Original title: Deep review of the two battles of the Green Army Heat: the peak showdown of the tactical game staged again in the East
In-depth review of the Green Army Heat: the peak of the tactical game once again staged in the East
This article will combine the two games, mainly from the layout of the Heat joint defense, the difference between the Green Army and last season's cracking of the joint defense, and the advantages and disadvantages of the joint defense when facing different teams, the adjustment of the Heat's defensive strategy in the second game, and the Celtics' defensive hidden dangers to analyze:
First, let's take a look at a high-quality joint defense breaking method that the Green Army used the most in the first battle.
Looking at the picture above, in the first game, the best way for the Celtics to break the joint defense was by Tatum standing at the free throw line, and this round is a very good example.
As mentioned in the last issue of the author's article analyzing the Heat United, a major feature of the Heat United Defense is that when the opponent's outside player holds or receives the ball outside the three-point line, a defender on the upper line will stand outside the three-point line to defend. Conversely, when the player does not receive the ball, he will retract to the 2-3 defense line position within the three-point line.
As a result, in many Heat positional warfare defensive positions, they will position their defense inside the three-point line in a diamond-shaped, similar to a 1-and-4 position. Or like in the picture above, the joint defense position on the original side of the upper line is vacated, that is, one of the "2" in 2-3, and one corner of the lower line (Lowry's position in the picture) is slightly raised to achieve defensive characteristics.
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So let's look at this picture, Tatum's standing intention is very obvious. But we all know that traditional defensive positions usually allow a center who can shoot to stand at the free throw line to punish the opponent. The Greens chose to use Tatum at the free-throw line more in order to make better use of its mobility.
It can be seen that once Tatum is at the free throw line, due to the vacuum here, Strus on the left needs to be recycled a little to swipe the card, and Adebayo is forced to defend Tatum, while Lowry on the right needs to take care of Horford. Therefore, at this time, the Celtics formed 3 points of opportunity through this position:
The first is that Tatum can use his shot speed to make a direct dry jumper, which is what Horford lacks when facing defense in this position.
The second was Strus's assist, which produced a 3-point chance with a 45° Gwee on the left.
The third is that Lowry needs to move sideways to cover Horford's area, at which point Horford gets a three-point shot and a big and small misplacement opportunity.
Looking at this round again, although facing the first layer of tactics, the Heat successfully disassembled through Adebayo's uplift, Lowry's recovery, Hilo's complement and weak pinch shot.
But when Tatum pulled back from the free throw line and went outside, the right 45° had a very good three-point chance. Lowry then needs to move from the bottom corner to the upper line to cover the defense again, and Adebayo needs to retract from the free throw line to the bottom right corner to cover Horford. Obviously, for Lowry, a veteran, and his defensive coverage, this bottom-corner three-point opportunity was created.
Then the whole offense mainly uses two points, one is the mobility brought by breaking the tradition of standing Tatum at the free throw line, of course, which also has the characteristics of Horford's exaggerated three-point accuracy compared to other centers who can shoot the free throw line. The other is the 5 outside positions formed by the Green Army at this time, as shown in the picture, which poses a huge threat to the Heat in the first battle with a burst of hands.
Let's look at another example and notice the off-ball moves of Tatum and Horford in the round above:
When Tatum moves to the left of the free throw line, the ball side is also on the left side; Horford moved up, which caused the entire Heat's defense to shift to the left and up with these projectiles (Lowry and Adebayo couldn't have let go of these shooting points in order to secure the joint defense formation).
As you can see, although Vincent is in line with what we just said, it is strictly implemented when the upper line of Smart in the defensive no-ball stage is recycled to the 2-3 upper line in advance. But because Lowry, who was supposed to swipe on the right side of the lower line, was taken away by Tatum after moving left after standing at the free throw line, and Adebayo, who was off the line, was also taken away by Horford, Smart got a good breakthrough opportunity in the 2-3 defense.
In the end, he caused a foul by virtue of his size.
In addition, the Celtics also appeared many times in the first game of Tatum standing on the free throw line + Horford standing on the line, which also played a good role, see the picture above:
This is a very typical example. When Smart and Horford were on the line at the same time, the bottom right corner of Horford's habit of squatting became Gwei. Smart picked up the ball from outside the three-point line, Highsmith again single-arrowed to defend, and Tatum moved to the free-throw line. Note that Tatum is off the ball at this point, but his threat in this block requires both Strus and Adebayor on the right to shrink at the same time, so Horford's outside chances are easily created.
So in fact, there are two more reasons for this round: the first reason is that Tatum's competitive state in the first game has indeed reached the intensity of the Heat's high tightness, individual defense + assistance at any time; The other is that the Heat have a lot of room for improvement in the first time they face such a process, such as Strus's position selection at this time. There is no need to shrink so much before Tatum receives the ball.
Therefore, not only did Tatum stand at the free throw line become the main tone for the Celtics to break 2-3, but Horford's method of standing on the line we also saw several times in the first game, and then look at a wonderful offense:
In the image above, the Heat are using a classic 1-2-2 to 2-3 defensive change. But Horford stood 45° and fired a shot into the inside line, directly disrupting the entire Heat's defense. The Green Army then passed Brown's free-throw line and two 45° passes to the weak defense, eventually creating confusion in the Heat joint defense and a three-point opportunity in the bottom corner.
This is a core 2-3 break method for the Celtics in the opening game against the Heat, and we need to pay special attention to the lineup at this time:
Tatum + Horford + Smart + Gwi + Brown/Brogdon are all lineups that can be deployed at any time to deal with defense and have very strong shooting ability.
And when the game entered the transition section, especially after Cornet was on the field, due to the decline in projection ability compared to this lineup, the Green Army used another strategy to crack the joint defense. But in comparison, the success rate and efficiency are low:
Let's take a look at the shot given above, which is the main offensive and defensive method of the Celtics when Cornet is on the floor:
That's right, when this lineup faces 2-3, the Green Army's way of breaking the joint defense is very simple, mainly with Cornet playing 1/5 after he is promoted. For example, in this round, after Cornet covered for Brogdon, Brogdon forced the inside, and the Heat's defensive focus was still on the rim and rebound protection. Therefore, the first point is to pinch the attack frame and go down, and give Brogdon the opportunity to throw.
The same is true for this round. The Heat had a regular 2-3 joint defense position, and Kornet went up to Tatum to block the breakout on the left side. However, it can be found that at this time, the space for forcible breakthroughs on the left side is very small, and the advantages of the containment of such external forcible killings in traditional joint defense are reflected.
Therefore, compared to the richness of Horford's breaking defense when he was on the floor mentioned above; After Horford's departure, even in the Green Army's explosive opening game, its 2-3 against the Heat had varying degrees of offensive stagnation and simplicity. At this stage, the Green Army's offense is mainly based on this type of No. 5 blocking, and a few outside transmissions after three shots.
And this was also made by the Heat in the second battle against the Green Army:
Let's combine the two rounds given above, and the lineup on the Green Army at this time is the configuration of White + Brogdon + Cornet + Gwi + Brown:
Obviously, in this shot, the Green Army is also trying to make some changes, no longer just throwing three-pointers on the outside or calling Kornet's ball blocking, especially in the context of the overall outside three-point feeling of the game. One of the most commonly used is the strategy used in both rounds to create breakthrough space for the ball carrier through rapid dodge cover.
The purpose is simple, let Cornet do a ball block after lifting, it will appear that the intention is too obvious when attacking a joint defense such as the Heat, and the breakthrough path of the ball carrier is better identified. And the use of fast dodge cover is the advantage of not closing the door in a hurry, and at least breaking through the first layer of defense after being forced to change defenses.
But from the diagram we can also see:
Although White had a chance to break through in the first round, he found Dydmon's interior defense when trying to connect the left turn to wipe the basket, and was forced to shoot head-on.
In the second round, we were able to see more clearly some of the problems that the Celtics would have in breaking the defense when Cornet was on the floor. The Green Army here adopted a strategy of playing 45° after a bottom-corner Brog Denti made a quick dodge cover. But obviously, because Cornet doesn't have the ability to shoot, the Heat's entire defensive rotation is much shorter than when facing Horford mentioned above. Adebayo's entire traverse in this defense was only from under the basket to the bottom corner, and then back to the basket with the breakthrough. And not the previous forced uplift.
In fact, we also have traces of this kind of dodge cover:
In the first game, Tatum crossed with Smart after covering through a dodge in the first quarter, and the two switched defensive positions, thus successfully allowing the Heat to make a mistake in the joint defense. Note that there is also Cornet's lineup at this time, but similarly, while the Green Army wants to do the same in the second battle, the Heat have also refined this.
Although in World War II, Cornet performed very well on the defensive end, and handled many delays or changes of defense well. But also on the offensive end, the Heat also managed to seize its weaknesses to target defense, which is a high-level offensive and defensive confrontation.
Let's take this complete offensive and defensive example for analysis, and then systematically talk about the special joint defense of the Heat and the cracking method of the Green Army:
First of all, as we mentioned above, the remaining four Heat maintain a 2-3 joint defense position within the three-point line and close relatively close (which is also related to the Green Army's overall poor three-point feeling). At the same time, the upper line of the 2-3 joint defense vacates Highsmith's position, and once the ball is transferred or within the three-point line, it instantly forms a 2-3.
The Green Army here is essentially a simple Brogdon ball-carrying force, and a strong breakthrough in the middle. We can see that Hiro did not close the door excessively, and the author believes that here should be Spot's advice to minimize this kind of operation that requires increasing the defensive range when Hiro is not strong defensively, and look at his own people.
And we pay attention to Cornet in the lower left corner, the overall cooperation of the Green Army here is still very fine, while Brogdon breaks through, it makes a fixed back cover in the bottom corner to create three-point opportunities for the corner. This also gives another option after the breakthrough attracts contraction, which is one of the obvious improvements of the Green Army this year.
So in fact, in the first game, when Cornet was present, the Celtics also handed over some beautiful ways to break the 2-3 defense, let's look at the picture above:
It can be seen that although this ball seems to be a routine for the upper line of the ball carrier from the first layer of tactics, it is not like this, and the core of the tactic is still hitting the level of the Tatum free-throw line. When Cornet went online to block the demolition, Brogdon chose to immediately split the side to catch this weak ring of 45°.
And Cornet's subordination at this time can at least ensure that Adebayo stays in the box and does not do too many sweeps. The benefit was that the Heat were forced to contract by 45° after the separation, Cornet controlled the Adebayo defensive area downward, and finally gave Tatum a relatively comfortable chance to catch and shoot in front of the free throw line. But we can also realize that the ultimate landing of such goals is still Tatum's personal attacking touch, and the poor basic feel of the second game has led to some similar attempts that do not work well.
Therefore, after the system has to parse the feedback of the Celtics' offensive defense and the Heat's defense according to the different lineups in the first game, we can obviously come to a relatively specific conclusion:
The Heat's joint defense change is mainly composed of 1-2-2 to 2-3, and in the absence of Butler in the first game, you can often see the moment when Hiro is on the line, and the overall defense quality is not high at this time. At the same time, when facing the Celtics' two lineups with interior personnel rotation as the core:
When Horford leads, the Green Army uses Tatum or Brogdon or Brown to stand at the free throw line, Horford can be in the bottom corner, can be on the line, the Heat face the Celtics' such 4 outside 1 free throw line offensive position, the joint defense feedback is not good, the three-point appearance is "defenseless".
But when facing Cornet, who lacks a certain projection ability, the Heat's joint defensive advantage is reflected, due to the shortened vertical distance of the defensive rotation of the downline players, resulting in a more stable overall defense.
As a result, this led to a change in the Heat's defensive strategy that was very evident in World War II:
When Horford played (mostly with the starting five and core substitutes), the Heat no longer used joint defense, but targeted people + changed every cover; When Cornet is on the field, a 2-3 combination is used.
This is one of the most important defensive changes for the Heat in Game 2, and throughout Game 2 and compared to Game 1, almost all of the game was combined for most of the game. The Heat's joint defense time in this battle was greatly shortened, even if this was in the context of the qualitative enhancement of the on-line defense after Butler's return:
The Heat's intention is very simple, from the perspective of pinching the Celtics by three points, it is natural to ensure a certain degree of containment of the Celtics' terrorist attack due to the three-point firepower through a large number of defense changes. In particular, we know that many of Celtic's offensive tactics this season are based on passing.
So in this, let's look at the above two shots, the Heat basically implements two pinch strike principles under the basic strategy of staring at people + changing defense: the first pinch is the pinch shot at the free throw line position, which is the norm used by the Heat in joint defense. For example, in Figure 1, when Tatum breaks through with the ball, Adeba's date on the upper side immediately provides a pinch near the free throw line to force him to get the ball. In this case, the defensive rotation on the line depends on the individual defensive motivation and coverage of the pinch executing player.
The second pinch is a pinch strike that breaks through to the depths, which is a conventional means of protecting the inner line, let's go to the picture above:
When the Celtics use this type of upper line to attract defensive attention, they are immediately interspersed with a curly offense. In the face of the impact of the inside, the Heat chose to resolutely contract, and we should pay attention to the fact that due to the matching, Adebayo is often the player who must let go of Horford to protect the inside.
And that's one of the things that makes the Heat defense very interesting: they don't want to defend the joint defense against Horford, making it difficult to rotate the entire defense, especially if Horford is on the line mentioned above. But again, in a staring defense, they will be forced to let go of Horford.
Therefore, to sum it up, the Heat can accept Horford's individual three-point ability goals, but cannot accept easy opportunities for other players in regional defense due to Horford's three-point containment. And this was also briefly vividly reflected in this game:
This is the middle of the second quarter, and we can see from the chart that the Heat have adopted a 2-3 joint defense position here. Horford crouched in the bottom right corner, while Smart got a very easy three-point shooting at 45°.
So if we dissect the lineup comparison before and after this time period, the Green Army has just made the Horford for Cornet adjustment, and the Heat have continued to hold on for 3 rounds of joint defense after Horford played. But he was easily hit two three-pointers at 45°, which was perhaps the only time the Heat used the Heat during his time on the floor, and was immediately responded.
As a result, when refined into the Heat's staring defense, the two sides present a situation where the Celtics made 45 three-point shots, but the overall shooting percentage has dropped a lot. This has to do with the Heat's defensive strategy change, as well as the cold after they've been playing high-quality three-pointers for many consecutive games.
Tatum was not in good form for the individual game, and the Heat also focused on pinching it, especially when the defense was misaligned. And in this case, Jaylen Brown's personal strong killing ability, core strength and lower breakthrough center of gravity reflect the advantage.
Adebayo's sideways cover hit the Green Army's defensive weakness:
In these past two games, the most surprising thing about the Heat is that their offense has not "dragged down". Even with the 10,000 arrows of the Green Army in the first game, the Heat still maintained a good offensive level to maintain the suspense of the game. And among them, the Heat's offensive means hit the soft underbelly of the Green Army:
Let's look at the two shots given by the author above, two consecutive games that make the Green Army very big is that the sideways cover led by Adebayo cannot be cracked, which gives the Celtics a great headache:
We can find that as early as last season's regular season, when Duncan Robinson still had a lot of playing time, the proportion of hand-to-hand hands at the top of the arc in the Heat's offense was very high, and there were a large number of pitchers taking over and using cover to move directly from one step. In these two games, once Adebayo used this kind of sideways block after handing over, the Celtics were very ineffective in grabbing this kind of cover.
This is also related to the quality of Adebayo's blocking and the breadth of the body. But we can see that whenever the Celtics can't grab this kind of cover when defending on the first line, they will fall into a defensive situation where they are forced to change defenses and chase back behind them. At this point, whether it is the first picture, Smart is forced to lift up to do a swipe on the breakthrough path, resulting in a three-point opportunity in the bottom corner exposed; Or in the second figure, there is a problem with the frame due to the lack of a guard hand on the inner line.
Including in many of the ball-blocking launches, we can notice that Adebayo has a larger lateral area and amplitude than other blockers in the league, which makes it more difficult for the Celtics to grab cover.
As shown in the previous image, Brogdon failed to grab it in time and chased him back. Although Horford raised to block the frontal defensive path, Butler's comfortable offensive area near the free throw line forced Smart to shrink to a certain extent, which also led to the reason why Smart's defensive position at his feet was not stable when the ball returned to Lowry.
Therefore, in these two games, Adebayo's sideways cover became a problem that the Celtics had been unable to properly solve, which caused it a headache. Throughout the two games, the Heat had a lot of tactics caused by or related to this sideways cover, mainly capturing the Celtics' weakness in grabbing this cover, which brought about a chain reaction. If the two wings come to assist the defense, then the corner three points will be exposed; If the defense is not coordinated, then the Green Army's current lack of Luo Wei caused by the lack of interior frame manpower will be exposed; Plus some arc-top three-point shots that use this cover.
These form the main theme of the Heat's offense, and Butler's return provides hard solutions and key ball handling when the team is stuck in a scoring drought.
The last-minute handling of both sides condenses the entire portrayal of the second battle:
As you can see, the Heat constantly have to catch the ball carrier on the upper line in the final moments, and constantly pile up the basket when facing the breakthrough of the attacking frame. Such a two-end blocking strategy on the upper and lower lines allowed them to expose the bottom corner and three points. The Celtics scored in the final moments mainly through 3 ways, the first was a pass ball + Horford opportunity after the break; The second is forcibly withstanding the killing of multiple people; The third is to anticipate the Heat's pinch hit, raise the hand at the moment of the start, causing a foul.
It's the same with the Heat, Adebayo's sideways block makes the Celtics very uncomfortable, which ensures the entire offense line and chassis, and most offensive starting starts are all unfolded. Butler's final defensive two-point attack became the key to the final blow.
Although the current rankings of the two teams and the team's recent situation seem to be worlds apart, the Celtics are in first place in the East and are surging; The Heat, plagued by personnel fluctuations and injuries, ranked 9th. However, the familiarity of both sides, the excellent coaching team, and the correctness of the team's overall tactical execution all made this 2 consecutive mini-series in a short period of time extremely exciting.