Nets

Couper Moorhead

The Miami HEAT are 24-20, No. 7 in the Eastern Conference with a Net Rating of +0.1. They just finished up a 3-1 homestand and now head out on the road for three. Here’s what we’ve been noting and noticing.

After Bam Adebayo’s 24-point outing Thursday night against the Milwaukee Bucks – without Giannis Antetokounmpo – I pontificated that it was probably Adebayo’s best-ever game specifically against one of the best, and most extreme scheme-wise, paint protectors in the league. After Lopez’ deep drop played a major role in Milwaukee sweeping the HEAT two seasons ago, a series in which Adebayo averaged 15 points on 45 percent shooting with minimal free-throw attempts, it wasn’t lost on anyone how significant it was for Adebayo to take all the gains he had made as a scorer this season and put them to work.

“I thought he really was intentional throughout the course of the game,” Erik Spoelstra said after the game. “He’s going to have to make some of those in-circle shots against this team based on that specific coverage.

“You also have to read that immediately in the possession, and this is what we’re talking about. He’s really been working on that this year. Not to pre-determine. Just take what’s available and find a way to continue to be aggressive and assertive regardless of what the coverage is. “

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Notebook Vol. 40: Bam vs. Brook

Back to whether or not it was Adebayo’s best game against Lopez. The answer is a clear and obvious yes. That shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. But here’s the thing. It might have also been the best game *anyone* has ever against Lopez while he was wearing a Bucks uniform.

Over the past five seasons, playoffs included, 944 players have hit at least one shot in the paint with Lopez as the closest defender, as those shots are logged by Second Spectrum. Adebayo hit nine of those shots Thursday night, and he’s the only player on the list to do so. The only one.

And then, after a slow start, Adebayo followed that performance up with another five paint makes with Lopez nearby on Saturday, tied for the fifth most ever made against/near - tracking data inevitably assigns all shots to defenders because they were closest, not necessarily because they allowed the shot or contested it - Lopez in a single game.

Sure, Antetokounmpo didn’t play in either contest and the added threat of his length in the paint adds a whole new layer of problems to solve, but this can just be about Adebayo and Lopez for the moment. It’s pretty clear that Adebayo has reach a new level on the offensive end, and even if it hasn’t always translated to consistent offense for the team overall, if Miami meets Milwaukee, or any other drop coverage team, in the postseason, they’re probably better equipped than ever – complete with plenty of ballhandlers and pull-up threats – to attack that style of defense.

Speaking of paint points, something else remarkable happened in the first Milwaukee game. After the final buzzer sounded and all was said and done, the Bucks had taken just three shots in the restricted area. Three. That was the second-lowest total, behind an Oklahoma City Thunder performance in 2019, across the entire league over the past decade. Playoffs included. The official NBA logging even had them with just two restricted area attempts, but to keep things apples-to-apples for historical comparison we’ll go with the three that turn up in Second Spectrum’s tracking data.

Even better, Milwaukee only made one of those three shots at the rim, the actual lowest total since the 2012-13 season, which is as far back as the tracking data goes.

Sure, the Bucks didn’t have Antetokounmpo and were on a back-to-back as they clearly came into the game with a plan to put up as many threes as possible, but plenty of teams have been in far worse spots over the past 10 years. Allowing just three restricted area shots is notable whenever you do it, and it’s a perfect encapsulation of what the HEAT are trying to accomplish with their defensive scheme – protect the rim by keeping the ball out of the paint.

Here’s a play I’ve watched about 50 times and still can’t makes sense of. The Oklahoma City Thunder were pulling ahead in the fourth quarter on Tuesday night. Jimmy Butler was on the bench, and a handful of made jumpers was enough to get the visitors out to a five-point lead. As Miami is bringing the ball up, Victor Oladipo has his pass picked off by Tre Mann, who immediately pushes the other way. It’s a fairly standard 2-on-1 break situation with a trailer. Gabe Vincent gets back, but he’s behind the ball.

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Notebook Vol. 40: OKC Wrong Turn

Normally in that situation you’ll just see the ballhandler go right to the rim against a retreating defender. He may take it all the way in himself, or if the defender commits he might bounce it off to his teammate, or throw up a lob. He may even dump it off to the trailer after drawing the commit, though with Vincent running back. In today’s game, it’s pretty common for this to turn into a pull-up three, too. Given Mann’s game, who had just hit a stepback jumper, that would have been in line with expecations.

But veering parallel to the rim, into the middle of the floor where both Josh Giddy and Vincent are about to run through? That’s not something you see every day. Unless he’s setting it up for a lob, of which there’s no indication here, this cuts off all advantageous angles and essentially renders the break inert.

Chalk it up to youth, and maybe a little healthy fear of Oladipo’s defensive prowess – this was an incredible individual play – but this was a massive turning point. Where the Thunder had a good chance to go up seven, instead they commit a clear-path foul on the turnover and compound the mistake by fouling Vincent on a made three during the resulting possession. In the span of about 10 seconds, the Thunder turned what could have been a three-possession advantage into a one-point deficit.

Sure, the Thunder were still a free throw or two away from winning the game in the final minute, but this is a great example of how just one mistake, one dribble in the wrong direction, can swing a game. With Miami living in the clutch, at least until the recent pair of games against Milwaukee, any possession that changes a game that dramatically is usually the difference between winning and losing. Sometimes you need a little bit of fortune when you’re pushing the elephant uphill.

It’s a HEAT season, which means there have been complaints about the team switching too much. Fair or not – I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve seen comments about a guard ending up on a big that had nothing to do with switching in the first place – the larger conversation often misses the point that choosing not to switch isn’t any more foolproof than switching itself. There’s a cost and benefit to every coverage, and whatever you choose to do you have to do it well if you want any mileage out of it.

Against Brooklyn the other night, the HEAT did not have the luxury of an opponent they could simply run drop coverage against. You have to play up on the likes of Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving – very up, as has often been the case now that Gabe Vincent and Victor Oladipo are back in the rotation as Spoelstra’s pressure options – and against that type of deep threat you really only have one option to avoid the switch, which is to show the weaker defender out and have him recover quick enough to prevent the defense from having to overshift in compensation.

On that note, watch Tyler Herro execute that coverage just about perfectly a few times in the first half.

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Notebook Vol. 40: Tyler Show Defense vs. Nets

Herro is always going to be a target for opposing defenders. His frame isn’t going to suddenly change as if he were stuck in a David Cronenberg body horror movie. There will always be a better option for team’s to chase rather than going after Adebayo or Butler or a number of other strong defenders on this Miami roster. All that said, Herro has made strides on that end. His deflection rate is at a career-high – an incremental improvement, but still the best it has been – his advanced metrics, either Estimated Plus/Minus or 538’s RAPTOR, are also career bests, and it’s all backed up by the eye test which shows a player working hard, staying within the scheme and generally playing with an activity level higher than what it was previously.

Does that all make him a plus defender? No. But every inch closer to average is an improvement, and being able to execute what Spoelstra is asking him to do, which is all geared to put him in a position to succeed anyway whether the team is in man or in zone, is a skill in itself. Avoiding the switch is an art form, too.

Two seasons ago, Gabe Vincent had something of a breakout in a two-game set against the Philadelphia 76ers, scoring his then career-high of 24 in the first matchup and following it up with 21. Those were his only 20-point games that season.

Last season he set his career-high again, this time with 26, against Philadelphia. Two nights later, he topped it with 27 against Orlando. Later in the year, he scored 20 against Chicago, followed by 21 against Milwaukee. And now this season he followed up another career-high, 28 on Thursday, with 27 against the same team.

What do all those teams have in common? They all have big centers and/or play a ton of drop coverage. Joel Embiid. Nikola Vucevic. Wendell Carter Jr. Brook Lopez. If you concede space in the middle of the floor, the best version of Vincent, which is typically the healthy version, is going to gobble up that space like Pac Man.

In the meantime, let’s highlight this Vincent shot where he took on Jrue Holiday, of all people, and put a pure isolation on him. Not typically Vincent’s game, but a great relief sort of relief basket when he can provide it.

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Notebook Vol. 40: Gabe ISO Jrue

“Jrue is a hell of a defender,” Vincent said. “He makes you do things you don’t want to do. I was just trying to get to my spot any way that I could. There was a point where I backed up and he kind of jumped me, and it was similar to a closeout so I had the advantage to attack. He had cut me off, and I had an angle to get a pullup off and it went down for me, thankfully.

-Interesting note from NBA.com’s John Schumann in his notebook this week where, in a discussion about the Clippers’ offense, he looked at the team who take the most jumpers in the league as a percentage of their total field-goal attempts. Miami was not in that Top 5, which consisted of Golden State, Dallas, Milwaukee, Boston and Brooklyn. That was a bit surprising, given how many jumpers it feels like Miami takes, but that specific statistic was only looking at shots outside the paint. If we use Second Spectrum’s Shot Type tagging, Miami jumps up to No. 5, behind Phoenix, Golden State, Milwaukee and Dallas at around 50 jumpers per game. The difference there speaks to how unusual it is that Adebayo shoots so many straight-up jumpers, and they are jumpers, inside the paint where others would likely change up their form to account for distance.

-On a related note, of the Top 10 teams in jumpers taken per 100 possessions, the HEAT currently have the lowest effective field-goal percentage at 48.71 percent.

-Still thinking about the offense, which is increasingly on the mind as the defense stabilizes somewhat, there is a question worth asking about whether or not the HEAT’s struggles are due to a low ceiling or low floor so far. In other words, are they balancing out explosive games with whatever the opposite of explosive is, or are they consistently putting up Offensive Rating’s closer to sub-average? The answer is closer to the latter. No team in the league has fewer games with an Offensive Rating of 120+ than Miami, now with six after hitting that mark on Saturday, but they’ve also done a pretty good job limiting the truly poor performances. The floor is moderate then, in part because they do a good job of supplementing weaker shooting nights by creating turnovers and being opportunistic on the offensive glass (they’re No. 8 in offensive rebounding percentage over the last 15 games).

Nets

Coup's Notebook Vol. 40: Bam And The Beanstalk, Tyler Herro's Incremental Defense, One Wrong Turn And One Gabe Vincent