Tony Parker Lofting This Back Breaker Over Dwyane Wade

For coaches watching this series, and the Spurs in particular, it’s nothing short of Coaches Porn. So many of us have been in a position where we have had teams that were not the most physically talented and had to use brains and guile to compete. That’s exactly what the Spurs have done through five games: at their best, they execute their offense with ruthless efficiency, spacing the Heat defenders out, attacking the seams, and all five players working to create the best shot. At its worst, the Heat rip the ball from their hands and blow right by them for easy baskets. But as we’ve seen countless times in these playoffs, one run can end the ball game, be it early in the 1st half or, as was the case in Game 5, at the end of the third quarter.

This is a difficult series for me to be impartial because we’ve seen enough petulance from the Heat to sour my outlook. It speaks volumes that the games where the Heat are tied are the games they don’t come out with desperate energy to fight and claw for every possession. Meanwhile, the Spurs have gone down swinging even in their blowout losses, because their coach demands it of them. Too often, the teams with talent can simply overwhelm their opponent, skating by on their good looks, and that’s what the Heat’s foundation is built on. There are maybe 2 teams that can actually beat them in a 7 game series, so their standard is pretty freaking high, but from my point of view, they play down to their competition.

Gregg Popovich has built this team on a basis of consistency and execution, and it shows in the way they run their offense. Their default motion set is designed to get the ball to the high post, get a swing pass, and execute pick and rolls with shooters spotting up on the weakside. What Popovich has done over the course of the year is to give his players the framework to excel in a flexible, yet purposeful offense.

LeBron James Ponders His Inability To Dominate Game 5

I do want to point out that I’m singularly impressed with how hard Coach Spoelstra gets his team to play on defense. When they double, scramble, move together on a string, it’s a thing of beauty to behold. But I can’t help but get frustrated watching the Spurs constantly bait them into doubling the ball handler, making the easy pass and eviscerating the rest of the defense with supreme ball movement. The Heat have no other gear on defense, and while it’s incredible to watch when it works, it’s an either/or defense: Either they get the steal, or they give up a dunk or a wide open 3.

The Heat’s brand of basketball may very well win the championship again this year. And it will serve to teach us that teams can have success turning it on whenever they want to, coasting the rest of the time on their talent alone. And that is a frustrating thing, since there is a whole level of team play the Heat could and should aspire to. If they could ever get there, it would be a sight to behold. The Spurs have already shown us how.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the ball, the Spurs turned it over 19 times. While it may seem like the succumbed to the pressure of the incredibly aggressive Miami Heat defense, this is not entirely true. Only 7 of the 19 turnovers were forced due to the defense, while the remaining miscues were the Spurs being uncharacteristically careless with the ball.

Throw in some bizarre matchups like 7’0″ Tiago Splitter beginning the game on Wade when Heat coach Erik Spoelstra started Mike Miller in place of Haslem, and this game was hard to pin down. Chris Andersen, a fixture in the Heat rotation til now, did not even get in the game while Shane Battier – a fixture on the bench recently – played 9 minutes. Splitter, disjointed from uneven minutes, only played 14 minutes.

What this series comes down to is Game 5. In a 2-2 NBA Finals, the winner of Game 5 has won the title 21 of 27 times. As this is an outdated 2-3-2 format (instituted back when teams stuffed themselves in commercial planes), the Spurs get this deciding game at home. Outside shooting is a fleeting thing, something you cannot rely on. I say this even though I’m on record as saying Neal and Green will continue to light up the scoreboard if they continue to get so many open looks in rhythm. That said, these two guys are on a hot streak, and LeBron and Wade still need to prove that they’ll continue to hit from out there.

The one thing the Spurs can control is the dumb mental mistakes and unforced turnovers. Of their 11 unforced turnovers, had they eliminated 5 of them (remember: 2 of them were from lost jump balls and another from a truly awful offensive foul), Game 4 would have been a completely different game. For the Spurs to win Game 5, they must keep their turnovers under 14, and do their best not to get burned by too many live ball turnovers.

One thing is for sure, this series has already had some gripping Finals moments, with several players shrinking and growing under the limelight. Tony Parker’s hamstring did not appear to affect him that much, and with an extra days’ rest, he should be good to go. The only questions now are which Wade will show up and can the Spurs just hang onto the ball. Either way, we’re in for a treat.

With the way the Spurs run their offense – great ball movement, pressure release hitting the Roll Man, there will be moments where the Spurs will eviscerate the over gambling Heat defense. This is precisely what happened in Game 3, as Danny Green and Gary Neal took advantage of the Heat’s scramble mode on defense and good great shots. The question kept being asked afterwards: Can they possibly continue shooting this way. The answer is yes, if they get open looks like they did. The Spurs were masterful in setting good screen and rolls and forcing the Heat defense to rotate a third defender over from the weakside.

More After The Breakdown

The biggest kryptonite the Heat defense has is the Roll Man, and the Spurs have refined their offense to utilize this play to perfection. Like we said in our preview of this series, this is Erik Spoelstra’s worst nightmare. Throw in the fact that their offense is disjointed, lacks rhythm, and refuse to run enough plays that put LeBron in the best position to score, and the Heat are on the precipice of losing this series.

The Spurs tactic in Game 3 was to give LeBron as much space as possible on the perimeter and dare him to shoot. And shoot he did, to the tune of a dreadful 7-21 from the field. Throw in a modest night from Chris Bosh and ineffectual one from Dwyane Wade and you have a 36 point blowout.

Through the first 3 games, neither team’s Big 3 has played very well. In this context, what determined the outcome of these games thus far are the role players. And I think this reflects more on the coaching and their respective systems that anything else. This is proof that Popovich is a better coach and has a better system that his role players have been able to flourish while players like Tim Duncan and Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker have struggled mightily. Make no mistake: the fundamentals and foundation a coach instills in his team are designed to get the maximum production from the role players. The stars are good enough to produce no matter what system you create. But it’s the floor spacing and ball movement hat Popovich has mastered that generates great shots for Kawhi Leonard, Danny Green, Gary Neal, Matt Bonner and the rest of the non Big 3 Spurs. While they don’t have an offensive system as structured as the triangle, their called sets maximize their potential as a team, and their basic rules on spacing and cutting has them playing what we’ve termed Coach’s Porn.

Contrast that with the Heat’s foundation on both sides of the ball, and you’ll see why it’s clear the Spurs are up 2-1. The Heat’s defense routinely gets out of position to pressure the ball as much as possible. This works against inexperienced teams with poor ball handlers and bad offensive systems, i.e. 20 teams in the league. They have decided that they will out-athlete and out-talent everyone and make no mistake, it has worked all very well the last three years. However, there will always be a team or two that will adjust to this kind of pressure and utilize their ball movement (the pass always travels faster than a person) to generate good shots. The Heat have no other way to play, and I am amazed how Erik Spoelstra has gotten his team to exert so much energy on that end of the court. However, so much of it is wasted as the Spurs continue to use that pressure against them and get great shots.

The offense is an even bigger issue as we’ve been tracking their play calling through the first 3 games. One note: trying to mesh three talents like Chris Bosh, Dwyane Wade, and LeBron James into an offense is no easy task and Erik Spoelstra has spent three years trying to come up with something that works. This year, the media seized on what they started running as the solution: A Five Out set that has Chris Bosh screening whomever has the ball and the other four players spaced along the perimeter. All throughout the playoffs, I would see them use this as their default set, spreading out the defense and asking one player to generate a shot for either himself or someone else. This is almost the exact opposite of what the Spurs do, and it’s asking quite a lot of LeBron James to create a shot for himself, against a top defense who has had 2 days to prepare. This offensive set is built for tumult of the regular season, against inferior opponents who are in the midst of 3 games in 4 nights. This offensive set is designed to take advantage of less talented teams that don’t have solid defensive fundamentals in place. This offensive set is designed for the first 3 quarters, before fatigue sets in and defenses buckle down to shut down driving lanes.

And LeBron James has been shrinking under the weight of the Heat’s offensive principles. I don’t blame him for feeling the weight of the world’s shoulders when the ball doesn’t get swing, has at least 2 players stationary throughout the entire possession, and a second defender shadowing him behind the impossibly long arms of Kawhi Leonard. And it isn’t like the Heat haven’t noticed this as well. In Game 2, they created myriad openings for him by having him screen the ball – a wonderful way to confuse the Spurs defense – they weren’t sure who to stick to and the Heat took advantage in their blow out. But like we said in our Game 2 breakdown, the Heat have shown a remarkable propensity for NOT running plays that work in consecutive games. They can’t seem to stick to a winning game plan and it’s what I’ve taken to calling coaching criminality. Before the game completely got out of hand, LeBron was involved in that ball screen exactly three times in 55 halfcourt possessions. He was involved in posting up a mere five times. But they ran 5 Out seven times. The offense has been completely schizophrenic – running a play 3 times in a row in the first quarter, then never running it the rest of the game. This falls on the coaching staff since they have control over what sets the Heat offense run in the half court, and if they don’t, they should.

Greg Popovich has drilled his players in the art of creating shots for teammates, and they play with the joy of setting each other up. The Heat are the opposite, yelling at their teammates over mistakes and taking on the world individually. This could be a subconscious reason why the Heat engender so much hate. Make no mistake, if Erik Spoelstra has installed an offensive system similar to what the Spurs run, and let’s face it, it’s more a mindset on how to play the game, no one would beat the Heat – not even the aliens from Space Jam. This is why it’s coaching criminality: they’ve had 3 seasons to mesh these supreme talents, and they still haven’t been able to get these guys to truly play like a team. They’ve had absolutely tremendous success – 3 straight finals appearances and one title (so far) is almost unparalleled in the history of the NBA. But they’re selling themselves short, and I truly hope they do figure it out so we can be entertained by transcendent basketball. It’s quite possible that no coach could take these personalities and talents and create what the vision I have in my head of what their potential can be. But I can still hope.

LeBron James Thwarts Tiago Splitter’s Dreams

The Heat unveiled some other offensive sets they hadn’t shown as far back as the Conference Finals vs the Indiana Pacers. While simple, they were very effective. The first was having LeBron or Wade dribble to the corner and then get a screen while the other 3 Heat players spaced on the weakside. The other play was a screen and roll, notable because LeBron James was setting the ball screen at the elbow of the foul line. The Spurs had no answer for this simple set, and it was the primary fuel during their game ending run.

Now that these two teams are heading back to San Antonio for three straight games, this next round of adjustments will be crucial. Popovich has to be thinking that Manu Ginobili could not possibly play worse than he did, mishandling the ball on no fewer than 12 possessions. And Tim Duncan was also surprisingly ineffective down low on the block. The Heat’s defense was particularly aggressive with Tony Parker, and he got no benefit of the doubt on any of that physicality.

The Heat will surely need more production from Dwyane Wade, who still looks a step slow on half his shots, and most of his defensive possessions. There is more cause to rejoice in South Beach because Chris Bosh awoke from his rebounding doldrums to snare 10 of them. Since 1985, 11 of the 12 series that were tied 1-1 were decided by the winner of Game 3. There’s no reason to think this series won’t follow that pattern, so it is crucial that adjustments be made. If I had to put money, knowing that this as much Spoelstra vs Popovich as it is Parker vs LeBron, I’ll have to choose the Spurs.

Follow Arun and Coach Nick on Twitter.

There was plenty of intrigue in this first game of the 2013 NBA Finals, and both the Miami Heat and San Antonio Spurs gave us a game for the ages. Kawhi Leonard, in his first Finals appearance, battled LeBron James and foul trouble and more than held his own. While LeBron got a triple double, it wasn’t the kind of dominating performance the Heat needed to win this game. As expected, LeBron guarded Tony Parker the last 3 minutes and the results were a bit mixed. Of the six offensive possessions LeBron started on Parker, the Spurs scored 7 points. However, the Spurs were able to get a switch on almost every possession and on one of them, Dwyane Wade picked up Parker to start. On the crucial drive by Duncan that got the Spurs two free throws, Popovich buried Parker deep in the right corner, pulling LeBron away from the play. Ironically, it was LeBron who came over to help on Duncan that committed the foul.

This series is dependent on adjustments, and that means looking to the coaching match up. Erik Spoelstra has shown an unwillingness to adjust on defense, trusting that his foundation of gambling and hyper aggression will wear his opponent out. There has been evidence that they will change their play calling, but that tends to be in tiny increments, as evidenced by continued reliance on running 5 Out.

Looking at the tables below, you’ll see the Heat ran their LeBron flash to the Free Throw line only once the entire game, and this borders on Coaching Criminality. This play involves their three best players, putting a tremendous amount of pressure on the Spurs defense. It is hard to fathom why the Heat ran this set only once, and I expect to see it more often in Game 2.

Gregg Popovich Controlling The Game

Gregg Popovich, on the other hand, has built a flexible offense designed to take advantage of that very pressure the Heat bring, exploiting the roll man option out of their pick and rolls. Defensively, he has to be ecstatic with the job Kawhi Leonard did on LeBron, containing him and forcing two bad mistakes by him down the stretch.

Losing the first game of the NBA Finals is nothing new to the Heat, as the Thunder came out and beat them last season. However, these Spurs are a whole different team compared to the inexperienced Thunder. They are tested veterans who have gone through the pain and humiliation of early exits from the playoffs. They’re on their last run, and won’t give up this opportunity lightly. The Heat were only a few plays from winning this game, so Game 2 becomes pivotal for them. There is no way to measure the pressure on their shoulders, as the Spurs can play care free having already achieved their goal of stealing one of the first two games.

We charted the Spurs three-point shooting against the Grizzlies in the visualization below. On the first tab you can see shooting by a player. We see that Danny Green takes most of his attempts from the wing areas, Matt Bonner from the top & Kawhi Leonard from the corners. With the ball in their hands, Tony Parker & Manu Ginobili attempt three’s from all over the court.

From the second tab (team) we see that Green, Bonner and Leonard produce the most damage for the Spurs. Most of the attempts came from the wing areas (37) although the Spurs made only a few (13) of these attempts.

One way of taking these statistics further is by looking into some of the shots that Bonner, Green & Leonard take. Most of Leonard’s attempts to be in the corner/wing areas off penetration or PnR rotations.

The story is a little different when it comes to Green and Bonner. From watching film, it’s highly likely that the Spurs are running specific plays to generate open three-pointers for Green and Bonner.

Green mostly sits on the wings for drive & kick shots but they also run misdirection plays (often very early in 4th) where Parker/Ginobili drives to baseline and passes to Green who slides from wing to corner on the weakside. The key here is that Duncan sets a back screen on Green’s man who watches the drive. Note that Duncan seems to often be setting back screens. Turn your back on Green at your own risk. SVG says this is “hammer action.”

With Bonner the Spurs seem to run specific plays for him when he enters off the bench. In addition to sitting him on the wing in PnR, he’s often involved in double high-PnR’s w Parker & Splitter. There’s one set where Bonner starts under the hoop. In the other he’s in line w Splitter so that they can both set picks for Parker. W Splitter diving into paint & Parker coming over two screens, Bonner usually gets a wide open shot.

It should be interesting to see how the Miami Heat defend the Spurs. The Heat like to use their length and athleticism to trap the PnR. The risk of trapping is that one mistake or slow rotation will likely lead to an open three-point shot. Another concern should be that the Heat will think they can rotate and chase the Spurs all over the court. This can leave the Heat susceptible to back screens that Spurs definitely utilize.

Unlike the Pacers, the Spurs have both better shooters and much better creators in Parker and Ginobili. But by watching the film, and recognizing the plays they run for Bonner and Parker, the Heat can have a better chance of eliminating a few open three-point attempts.

Follow Arun and Coach Nick on Twitter

The Pacers, meanwhile, went away from what worked so well in Game 2: The high screen and roll for Roy Hibbert. Taking advantage of the Heat’s aggressiveness defending the pick and roll by doubling the ball handler, a weakness is allowing a pass to the roll man. With Roy Hibbert getting into the lane with the ball in Game 2, the Pacers created highly efficient shots time and again. However, under the pressure of the Heat defense, the Pacers were pushed higher up the floor, Hibbert screened the ball less and their offense was rendered ineffective.

If LeBron James continues to post up, the Pacers will have to double team the ball or suffer the consequences of easy baskets all around the court. That said, it is unclear if Coach Spoelstra has settled on play calling that benefits the Heat the most. He has shown a surprisingly willingness to go away from successful sets for long stretches at a time. At this point in the season, it should be very clear which sets work with each player, and simple execution creates success. This is something the Spurs have mastered, and it’s precisely why they’re sitting at home resting and waiting.

Our breakdown focuses primarily on the damage Hibbert is able to inflict and how the Pacers are getting him the ball. In particular, the Pacers are using Hibbert in the high PnR. Even though Hibbert is not very mobile he has a good chance of getting the ball since the Heat aggressively trap the passer.

With Hibbert’s defender trapping the dribbler, the Heat end up with a small player rotating over to Hibbert. If Hibbert is able to catch the ball, & locate the rotating defender, he’s able to score with his size advantage. And if Hibbert misses, there’s a good chance that he, or another Pacer, can get an offensive rebound.

The Heat can counteract this play in several ways including going under the screen, switching, trapping Hibbert more quickly or playing with another center like Chris Anderson. We see that the Pacers are also getting Hibbert the ball in the post and, in general, trying to exploit mismatches at the center and power forward positions. It seems like the Pacers are attacking with Hibbert or West whenever Bosh is guarding Hibbert or Battier is guarding West.

The Heat are somewhat reluctant to play two traditional big men to neutralize size problems against Hibbert and West. It’s likely the Heat prefer to play small & hope that their speed advantage overcomes their lack of height.

Check out our breakdown & postgame chat-

Heat Pacers PostGame Chat

Follow Arun and Coach Nick on Twitter

LeBron On His Way To Scoring Winning Layup

The Heat’s offense was a curious mix of different sets, HORNS being the most popular. But against a physical, no middle defense like the Pacers, it was difficult for LeBron James to get in a rhythm. Add to that 20 turnovers, and we had a rough game filled with lots of basketball squirting around from one player to the next.

The Pacers should be encouraged that they did everything they needed to do to win this game on the road, save for some awful defense by Paul George on the final play. Having Roy Hibbert in the game for the final possession is something Pacers Coach Frank Vogel has pledged to do, but based on his success rate in Game 1 – it was not clear at all that he would’ve had an impact on LeBron’s game winning layup.

The LeBron post up game that was so effective and celebrated last year has been reduced to face up 20 footers and unless they can go back to running more post plays through him, they will struggle to overcome tough defenses. While the Pacers should find some amount of confidence having given the defending champs all they could handle in Game 1, this series won’t last long if the Pacers can’t find a way to hide their bench.

Coach Nick on Sportscenter Tonight

If you like what you hear, tweet @espnradio and let them know!