During the regular season, every team forms an identity. There will be injuries, hot streaks, and cold spells, but the main protagonists will always emerge. But in a winner-take-all game, how long can you stay with your main protagonists if the matchup is bad for them?
The Eastern Conference Play-In games will be an exercise in Gravity: Which players can create it, which ones can’t, and how much each coach values it vs. specific matchups.
The Epicenter:
Your gravity on the court is not about your shooting percentage. No team or player will bend their defensive coverage to a player who shoots 40% from three if they only shoot once a game.
Gravity is all about the “fear factor” a shooter invokes in the defense. FF is a mixture of shooting percentage, volume, and form. Those three factors create an equation that produces a shooter's “fear factor.”
The fear factor of a shooter is a direct correlation to the level of “Oh Shit” emotion that goes through a defender's head when he turns to watch the flight of the ball after allowing his man to get a shot off.
The lowest level on the fear factor scale is equivalent to “We’re good; let me start to run the wing so I can get an easy one.” The top level is close to, “I might as well start heading to the bench right now.”
Tonight's Eastern Conference Play-In matchups will feature two teams (Miami and Chicago) with wild swings in the level of gravity they can create on the floor based on what personnel is or isn’t on the court.
Both teams are a nightly experiment in the question: How many players can you have on the floor at once that produce a below-average shooting “fear factor” and still maintain offensive optionality?
For Miami, this question concerns who is on the floor; for Chicago, it centers around which player is at the hub of their offensive wheel.
Bam Adebayo & The Miami Zone:
When playing Philadelphia, everything must be viewed through a Joel Embiid-sized lens. He’s the epicenter of everything they do on both ends of the floor.
Embiid is a fantastic player, but there are still things that teams can do to frustrate him on offense and matchups that are less than ideal for him on defense (especially on a bad wheel).
During the April 4th game, Miami found the sweet spot on both ends of the floor. The only issue is that it involves Bam Adebayo sitting on the bench and Kevin Love being on the court.
The Playoffs (Play-In) are all about the matchups, and Embiid is a bad match-up for Adebayo.
Adebayo must work early on defense to prevent Embiid from catching the ball anywhere inside 18 feet. This is much easier said than done. Adebayo’s edge comes from his speed and quickness, but that doesn’t help when Embiid gets touches at the nail or elbow. Embiid’s size and skill are just too much to overcome.
Embiid ISO vs. Man-to-Man Defense
On offense, Adebayo’s lack of shooting allows Embiid to effectively stay in the paint and rest. This makes Miami’s spacing very compressed and allows Embiid to help on drives without putting Phidelipiha in rotations, which is not good for Miami's offense.
However, with Love on the court and his shooting gravity, Miami created more space to attack, generating help-and-rotation situations that produced quality offense at a high clip.
Adebayo was a -29 during the April 4th game, while Kevin Love was a +25 (it’s only one game, but the film agrees with the numbers here).
Miami’s zone defense allows Love to play without becoming a snack for Embiid. The zone prevents Embiid from getting clean touches with his back to the basket in his preferred spots, like the nail or the elbow. There is no easy entry pass, and if Embiid does get the ball, he is almost immediately swarmed from different directions by defenders with quick hands, creating deflections.
Miami Zone Frustrating Embiid.
The zone is taxing both mentally and physically on Embiid.
(Yes, you could play the zone with Adebayo, which would be effective, but that would still leave the same gravity problem on the offensive end of the floor. Maybe it wouldn’t be as drastic if Miami got stops out of the zone and played possessions vs. a non-set defense.)
Playing with Love instead of Adebayo forces Embiid to guard either a player with a particular shooting proficiency, like Love, or a player with speed, like Highsmith or Jaquez Jr.; both are much more mobile than you would want Embiid covering.
Adebayo vs. Love Offensive Gravity.
Philadelphia eventually went to a zone to prevent Embiid from being stretched too far defensively. This is an advantage for Miami, which is better equipped to handle a zone with its interchangeable parts that move with intelligence and ferocity. They have two of the best “soft spot” finders in Jaquez Jr. and Butler, who set screens, dive to the rim, tip out Orebounds, and are just general pests to the defense!
(Note: Buddy Hield missed four wide-open threes when Miami was in the zone. Every defense gives up something offensively; you can’t cover everything. If Buddy gets it going, it’s lights out for the Miami zone.)
Demar DeRozan & The Chicago Bulls Offense:
DeRozan is the epicenter of Chicago’s offense. His top-line Play Types numbers on Synergy read like an All-NBA player, especially his PnR actions, the epicenter of the modern NBA offense.
According to Synergy, DeRozan has run 620 PnR actions for his own offense. He’s very effective at scoring, ranking in the 91st percentile in the league with 1.068 PPP.
Dig a little bit deeper into the film, eFG%, and shot distribution, and it’s not hard to see the difference between DeRozan and a current All-NBA wing like Paul George.
According to Synergy, George has run 279 PnR actions for his own offense, ranking in the 95th percentile in the league with 1.090 PPP.
Their breakdowns are very similar on the surface. However, the differences that separate them all center around shooting and the concept of gravity.
Creating offensive optionality is all about fear, not so dissimilar to shooting gravity. Everything defense is an exercise of bend but don’t break pressure points: How much can we withstand from this action until we believe it can beat us?
Here’s how the deeper numbers in the PnR actions break down between DeRozan and George:
DeRozan’s high volume of midrange twos in the PnR and lack of shooting from three makes him very predictable in most actions, especially the PnR.
DeRozan has only attempted 16 shots from three in PnR actions this season. This begs the question of why you would ever go “Over” on a PnR action with DeRozan and allow him to get downhill.
The volume of three-point shots limits the offensive optionality he can create in a playoff setting.
No team should go “over” a DeRozan PnR action. Going “under” the screen will compress the defensive shell and make it harder to crack, creating fewer opportunities for DeRozan to get downhill to attack the rim to score for himself or be a playmaker for others.
During the regular season, teams play their habits (GTO), but during the playoffs, it’s all about exploiting matchups and funneling people to their least efficient actions (FEP).
DeRozan vs. White PnR defensive shell spacing (Compressed vs. Stretched)
Tonight could be Coby White's official coming-out party. He is dynamic as a scorer and can create fear in defenses with his shooting, which can lead to offensive optionality for the whole team.
Does White become the center of the Chicago offensive wheel tonight?
Boogie & Maxey:
Alex Caruso can only guard one person; I don’t think it will be Boogie.
Caruso will likely be matched on Murray or Young, which leaves Boogie as Atlanta's best match-up for creaking the defensive shell and generating quality offense. He has a beautiful “feel” when operating in the PnR and consistently makes good reads.
Having two guards on the floor who can be dynamic with the basketball at all times creates exponential optionality within Atlanta’s offense.
Ayo Dosunmu can have a massive impact on this game without scoring a bucket. If Caruso goes with Murray, Dosunmu will be the primary on Atlanta’s secondary ball handler.
Boogie PnRs creating endless offensive optionality.
On April 1st, when Dosunmu had the opportunity to be the primary cover on Boogie, it was not pretty. Boogie finished with 20 points on seven shots! The number of defensive rotations he created was even more impressive, leading to open shots or advantage attacks for Atlanta. He was heavily involved in producing high-quality offense all game for himself and others.
If Dosunmu can slow Boogie down, the Atlanta offense must work much harder to create high-quality shots.
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Maxey's speed is a real problem for Miami, especially in the PnR action.
With Embiid in the game, Miami tried to hedge and show on PnR actions to prevent Maxey from getting a head of steam going downhill. But Maxey was so fast that he got around the coverages and played downhill from an advantage anyway.
When Embiid was out of the game, Miami switched the PnR action in an attempt to slow Maxey’s downhill attacks, but that didn’t work either. Philadelphia hunted specific defender they wanted switched on Maxey, and let him cook.
Eventually, Miami admitted they couldn’t control him with any individual and sent a double at him to take the ball out of his hands. Miami was willing to live with open shots from other players, but it wouldn’t be Maxey who got them.
Maxey Being An Absolute Menace.
Maxey’s speed was too much for every Miami defender. He can be highly combustible and can blow a game wide open with a personal 10-0 run at any point. Controlling Maxey will be vital tonight for Miami.
(Buddy Hield missed a few open threes in this game during these situations when Maxey was being blitzed. I think his shooting will be a swing factor in this game.)
2024 Play-In Game:
Shooting creates offensive optionality and can stress a defense like no other skill on the court can.
All four teams have lineups and offensive options that can create gravity, but those lineups do not include some of their main protagonists.
It’s a one-off game, and anything can happen, but tonight, I’ll watch which Miami center is playing the most and which player is Chicago's offensive tip of the spear in the PnR action.