The Hornets pull out all their tricks in Game 5
Charlotte has taken three straight from the reeling Heat mostly because its defense has held Miami to a pitiful 89 points per 100 possessions over the past three games.
Miami was never going to keep up the fiery pace it established during its first two wins, when point guard Goran Dragic was canning step-back 3s and rookie Justise Winslow, getting damn near the Tony Allen treatment, drained some long jumpers. The Heat just don’t have enough shooting when any three of Dragic, Dwyane Wade, Luol Deng and Winslow are on the floor, and things get tight when only two of them are out there.
Scoring is hard work for the Heat, even when they make it look easy. The Heat have to the run the floor hard and pluck the low-hanging fruit of transition points. In the halfcourt, any smart opposing defense will clog the paint to snuff out Miami’s first option; on bad nights, the Heat have to drive-and-kick their way through options two, three and four to scrounge a clean look. When they’re a little weary, as they appeared in Game 4, they won’t score enough to win.
Charlotte has cleaned up some of the errors it made in Games 1 and 2, adjusted to Miami’s weirdo baseline cutting, and played with manic intensity. Down by a point with about 1 minute, 40 seconds left in Game 5, Charlotte put together one of the best defensive possessions of the playoffs — all five guys zipping around the floor to contain the fallout from a Wade-Josh Richardson pick-and-roll, nailing every rotation clean until Richardson had to barf up a long contested triple. It was the sort of defensive possession you practice and drill all season to have in your bag when it counts.
But all that focused effort wouldn’t have mattered as much had the Hornets not gradually found ways to poke at Miami’s pick-and-roll defense, centered on the gigantic Hassan Whiteside. Miami’s game plan from the outset of Game 1 was clear: chase Kemba Walker, Jeremy Lin and Nicolas Batum over screens closely enough so that Whiteside could hang in the paint — guarding the rim like basketball’s Cerberus.
It worked in Game 1. Richardson is a monster on the ball, and Dragic played some of the best defense of his life, clinging to Walker’s hip so that Walker didn’t have enough airspace to pull up for jumpers in the territory Whiteside surrendered.
But starting in Game 2, the Hornets found workable ways around Whiteside. Instead of shooting, Walker used the midrange area to bounce pocket pounces to Cody Zeller:
Walker and Lin put their heads down and simply drove at Whiteside. If he was going to drop back and give them a head start, then dammit, they were going to take it. They got into Whiteside’s body. Lin did that little Steve Nash trick, driving all the way down one side of the lane, skittering underneath the hoop, and popping out the other. Dragic and Nash used to call that “midgeting” when they were teammates in Phoenix, and it can cause chaos.
The other three defenders might watch the ball, opening up a window for some canny cutter to slice backdoor. The tactic often draws switches, with Whiteside shifting onto Lin or Walker, a mismatch both Hornets — and especially Lin — have exploited at times.
On some possessions, Walker and Lin would bait Whiteside by faking toward a pick, getting him to lean that way. and then bolting away from the pick — and into a race to the rim with Whiteside.
None of this turned Charlotte into the Warriors, but it connected with enough jabs to wobble Miami during Games 3 and 4.
The Heat adjusted last night, nudging Whiteside a step or two higher on the floor on the pick-and-roll, into the area between the foul line and the 3-point arc. Sometimes he even trapped Charlotte’s point guards. The idea was obvious: Corral Walker and Lin further from the hoop, make them pick up their dribble and bank on everyone helping appropriately behind the play just in case.
The Hornets eventually wriggled ways around that strategy, too. Walker split traps, or slipped passes through them to Zeller and Al Jefferson rolling free toward the rim. They also got creative, including on a crucial out-of-timeout play that immediately became one of my favorite possessions of these playoffs — and emblematic of the razor-thin margin between winning and losing:
Oh, baby. The Hornets know by now that Whiteside is going to creep up high against the pick-and-roll. They lure him out with a Walker/Zeller job, and Walker sells it as the main threat by taking a couple of hard dribbles at Whiteside — sending him backpedaling deep inside the paint.
But that Walker/Zeller pick-and-roll is a decoy, designed only to shove Whiteside away from the main action: the pindown screen Zeller sets for Marvin Williams. If that hits flush, the Heat, with Whiteside hopelessly below the action, have no real means to contest Williams’s shot — unless Richardson, on Walker, makes a borderline psychic-level read and lunges toward Williams.
Zeller nails Deng with his left hip, and it looks like Williams will have a wide-open look at the rim. But holy hell, does Deng fight and fight and fight, squeezing around Zeller and reaching his left arm close enough toward Williams’ shooting window that it probably bothered him. Williams made the shot anyway.
That is a great shot. The Hornets made a bunch of insanely tough 3-pointers during crunch time in the tiny pockets of space they opened by keeping Whiteside off-balance. The Heat defended most of the plays well. The shots went in anyway. Sometimes they do. Sometimes you lose.
The Heat lost last night. They’ll have new tricks ready for Game 6. Buckle up.
