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Spurs not repeating 2013 mistakes
Stronger transition defense, adjustments in pick-and-roll situations paying off
Updated: June 11, 2014, 2:49 PM ET
By Tom Haberstroh | ESPN Insider
Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE/Getty ImagesDefensive changes on LeBron James and Dwyane Wade, above, have been crucial for the Spurs.
We're here again.
The San Antonio Spurs blew out the Miami Heat in Game 3 of the NBA Finals to go up 2-1 in the series. Sound familiar? You might recall that this is exactly how it played out in the 2013 Finals between these two teams. So this is a rematch from last year in every possible way, right?
Wrong.
Yes, on the surface, it looks like the 2014 Finals is playing out just like it did in 2013. The cast of characters hasn't changed much, and the sequencing is identical. Last year the Spurs took Game 1, dropped Game 2 and then routed the Heat in Game 3.
But this is not déjà vu all over again. Peel back the top layer, and this series looks a whole lot different than it did last season. This is the rematch that never was. For starters, the Spurs have home-court advantage this time around, and the traditional 2-3-2 format in the Finals is no longer. Normally, the team with home-court advantage has two opportunities at the end of the series to close out at home. But the Finals format has changed to a 2-2-1-1-1 setup, altering the dynamic a bit.
But beyond the format, there are plenty of reasons why 2014 is not 2013. Here are three of them.
1. The Spurs are actually guarding LeBron James and Dwyane Wade
In the first three games of the 2013 series, the Spurs subscribed to a different, more conservative game plan than what we're seeing now. They famously packed the paint and dared James and Wade to shoot from the perimeter. In pick-and-rolls, the Spurs' big men camped out in the paint and let the ball handler's man fight through the pick almost every time; there was virtually no switching at all. In fact, after watching the 65 plays designated as pick-and-rolls from James or Wade on Synergy Sports, only nine showed hard switches from the Spurs' defense. Just nine over three games.
In Game 3 alone Tuesday night, the Spurs switched 10 times in 13 pick-and-rolls involving James or Wade as the ball handler. That's more than they did in Games 1-3 combined last year. Overall, there have been 31 pick-and-roll plays according to Synergy Sports tracking (less than half of last year's total over the same stretch), and the Spurs switched on 14 of them. Put another way, the Spurs are switching almost every other pick-and-roll involving James or Wade.
Soobum Im/USA TODAY SportsBoris Diaw started in place of Tiago Splitter in Game 3 to better match up with Miami's spread-oriented system.
This is a complete departure from what we saw in 2013. Spurs coach Gregg Popovich was asked about this blueprint before Game 3 and he said, in a rare moment of transparency, the Spurs wouldn't switch everything but admitted that "switching is part of the game plan." What this probably means is that the Spurs are making sure James and Wade don't see daylight. It also indicates that Popovich is empowering his versatility with Boris Diaw starting at the 4 instead of Tiago Splitter. As ESPN Insider David Thorpe pointed out on Twitter, the Spurs are employing the "guard the nearest guy" strategy rather than guarding nobody, as they did last year.
We knew Popovich would have something up his sleeve to catch the Heat off guard, and it appears that this is the wrench he's throwing into the Heat's machine. Keep an eye on whether this trend continues for Game 4. Popovich isn't shy about making counters on top of counters, and the Heat surely won't be slow to react.
2. The Spurs are winning the pace battle
The Spurs love to play fast and get out in the open floor. Taking a page out of the "Seven Seconds or Less" offense that Mike D'Antoni popularized in Phoenix, this strategy allows the Spurs to attack before the defense gets set. So far in this series, they've won the pace battle, averaging 88.0 possessions every 48 minutes. This is considerably higher than what we saw in the first three games last year (84.9 pace factor).
The Spurs are pulling it off by playing spectacular transition defense. It's uncanny how good San Antonio is when the Heat have been in the open court. Over the last two games, the Spurs have coughed up the ball 24 times. How many points have the Heat scored off those 24 turnovers? Eleven. That's it.
For the series, the Spurs have given up just 39 points on 47 turnovers. This is almost impossible to do against the opportunistic Heat. Turnovers typically lead to a fiery death when James and Wade are involved. On average during the regular season, the Heat scored 1.2 points on every turnover they forced, which means that the Spurs' transition defense has shaved 17 points off of what we might expect given their number of miscues. That's huge.
And this isn't just a case of the Spurs' limiting their live-ball turnovers, which tend to be more rewarding than dead-ball turnovers. Actually, the percentage of Spurs turnovers that are live-ball turnovers in this series (59 percent) is higher than we normally see against the Heat (53 percent). Bottom line: The Spurs have done a fantastic job of damage control. They are winning, and winning on their terms.
3. Mike Miller's absence and the Heat's rotten point guard play
There's little explanation for Mario Chalmers' dumpster fire of a Finals. He has three times as many turnovers (nine) as made baskets (three) in this series. He has made one 3-pointer and leads the team with 12 fouls despite playing just 70 minutes. In fact, he has negative player efficiency in this series so far (minus-0.5 PER). This is the Shakespearean tragedy genre of small-sample-size theater.
The point guard position wasn't a strength in last year's Finals, but at least Chalmers had his moments. He had monster games in the Heat's Game 2 (19 points) and Game 6 (20 points) victories, but his play has been so destructive thus far that it seems like he's playing through an injury. All in all, Chalmers posted a 7.3 PER in last year's Finals (15 is average, mind you), which would be considered a dream scenario at this point.
The thing is, there's no sign that Chalmers can play his way out of it. He's been in this funk for a while now, having not scored in double-digits in more than a month. He's shot 37.5 percent over his last 12 games, and you have to wonder how much longer they can keep trotting out a point guard on the floor considering Cole hasn't been much better. In this series, Cole has a 0.6 PER. Hey, at least it's positive.
The Heat have gone without a point guard on the floor for 11.8 percent of the overall minutes in this series, which is almost identical to last year's rate of 11.1 percent. But the difference lies in the results. Last year, the Heat outscored opponents by seven points in 38 minutes without a point guard on the floor, but they haven't enjoyed that success at all this time around (minus-9 in 17 minutes).
This is where not having Mike Miller can hurt. It's not at the 3-point line, where Rashard Lewis has as many perimeter makes in Games 1-3 (nine) as Miller did last year. The issue is that the Heat don't have another ball handler like Miller to help buoy Miami's non-point-guard lineups. The Heat can try to play Allen in that role, but that puts extra pressure on James to play point guard and defend Tony Parker on the other end. That's taxing for James, even if we put his cramping issues aside. Erik Spoelstra better find some reliable point guard play or James -- and in turn, the Heat -- might run out of gas.
Thanks for posting.
Interesting. Thanks for posting.
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