressure point while the best shooters on the floor have been cut off as the 76ers are often happy to defend the pick-and-roll with two bodies if one of them is Embiid. Even with the ball going towards the rim, the help, positioned on shooters, doesn’t come. For the HEAT, that would be blasphemous.

While the HEAT indeed had some open, makeable looks earlier on in the game, this is a string of six crucial possessions played out down the stretch. Watch how the defense is playing the shooters even as Butler and Adebayo are scoring in bunches.

Miami only had two catch-and-shoot threes in the fourth quarter that were deemed uncontested or lightly contested by Second Spectrum. Neither of those came from Strus or Herro.

A quick history lesson here. Tom Thibodeau, who designed some of the best defensive systems in the league in the years following the various rule changes in the early-2000’s, spent three seasons with Rivers as Associate Head Coach in Boston while the Celtics went to the NBA Finals in two out of three seasons with an elite defense centered around Kevin Garnett. When Thibodeau got the head coaching job with Chicago, he designed his entire system around the capabilities of big men like Joakim Noah and Taj Gibson. The ideas in play were similar to what we’ve seen the last two games. Use the big man to contain the immediate action and space the floor so the best shooters are cut off or at least facing a hard closeout depending on how many miles the ball would have to travel in the air. We don’t have a reason to get into who came up with what, but there’s a long history with the choices Rivers is making. He’s had success with this style. Their goals are as clear as Miami’s are when they treat high-volume ballhandlers the same as they’ve done for years.

How these concepts have played out, with spacing at a maximum - in that respect, the shooters are doing what they're meant to do by creating room for attacks - is that Butler has answered a call that keeps ringing. He’s taken 20 and 22 shots in consecutive games – Butler only took 20 or more shots three times in the entirety of Miami’s Finals run back in 2020 – but with Rivers challenging him to score Butler has obliged with a combined 73 points on efficient shooting, often going right at Embiid. Butler has been Miami’s most effective ballhandler in pick-and-rolls by a significant margin, producing 1.09 points-per-screen over 54 actions in two games, a number that’s equivalent to a Steph Curry pick-and-roll during the regular season. He’s produced 11 points on 10 isolations and Adebayo, getting similar spacing treatment on the block, has eight points on six post-ups. When those two have run a pick-and-roll together, Miami is getting 1.27 points per the entire possession that the action took place in. Not quite as effective as Harden and Embiid together – 1.24 points per screen on double the usage – but points are going on the board.

It also hasn’t quite looked like Miami’s usual offense. Not quite in the same way that the HEAT catapulted Atlanta’s vaunted offense into a different dimension in the first round, but the HEAT’s offense is one built on a balanced, motion-heavy attack, with everyone on the floor a threat in part thanks to the selflessness of lead players like Butler and Adebayo. The 76ers are trying to turn them into selfish players, at least in effect, and for as much as the HEAT are trying to grease the wheels with more complex screening actions and by having the shooters constantly relocating, the offense has been down. In Game 3 they scored just 89.8 points per 100 possessions, and while Game 4 was an improvement the final number was still a below-average 110.2.

Perhaps more telling, in the 16 minutes that Butler has sat over the past two games, Miami’s Offensive Rating has been just 51.7 as the non-Butler minutes have given Philadelphia a chance to stretch the lead in each fourth quarter. And the team’s assist rate with Butler on the floor is sitting at 55.9, down from 63.1 during the regular season.

And yet despite all of this, even with the 76ers making nearly half their threes, the HEAT have had a chance to win each game. Each contest turned on some incredible shot-making in the final period, with Maxey going off in Game 3 and Harden – posting a usage rate over 30 in a postseason game for the first time in two years – owning the end of the clock in Game 4. Through the first three games, Harden was producing just 0.63 points-per-isolation at high volume. Embiid looked more comfortable in Game 4, but he’s still being forced to work incredibly hard to even get a good catch and his own isolations have produced just five points on 10 possessions.

A little more make here and a little more miss there, and the HEAT could have easily taken one of two.

All this means for the series going forward is that each coach, barring further adjustments, have laid out their rules of engagement. Miami has tried to force the ball out of the hands of Philadelphia’s best players, and even with all the made threes the 76ers won on some incredible individual efforts. Philadelphia is trying to take away the HEAT’s best threes, and even with all the misses Butler – and Adebayo in Game 4 – was so good that Miami was right there. Both sides are doing what they intend to do and living with the consequences.

The question for Miami is whether all this takes its toll on Butler, who has had to be rather Herculean. It’s true that the HEAT underperformed their expected effective field-goal percentage from three in Game 4 by more than they have in any other game this season, but they also over-performed their expected efficiency on twos by the fourth-most this year. Make or Miss cuts both ways, and it’s not all about threes.

Still, the HEAT have had enough opportunities to capitalize on even with how they’re being defended. Game 5 could easily a huge perimeter swing, with the HEAT back at home making more of the same threes and the 76ers not getting Danny Green – 10-of-13 from three in two games – toggled into Hunter Killer mode. We could also see both Butler and Harden struggle to make as many shots and others step up in their stead. Miami is probably in pretty good shape if they’re forcing the type of shots they’ve forced in the last two fourth quarters, especially if they can get to that point with a bit of a lead rather than playing from behind. The 76ers might feel the same way on their end.

Maybe Make or Miss really is everything, but each coach has had a major say in who is doing the making and who is doing the missing. Spoelstra and Rivers have set the guidelines. The fun – and the heartbreak and joy, depending on where you sit – of the postseason is not knowing who is going to perform within them.

the-rules-of-engagement-in-a-make-or-miss-series-erik-spoelstra-and-doc-rivers-are-shaping-the-floor-to-their-own-designs

The Rules Of Engagement: In A Make Or Miss Series, Erik Spoelstra And Doc Rivers Are Shaping The Floor To Their Own Designs

The common thought headed into Game 1 was that, without Joel Embiid, the Philadelphia 76ers were going to need something close to the James Harden who won Most Valuable Player with the Houston Rockets to have a chance at stealing a game in Miami. That the 76ers, lacking in quality defensive options to replace their best player in the middle of the floor, would need to cook with gasoline on the other end.

As far as the reasoning goes, it was bang on.

In the 17 minutes that DeAndre Jordan, who started both halves, was on the court, the 76ers allowed 159.4 points per 100 possessions. In Paul Millsap’s five minutes, 127.3. They found some traction with Paul Reed, some zone and running Georges Niang at center, but that’s 22 minutes Philadelphia played with what would be well-below league-worst defense. Granted the HEAT’s halfcourt offense only produced 86.4 points-per-play – an issue to discuss another day, but an ongoing issue nonetheless – in part because they only shot 9-of-36 (25 percent) from three, but with transition attacks and 15 offensive rebounds, Miami scored at a rate (115.2 per 100) above their season average. The defense, as predicted, was an issue.

The 76ers needed their offense to win the race. They needed Harden to be great. The HEAT held up a rather polite sign that read, ‘No, Sir. Not Today.’

In Houston, Harden shouldered a massive offensive load. His usage rate – which defines the percent of your team’s possessions that you shoot, draw a foul or commit a turnover – during his MVP 2017-18 season was 36.1 percent. By the next season, it spiked to 40.5 as Harden attempted nearly 25 shots a night on his way to 36 points a game in 2018-19. And that’s not even accounting for his assists, of which there were many. The Rockets were the No. 1 and No. 2 offense in those two seasons. Harden carried the weight and ran a marathon with it.

Also on those teams, in all those practices and shootaround and workouts, was P.J. Tucker. That’s who Erik Spoelstra asked to pick up Harden full court from the very first possession on Monday night, hounding the former MVP every step of the way despite turning 37-years old on May 5.

“He’s been on the same team as James, so he knows his tendencies better than anybody else on our team,” said Bam Adebayo, who allowed just 0.57 points-per-screen in the pick-and-roll and was otherwise casually dominant against a depleted frontline. “It just shows the sacrifice that he’s willing to give up. Picking up 94 feet is not easy in the NBA, especially playing 30 minutes a game. It’s just the utmost respect for him.”

With a considered and disciplined scheme behind him, Tucker led the way toward Harden taking just 13 shots (for 16 points) and posting a usage rate of 26.3 – which would have tied for a season-low during Harden’s 2017-18. The playmaking, with five turnovers to five assists, didn't compensate for the relatively low volume. When Embiid was off the court during the regular season, Harden’s usage jumped to 36 percent. This wasn’t that.

“They need him to be James Harden,” Tucker said. “It is my job to try to make it tough, but he is going to score and he is going to take shots and be aggressive, and I am just going to try to make it tough.”

For an idea of just how committed Tucker was to not giving Harden airspace, look where he’s standing, the way he’s angled relative to the ball, on this possession with Harden 20 feet away from just about anything.

The scheme in question wasn’t all that different from what they did to Trae Young in the first round when Young had what was effectively the worst five-game stretch of his career. In that series Miami took what they typically do in crowding the gaps on either side of the ball and dialed it up another degree, constantly showing Young three bodies no matter what matchup he may have sought on a switch. As a result, Young rarely got going downhill, his drives diminished, and his shot profile reduced largely to off-the-dribble threes.

With the added component of Tucker’s wet-blanket pressure and full-court physicality, the look against Harden was largely the same. No matter how many screens he used or which defender wound up on him after the dust settled, he rarely looked up and saw one body. He saw a formation. One anchor, two wingers. A pentagram of deterrence.

“They did a really good job of showing their bodies, crowding the ball,” Harden said.

“We want him to take difficult shots,” Adebayo said, agreeing to the comparison of the scheme for Young. “We don’t want him to get easy looks and get going.”

Of Harden’s 13 shots, seven were from three. All of them above-the-break. He did get downhill a few times, because unlike the more finesse-focused Young he’s more accustomed to creating and playing through contact. It was not, by any measure, dominant.

Part of the reason for the scheme working so well against Atlanta was that while the Hawks had plenty of shooters who could take advantage of Young’s on-ball gravity, they didn’t have nearly as many attackers. The 76ers have Tyrese Maxey.

Take this possession, for example. Harden draws the extra attention. As he swings it to Maxey, Maxey doesn’t wait a beat to allow the defense to regain its shape. He’s off to the races, darting right down the crease that opens for a split-second and closes just as quickly.

Or look at this transition possession, where Tucker and the defense are loaded up on Harden and Maxey attacks the space liberated by all that tilted attention.

Maxey isn’t a problem that will go away, but his attacks were a price worth paying. Those plays were too few and far between as the 76ers finished with an Offensive Rating of 97.9 – making the HEAT the only team other than Toronto (twice) to hold Philadelphia below 100 points per 100 possessions since the Harden trade. Harden had 67 touches and the 76ers scored 0.72 points-per on any possession where he put his hands on the ball, down from 1.07 during the regular season.

Matters certainly weren’t helped by Philadelphia shooting 6-of-34 from three – Miami was only 9-of-36 themselves, but that’s a nine-point difference in a 14-point game – as Harden, a genius-level passer, often made the right read only to watch a teammate miss. A component of that is the 76ers having a three-point Shot Quality that would have ranked No. 30, by a decent margin, during the regular season, so it’s not as if the HEAT were giving up a ton of open looks. Still, they aren’t going to shoot quite so miserably all series. A few more makes might grease the wheels and give Harden a little more breathing room.

“I think shot making is what opens the floor for our entire team,” Harden said. “We make a couple of shots and that opens it up even more.”

Harden will always be able to get to his stepback. Adebayo may contest it better than others, but if that’s the shot Harden wants that’s the shot he’s going to get. The same as it was with Trae Young and his 30 footers. Some are going to fall. At the right moments, they can even win you a game. They just aren’t going to sustain your offense for 48 minutes.

Other words, if Harden figuring it out translates to the same shots falling that might be something Miami can live with. The concern is only if Harden finds a true, consistent exploit – something Young wasn’t able to do.

“He's a great player and a great mind,” Spoelstra said. “He’ll also go through his own adjustments. It’s not like we’re surprising him on anything. He’s literally seen every single coverage. He doesn’t get sick at sea. It’s not like you can speed him up, you can’t rattle him.”

Maybe we’re thinking about this all wrong. Maybe the 76ers don’t need flashback Harden while Embiid is out. Maybe the version of him who embraces the true point-guard role, as he’s done since being traded to Brooklyn last season, can absorb Miami’s scheme and create a sustainable offense for his teammates. Maybe Houston Harden isn’t the goal.

Maybe. The HEAT, turning the screws from the jump, appear to be betting otherwise.

the-turn-of-the-screw-behind-p-j-tuckers-all-court-pressure-miamis-james-harden-defense-gets-in-formation

The Turn Of The Screw: Behind P.J. Tucker's All-Court Pressure, Miami's James Harden Defense Gets In Formation

James Harden didn’t play against the Miami HEAT in a Philadelphia 76ers uniform this season. Joel Embiid is out for Games 1 and 2 with a right orbital fracture, and it’s unknown whether he’ll be able to play in this series.

Those are the two most important things to know going in, elementary as it sounds. While injuries may leave the status of significant players in flux, the HEAT were never going to face a 76ers team that they have played before. Philadelphia only played a healthy HEAT team once this season, for that matter, but Miami didn’t acquire a former MVP at the trade deadline. They’re much more of a known quantity.

Philadelphia hasn’t just been good when Harden and Embiid were together, they were on an entirely different statistical level of dominance. Over 21 games, 603 minutes and 1,214 possessions, the 76ers posted an Offensive Rating of 124.1 and Defensive Rating of 108.4 when their two stars were on the court, good for a Net Rating of +15.8 per 100 possessions. For context, the 73-9 Golden State Warriors were a +10.6 per 100 in 2015-16. Granted, 21 games isn’t a full season and there were some lighter opponents mixed into that stretch, but great is great and those numbers for the two-man grouping translated nearly decimal for decimal to their first-round series against the Toronto Raptors.

At the very least, all indicators were that Miami was preparing for a team with a legitimate shot at winning the title. On a competitive level, they were looking forward to it.

“We want Joel to play,” Jimmy Butler said. “We want to go up against them at full strength and prove that we can hang with anybody and can beat anybody.”

For now, the 76ers won’t be full strength.  They should, in theory, play very differently. With their star center playing, they’re an elite defense that keeps teams away from the rim and working in the mid-range. Without him – or Andre Drummond, sent to Brooklyn in the Harden trade – they’re well below average (allowing 117.8 points per 100). The offense holds up because Harden is an offense unto his own. Harden’s usage with Embiid on the floor was merely 21.1 percent, hardly star-level as Harden often played a true point-guard, playmaking role. When Embiid sat, that usage rate spiked to 36 percent – exactly how often he controlled the ball during his MVP, 65-win 2017-18 season with Houston.

Can we think of this iteration of Philadelphia as something close to Harden’s run with Houston? While tempting, it’s probably not a fair comparison. The 76ers, like Miami’s first-round opponent, isn’t lacking in shooters. But also like Atlanta, they aren’t quite replete with defensive-minded shooters who can hold up on a switch. There are some options in that vein, but not to the degree of a Rockets team that was designed from the ground up to switch absolutely everything – having P.J. Tucker helped there – while surrounding Harden with space. Those Rockets also had a guy who just helped lead the Phoenix Suns to the No. 1 overall seed in Chris Paul. Pretty good, that guy.

Still, they may have to try and play that way. The guess would be that either DeAndre Jordan or Paul Reed starts at center – Reed got all the backup minute in the Toronto series – and tries to fill the Clint Capela role diving to the rim. Paul Millsap is an option, too, but he hasn’t been in the rotation. The defense held up reasonably well when rookie Charles Bassey played, but he only played 168 minutes all year. 76ers coach Doc Rivers was extremely frugal with running Tobias Harris at center – who could theoretically unlock a switch-heavy lineup – using it for just 132 possessions with that look allowing 124.8 points per 100 possessions. In Danny Green and Matisse Thybulle, Philadelphia does have defensive-minded wings who could be asked to switch.

As far as the numbers go, there aren’t a ton of great defensive options. Philadelphia was one of the slowest teams in the league playing through Embiid’s post-ups and isolations. Maybe Rivers, and all we can do is make educated stabs in the dark here, opts to play small, turn the speed dial and make it an offensive race. Miami has the defenders to play at any pace, but their offense – granted this is more of a half-court issue – can get stuck in a rut for four or five minute stretches.

The one player that Houston didn’t really have was someone like Tyrese Maxey. Well, they did have Eric Gordon who would occasionally catch-and-go off a Harden pass like he was shot out of a cannon, but Maxey has taken that skillset and, along with a vastly-improved jumper, made it his identity. It’s one thing to surround an offensive engine with shooters like Atlanta did with Trae Young. It’s another to have a player who can both shoot at a high level and attack the creases of a defense loaded up on Harden before that defense can recover its shape. A Maxey drive was already a highly-valuable proposition, producing 1.09 points-per-drive. When Harden is on the floor, a Maxey drive is worth and absurd 1.36 points-per-drive. Philadelphia has a portal to the paint in ways Atlanta never had.

Without Embiid’s gravity pulling defenders into the paint or wherever else he happens to be standing, is Miami going to try and defend Harden the same way that it did Young? For a refresher, it looked like this:

This is a tricky one. On one hand, what the HEAT did to Young wasn’t that far from how they usually defend. Miami may be known for being the most switch-heavy team outside of Boston – enabled by Tucker and Adebayo being two of the best switch defenders the league has or will ever see – but the core component of their scheme may be how they play the gaps. They don’t hug shooters and play the pick-and-roll with two players. They defend it with all five, planting bodies on either side of the primary defender to close off all avenues into the paint at the expense of giving up some threes. They’ll show help without helping, waiting for you to make your move. They’re William Wallace’s Army. Hold. Hold. Hold. You just drove the ball into a wooden stake.

They had to extend that style all the way out beyond the arc against Young’s range. The intended effect was the same. Young’s drives were down, he rarely got into the paint and his passes often went side-to-side as opposed to the far more dangerous North-South variety. The HEAT were so effective that Atlanta was 3-of-9 on Young’s lob attempts.

Harden is a little different. He’s bigger than Young, so it’s more difficult to cut off his passing lanes – nobody is LeBron James, but during the NBA Finals two years ago James’ size and vision made it incredibly difficult for the HEAT to help off shooters who, to anyone else, would be two passes away. He’s been around longer and has seen more coverages, which means he’s more familiar with how to manipulate them to his advantage. He’s also one of the best ever at drawing fouls, so if he knows where help is coming from he can use that contact to his advantage. The Maxey release valve is there.

And then there’s this: Harden’s efficiency has slipped. Four years ago he shot 54 percent on twos and 37 percent on threes – a remarkable number given how many of his threes are of the stepback variety. This season he’s at 47 percent from two and 33 percent from three. His true-shooting percentage is comparable, but that’s because true-shooting includes free-throws. His effective field-goal percentage is almost six points lower. Harden remains a genius level passer. Maybe it’s the passes that are the greater concern.

Consider this. As with Maxey, a Harden drive is incredibly valuable at 1.10 points-per-drive. But that number, tracked by Second Spectrum, includes assist opportunities created by the ballhandler. Drives where Harden passes are worth 1.27 points. Drives where he shoots, draws a foul or commits a turnover are worth 1.02 points. But if you take free-throws out of the equation and narrow Harden’s drives down to just shooting or turnovers, then the value drops all the way to 0.84 points-per-drive, No. 54-of-70 players with at least 250 drives this season. The same effect plays out with Harden’s isolation – Embiid doesn’t have the same split with his post-ups – and Philadelphia will surely attempt their fair share of matchup hunting.

If the pass is more dangerous than the shot, do you play it the same way to deter the shot? The key with the numbers we just referenced is that they were all drives, which means the ball went forward into the paint. With how Miami played Young, Young wasn’t driving at all.

However they play it, Miami cannot, by any means, rack up the fouls.

“They have two guys who really know how to draw fouls and do it exceptionally well,” Spoelstra said. “You have to do things with great discipline and great focus, but you don’t want to back off your aggressiveness and it’s that dance that we’ll be wrestling with all series.”

We don’t know how long Embiid is going to be out, so it’s worth touching on how Miami can go about handling the first center to win the scoring title since Shaquille O’Neal (1999-2000). As we went over with Harden, this is a series that’s going to be about the ever-exciting defensive spacing. About when to help, when to fake the help and when to stay home. Thrilling, I know. It’s more fun to talk about individual matchups, about guys going mano-a-mano, who goes at who, who stops who. That’s all good fodder for talk shows. That’s not quite how the HEAT defend, especially not with a center in Embiid who has effectively played his way out of single coverage. Even with Adebayo, the most versatile center defender on the planet, leaving him on an island with Embiid all game hasn’t proven to be a viable option. Even when it looks like two men in an arena, rewind the tape and you’ll notice the halfway help in the gaps limiting Embiid’s angles.

Take these three examples for how Miami has defended the MVP candidate. One with Adebayo defending, one with Max Strus caught on Embiid on a switch, and one with Dewayne Dedmon in the post. Watch the HEAT defenders who aren’t on Embiid.

It used to be that you could double-team Embiid and discombobulate him. As a value proposition, that’s still true. Embiid in the post against single coverage is worth 1.12 points-per-post, per Second Spectrum. When Embiid gets doubled – only Nikola Jokic was doubled more often in the post, and only he and Embiid were doubled more than 150 times this season – it’s worth 0.84 points. Seems obvious, just double team him every time, right? Not quite. There’s selection bias there. The doubles that work work because they catch Embiid off guard or happen with perfect timing when he decks the ball or come late in the shot clock. If you give him a steady diet, he’ll conquer any food group.

“There are no absolutes,” says Spoelstra, not a Sith Lord. “That’s the thing about great players. You can’t do the same thing and say this is going to be it and we’ll live and die with it. Great players will make you die with that. Their spacing has gotten a lot better, and they have more ways to attack it. In this last series they saw every conceivable trap, so I don’t think we’re going to have anything that’s going totally surprise them.”

Spoelstra and his staff are as good as it gets at scheming for an individual offensive force. That doesn’t always mean they’ll come out on top, they’ll just have a good plan. Where it gets tricky is when an opponent has more than one of those players. It warps the defensive spacing, upping the sheer number of details they have to mind minute to minute. On paper, a good counter to a team that switches a ton is a team with multiple players who are comfortable and effective attacking one-on-one matchups.

That’s where the quality and experience of Miami’s defenders come into play. Adebayo may be both the tip of the spear and the foundation of the building on that end, but it’s the free-lancing and creativity of Butler, Lowry and Tucker that doesn’t show up on paper. If Philadelphia gets whole, this becomes a fascinating matchup.

All this time talking about Philadelphia’s offense, what about Miami’s? There isn’t as much to analyze. The 76ers have size to hold up on switches – Harden is still a doorstop of a post defender, there’s no Trae Young to attack in their core group though there are some weak links in the chain – but they aren’t as experienced and tested at it. They play with a center, and that means a lot of drop coverage. When Embiid, who is agile enough to change up coverages, is that center and he’s fully engaged, he can have even the most dedicated paint attackers second-guessing on their forays. When that center isn’t a Defensive Player of the Year candidate, the floor opens up.

Whoever is manning the middle, Miami’s stable of dynamic shooters will be at the forefront. When the HEAT lost to the 76ers in the first round back in 2018 they had capable shooters, but they were mostly catch-and-shoot merchants who relied on the team’s drive-and-kick game. They didn’t have the personnel to consistently take advantage of the pockets of space available after a center set a screen. Now they do. They have Tyler Herro and Kyle Lowry, when he’s available to return from a hamstring injury (out for Game 1), to pull-up off the dribble. There’s a reason Gabe Vincent, more than capable off the bounce, set a then-career high with 26 points back in December. Embiid or not, the 76ers allow – or force, depending on how you look at it – nearly as many pull-up jumpers as the league-leading Utah Jazz. When the offense slows down, those shots should be there. Adebayo will have his choice of mid-range jumpers, though without Embiid around there are fewer reasons to pursue them.

And finally, there’s this. With Embiid, the 76ers are a solid defensive-rebounding team. Without him, they’re well situated in the bottom third of the league. Miami’s focus on second chances has come and gone over the course of the season depending on who was in the rotation, but they’ve proven themselves more than capable of dominating in those margins. Atlanta actually posted a better half-court points-per-play number in Games 2 through 5 of that series. That number doesn’t include offensive rebounds. The HEAT can play Find A Way basketball.

What was clearly set up to be a clash of conflicting styles and schemes has been blurred by injuries. That’s cause for disappointment when it comes to spectacle. There’s only so many great postseason series a franchise can be a part of. The possibility of one is tantalizing and exciting. It’s what you look forward to all season. What we know we’ll get remains high-level competition against a worthy opponent, but part of great is great players being available.

The HEAT shouldn’t care about any of that. Part of proving you can beat anybody is beating anybody, no matter who is on the court. Whoever plays in Game 1 or Game 5, this is about the win. This roster has proven themselves to be about nothing else.

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HEAT vs. 76ers Series Preview: The Houston Harden Quandry, Doubling Joel Embiid, Tyrese Maxey's Straight Lines And How Miami Scores In This Mystery Box Series

Shuaihu Zhong

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HEAT vs. 76ers: Round 2 By The Numbers

P.J. Tucker and Trae Young were just hanging out.

Down the stretch of Game 3, with the Atlanta Hawks having absorbed a 21-0 Miami HEAT run in the third quarter and punched right back in the fourth, Tucker was in his customary spot in the corner. On paper, there wasn’t anything wrong with that. Tucker was a 41 percent shooter in the corners this season – No. 7 in the league with 190 attempts. The corners are his home.

The problem was that Nate McMillan was sending his best player, the one matchup the HEAT had been hunting relentlessly for three games, for a nice, relaxing visit to P.J. Tucker’s House. With the HEAT’s half-court offense stuck in the muck, one of their greater issues throughout the regular season, the primary pressure point in Atlanta’s lineup was lounging around with his feet up.

This is the basketball equivalent of Boat Drinks:

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P.J. Tucker Post-Ups Trae Young Article

With the Hawks protecting their star, Young went on to have his best quarter of a series in which he’s been largely limited. Tucker tried to create openings, running from drunker spot to dunker spot and eventually setting screens for Jimmy Butler, but Atlanta handled it well. Miami’s offense sputtered. The Hawks won.

For Tucker, it wasn’t good enough. He took the experience and laid it out in front of Erik Spoelstra. He wanted a chance to punish the Hawks for hiding Young.

“I told Coach, ‘There’s no way they’re going to disrespect me and put point guards on me.’ I told him that last game when they did it for the whole fourth quarter and I didn’t get a chance at any post-ups.”

“He yelled at me,” Spoelstra said, half-seriously. “I said, ‘Alright, that sounds like a good idea.’”

When the Hawks tried it again Sunday night in a pivotal Game 4, Tucker and Spoelstra were on the same page. With the Hawks clinging to competitive minutes and the HEAT up 13 midway through the third quarter, Miami’s 6-foot-5 do-it-all forward walked Young right to the block and went to work. Dribble. Dribble. Dribble. Hook. It wasn’t elegant. Nothing with Tucker ever is. But neither was Charles Barkley. The ball dropped in and Tucker rewarded himself by lowering his right hand parallel to the ground in the universal gesture for Too Short.

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Tucker And Young Hanging Out

“Today, [Spoelstra] was like, ‘Hey, if you get a guard on you, go get it,’ Tucker said. “I told him you wouldn’t regret it. Coach trusted me.”

“We don’t want [Young] just to be resting on the weakside,” Spoelstra said. “They put him on [Tucker] in the fourth quarter of last game and P.J. this year has proven to be very effective in the post for us. That’s not only as a scorer, he’s been able to do that for us, but also as a great passer, facilitator, decision maker.

Tucker wasn’t supposed to be this good. Not at nearly 37-years old. It had been nearly a decade since he shot over 45 percent from the field. In three of the past four seasons, as he became increasingly synonymous with the corner three, he shot below 40 percent. He scored 2.2 points per game with Milwaukee last season, 4.3 a night during their run to the title. All signs pointed to a player who, while maintaining Corner-Three-And-D expertise, was slowing down in all other aspects of his game.

Turns out it was just a matter of perspective. That may have been how the league saw him. That may have even been how Spoelstra saw him, at first. But Tucker knew there was more to tap into. When Bam Adebayo went down for six weeks with a torn thumb ligament and the HEAT were dealing with health and safety protocols, Spoelstra went to the well.

“That’s one of the ancillary benefits of having all the injuries and COVID stuff in December, January and February,” Spoelstra said. “We had to explore different ways to get a trigger. He was one of those big ones in those months. We just went back to that menu tonight.”

“I think he just has always known about my competitiveness and how hard I play, I don’t think he knew I could actually score sometimes,” Tucker said. “So throughout the season with guys out he’s given me the opportunity to bring it up and direct some plays and put the ball into my hands sometimes.”

The result was possibly the most diverse season of Tucker’s career. He set career-highs in three-point and true-shooting percentages. He made more two-pointers – converting at a 54 percent rate – than he had made in five seasons. As he rolled off screens and made plays in the middle of the floor, he set a career-high in assist rate. He dunked three times after dunking zero times in the previous two seasons.

And he posted up 28 times after posting up just 16 times in the previous four seasons combined. With Miami running their post-split actions, all their shooters cutting and diving off one another as Tucker surveyed for the perfect pass, the HEAT produced 1.26 points-per-post when Tucker had it on the block.

Just like in Game 4, the volume wasn’t huge. Tucker scored on Young just the once – amusingly, he went ahead and posted up De’Andre Hunter, Atlanta’s best defender, on the next possession, scoring on him, too – and 28 post-ups aren’t exactly going to blow the bloody doors off. It’s not a matter of needing it all the time, just knowing that it’s there when the time is right.

The same principle applies to playing Tucker at center. Everyone knew that capability was there. Houston had traded Clint Capela to Atlanta a couple years back with the explicit intention of playing Tucker as the primary five man in a switch-everything lineup. You didn’t have to remind anyone that despite his height, the One-Man Iron Curtain was not a mismatch in the post. Or anywhere else, really. Yet through the first few months of the seasons, including the Adebayo-less December, those lineups weren’t particularly effective. They scored plenty with the spacing they provided, but through the first 200 minutes lineups with Tucker at the five were allowing 120.25 points per 100 possessions.

It was enough to win them a few games during the direst of straits, but it didn’t quite have the punch of a postseason lineup. Spoelstra kept it on the table.

“When we had to do that in those months without Bam, I liked it,” Spoelstra said. “I don’t know what the plus/minus was, but those were valuable, versatile minutes for us. Most importantly we ended up being able to see something different just in case we needed it. We were able to access that now based on need in this series.”

The trend line would steady its way upwards. In the subsequent 206 minutes with Tucker at the five, the Defensive Rating dropped to 112.38 as Miami outscored opponents by 8.9 points per 100 possessions. Like everything else about Tucker’s game that Spoelstra was open to, he knew he had another option should be need it.

In 22 minutes against Atlanta, used in part due to foul trouble for Adebayo, lineups with Tucker at the five are plus-23 with an Offensive Rating of 137.5 and Defensive Rating of 74.4. The efficiency doesn’t matter much in such a small sample. What matters is those lineups, the sort of versatile, change-of-pace lineups that every team with championship aspirations needs, are working. With Tucker able to hold up against Trae Young, having a miserable series by his standards, on the ball and provide relentless and stable help off of it – a topic worth an article on its own – there’s nothing his presence concedes.

“I played a whole season at the five. I love playing the five,” Tucker said.

That much isn’t a surprise. Neither are Tucker’s post-ups, at this point, or his soft, wrist-rolling touch in the paint. The time for surprise was back in December, when Spoelstra discovered Tucker’s multitudes. The time for discovery is over. When Tucker goes to his coach and presents an idea, he already has an answer. If Tucker says he can do it, he’ll do it.

“It’s great to have a coach you can have a dialogue with,” Tucker says.

He may only have posted up a couple of times Sunday night, but that’s what this time of year is all about. One small adjustment, one short conversation, that produces four points over two possession, can be the difference between winning and losing. And Tucker, both too tall and too short when he needs to be, is more than familiar with those margins.

“It’s the playoffs,” Tucker said. “This is it. This is what I live for.”

The only surprise at this point would be if Tucker, after a season of over-delivery, didn’t put his own words into action.

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The Tall And Short Of It: P.J. Tucker Went To Erik Spoelstra With An Idea Before Game 4, And His Coach Listened

Jimmy Butler doesn’t make any sense. Then again, neither did Dwyane Wade.

Six years ago, Wade shot 16 percent from three. Barely even attempted them, really. For a player who took 200-plus threes in three consecutive seasons, he only took 44 in 74 games that season. From December 18 through the end of the regular season, he didn’t make a single one. Teams still defended him at the arc because they knew not to play with fire. Maybe they weren’t surprised when Wade drained two three in the final minutes of a win or go home Game 6 in Charlotte. Everyone else was, especially a man sitting courtside in a purple shirt.

Butler has not been a good three-point shooter in a HEAT uniform. While he’s been better from mid-range than most people think, he just completed his third consecutive regular season below 25 percent on at least 100 attempts behind the arc. In the entire history of the league, only Charles Barkley and Michael Ray Richardson – a four-time All-Star, back when the three-point line was invented in 1980 – have more than two seasons shooting so poorly from three. Nobody has more.

And yet Barkley and Richardson were never good shooters. During his time in Chicago and Minnesota, Butler was league-average. At some point along the way, he just stopped being that. With Butler reluctant to speak on his jumper with much detail, the mystery has lingered. At least with his prior performance, it wasn’t a surprise when he followed up his first Miami season by getting back to average shooting – 35 percent on two attempts, with some massive hits against the Milwaukee Bucks – during the run to the Finals in the Orlando bubble. Weird, but rational.

It’s tougher to say the same about April 19, 2022, after another pair of poor-shooting seasons. Unlike Wade, teams weren’t paying too much attention to Butler at the arc unless he picked up his dribble. In their revenge series last year, the Bucks puts Giannis Antetokounmpo on Butler, went under screens and gave him plenty of shooting cushion. They dared him and he took them up on it, going 4-of-15 in that series. Sure, Butler had an uptick over the last two weeks of this season where he shot 42 percent on three attempts per game, which we discussed at the time, but teams hadn’t yet reacted. He made an early three in Game 1 against Atlanta and the Hawks didn’t budge. They, too, gave him room. Try it, they said.

As he did against Milwaukee, he was more than willing. This time it worked, as Butler drained 4-of-7 behind the arc as part of a grandiose 45-point masterpiece – tying his high in makes over the past two seasons – including the biggest shot of the game with 1:36 left as the Hawks pulled within five after trailing by double digits much of the second half.

If you laughed as that shot went through, nobody could blame you. Sometimes all you can do is laugh, for lack of any rational explanation. But Spoelstra saw Wade do this before. Butler’s performance was no laughing matter.

“It actually is a good comparison,” Spoelstra said of Wade and Butler. “If you get in those pressure moments and those moments of truth, if you’re on the other side would you ever want to just give Dwyane Wade an open three? You would not. Because he’s a killer. He’s going to seize that moment.

“Jimmy has a lot of those same qualities. You could say whatever about the percentages. Throw those all out. When it becomes about winning, he’ll find a way to kill you. You can look at a scouting report, look at numbers, but that’s when he’ll kill you the most.

There are previous examples of this phenomena. Barkley, who might well be the worst volume shooter on record, shot 3-of-4 from deep en route to 56 points to finish a sweep of the Golden State Warriors in the First Round of 1994. A year later he went 4-of-8 for 47 points as Phoenix swept Portland. The aforementioned Michael Ray Richardson’s best playoff game, 32 points against the defending champion Philadelphia 76ers, included 3-of-7 from deep. As part of an incredible comeback with the Los Angeles Clippers involving a 40-15 fourth quarter, Josh Smith, a career 28 percent shooter, went 4-of-7 against the Houston Rocket in 2015. Russell Westbrook, a career 30 percent shooter, has 19 playoff games with three or more made threes in part because he never stopped taking them. Michael Jordan, a 32 percent shooter, famously shrugged off a 6-of-10 showing against Portland in the Finals.

Things like this do happen, but only a time traveler would know when they’re about to.

To the credit of those around Butler, they never wavered. While it came across as something of a running bit this season with Butler’s common refrain about how his teammates keep telling him to shoot more threes, it was a serious bit. His teammates, and coaches, were actually telling him to shoot more threes.

“He’s finally shooting them,” Gabe Vincent said.

“It’s time,” says Kyle Lowry. “We need that spacing.”

“Everybody is just getting on my nerves about shooting more threes, honestly,” Butler said. “My teammates and the coaches have so much confidence in me to score the ball and facilitate the ball and get a stop. I just be out there hooping. I don’t even realize that I’m shooting a three. I just take the shot that the defense gives me. And they’ve been going in as of late. Don’t jinx me though.”

If you’re Atlanta, you might not think much of the distance shots that went in. While two of Butler’s three were well contested, the first and third – using very different forms, as you’ll see, with Butler experimenting with a bit of a set shot over the past few weeks – involved a player either going under a screen or outright backing off.

“He hit some tough shots,” said Trae Young, who had a career-high 10 turnovers in Game 2. “There are shots you can’t guard on both teams. He hit a couple shots tonight that we have to be able to live with.”

If a player with Butler’s percentages had shot that well against Miami, that would be more than acceptable thinking in response. Maybe the correct thinking, too. Because if you’re Atlanta, you’re less concerned about the statistical anomaly – Butler was only 3-of-9 between the restricted area and the arc – and more concerned about his 8-of-9 at the rim and 11-of-12 at the line. With Clint Capela out, Nate McMillan started John Collins – an athlete but not exactly a bonafide rim protector – to help juice the offense. And the offense did look better even if the shooting wasn’t there. The cost was a lack of resistance at the rim. With Bam Adebayo in foul trouble for much of the night, Spoelstra shifted to five-out small-ball with Caleb Martin (who didn't play during the competitive portion of Game 1). In that alignment, if Butler beat his man – or attacked Young in pick-and-roll thanks to Lowry’s timely screens – there was nobody else in the way.

“He has shooters around him,” McMillan said. “Our defense hugs the perimeter and it is giving him opportunities to play one-on-one. Tonight he took advantage of that. He was really good playing, creating and scoring with the space that he had. If you are helping, he will pass the ball and he will give it up to the shooters on the perimeter. Tonight he found a rhythm and he stayed aggressive. We really just did not have an answer for guarding him.”

A few notes on Butler’s overall game. He became the third HEAT player ever to post 45 points, 5 rebounds and 5 assists in a postseason game. Wade and LeBron James each did that one time. Neither of them also did it with zero turnovers, as Butler did (along with zero fouls). It was the 19th 45-5-5 game with zero turnovers in NBA history, regular season or otherwise, and just the second instance of that line in the postseason with only Jamal Murray doing the same in 2020. Butler’s GameScore of 40.1 is topped only by his two virtuoso performances against the Lakers in the 2020 Finals and was the 57th playoff game over 40, according to basketball-reference.com, ever. The only players with three or more postseason games as good as Butler’s three over-40 GameScore are Michael Jordan (seven times), LeBron James (six times), Barkley, Dirk Nowitzki, Shaquille O’Neal and Olajuwon. That’s the list.

Butler won’t do this every night, but the unique thing about Butler is he doesn’t try to do this every night. His 25 field-goal attempts in Game 2 were a career-postseason high. If he came out and scored 18 points on 10 shots to go with 10 assists in Game 3, it wouldn’t even qualify as a surprise. That’s just Butler.

“The next game it might be the free-throw line,” Spoelstra said. “It might be the attacks, it might be playmaking. That’s part of his genius.”

That part of Butler’s game tracks. He’s always been happy to do what Spoelstra asks him to do, whether it’s running the offense or hunting mismatches or taking on a defensive assignment like Young. It might sound like coach speak when Spoelstra describes him as a winner, but that’s just how coaches describe players who will do whatever it takes. That doesn’t always mean they’ll be successful. They’re just willing and able to try and do.

Will Butler keep shooting as he’s been shooting for the past couple weeks? Will he ever repeat 4-of-7 from three? It is folly to think we can know the answer to that. The percentages, the numbers, they would all seem to say no. But numbers don’t speak. They just are. They record what was. Percentages don’t decide, they can only help to inform what could happen. Butler is the type to fly headfirst into an asteroid field. Never tell him the odds.

And as we’re all liable to forget sometimes, 24 percent isn’t the same as zero percent.

Can you count on Butler, the shooter? Maybe, maybe not. But can you count on Butler, the player? The gamer? The winner? That much is undeniable.

Jimmy Butler doesn’t have to make a lot of sense. Greatness often doesn’t.

stop-making-sense-jimmy-butlers-nights-to-remember-arent-always-the-ones-you-see-coming

Stop Making Sense: Jimmy Butler’s Nights To Remember Aren’t Always The Ones You See Coming

The Atlanta Hawks don’t need to be told.

Some teams need a little time to learn how to best deal with Bam Adebayo, which is often to simply not deal with him at all. The Hawks play the HEAT four times a year, every year. They know. Trae Young knows. There’s a reason Young, who was No. 11 in the league this year with 593 total isolations, has only isolated Adebayo 12 times in the past three seasons.

The Miami HEAT don’t need to be told, either.

Some teams still adhere to an antiquated blueprint for how best to deal with Young. They’ll blitz him in pick-and-rolls, putting two on the ball in hopes of getting the ball out of Young’s hands and forcing the other Hawks to make plays. There’s a reason Erik Spoelstra, despite remaining one of the coaches most willing to use the most aggressive coverage, has only blitzed Young four times with Adebayo in the past two seasons.

What we got Sunday in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference First Round was a meeting of two teams that know each other. They may have only had about one night and one day to truly prepare for one another after the Hawks clinched their playoff spot Friday night, but they didn’t need to cram. These two teams have been dancing this dance for some years. There’s a reason Young didn’t isolate Adebayo a single time, nor did Adebayo blitz Young once. Miami knows their best option is their foundation, the switch. Atlanta knows their best option is to try and use that against the HEAT.

The first result was one of the worst games in Trae Young’s career, a 1-of-12, six turnover showing that marked just the third time ever that Young has failed to convert multiple field-goals. According to basketball-reference.com’s GameScore, it was the fourth-worst game of Young’s career. But it wasn’t for lack of trying to do the right thing.