The Celtics and Heat's G1 is like a long-distance run, and the Green Army is definitely faster and more talented athletes, but they are often led into the corner. The Heat, on the other hand, were the more focused ones, using 48 minutes of steady steps, unhurriedly stalemated, and then overtook to win the game.
The Twin Towers and Lowe Question
In the opening game, both sides defensively stared, the Heat, Butler and Tatum, the first stars of both sides met directly, Vincent went to stare Brown, this group of opponents Heat slightly pressured, so their people will be more contracted.
At the same time, the Heat's choice is space point to space point, Love to the guy, so that Adebayo can recycle the protection box, I think Spall did not open the joint defense, mainly want to try the shooting style of the Green Army up, by the way to see what the Heat's several links that may be named can be supported without joint defense.
What's more interesting on the Celtics' side is that they are constantly changing Butler's counterpart, from Tatum to Smart to Horford, some of which are Butler's blocking points (Smart), and some of which are given by the Celtics themselves (Horford).
In their twin towers, Lowe nailed the No. 5 position to Adebayo, because Miami has too many hands and blocks with Love, the Celtics must have a more flexible interior to deal with various changes, and no matter what the lineup, Adebayo and Zeller are almost the only points where the Heat can't shoot, so Horford can only take on some difficult matches, such as Butler.
There is an essential difference between such a twin towers and the defensive influence of the second round, because Adebayo is much more threatening than Tucker near the paint area, and as long as Lowe assists in the defense a little, Adebayo will be able to steal behind him, and Adebayo in G1 has hardly wasted this finish.
This also exposes another thing, that some of the misalignment that the Green Army gave the Heat was too easy, such as Brown switching to Defense Love and Horford to Vincent, and the Celtics needed to come up with some of the attitude of squeezing cover when chasing Harden in the second round, starting with Brown.
However, in addition to assisting the defense after being taken out, there is more than one problem surrounding Lowe in this game.
He was choked by Adebayo this time, because Lowe has always been a player who assists the defense much larger than the single defense, the Heat often advance with the ball in the semi-conversion, and then hang a cover such as Dunroe behind him, with Lowe's foot speed, the position can not keep up with Adebayo's movements, and the advance is more difficult to reach.
But in this late period against Zeller, there is no pressure on the single defense, Lowe handed over a good defensive performance, and the subsequent Green Army may have to arrange Lowe's time more carefully.
Another difficulty, what defense does the Green Army use to deal with various ball-carrying shots during the time period in Lowe Single Tower?
This touches on why Mazura put Pritchard's rotation ahead of Gwe. Because the Green Army is equivalent to self-lowering height, and let Tatum stand in the fourth position, and Pritchard on the offensive end does not handle the ball, he still does the work of squatting in the bottom corner, which is no different from Gwe, the only explanation is that in the face of the Heat's Vincent-Lowry-Dunroe lineup, Mazura wants Lowe to sink and needs a more flexible player who squeezes better cover, maintains the flexibility of the four points on the court, and covers the shooting gap that Lowe sinks out.
Although, the second section doesn't follow this design at all.
When the players of Lowry came up and the Heat put on the cliché of joint defense, I went back to what I said at the beginning--- the Celtics often inexplicably yaw on the long run, first Tatum against Dunroe - not to give, and then broke through from Lowry's side, the ball was very hasty and handled in the hands of the guard.
Adebayo with Lowry, Vincent, Dunro and Martin, the Green Army has such a low success rate in almost every point with the advantage of ball carrying ability and size, and was used by the Heat to counterattack to Lowe sink, Lowry's shooting, making the transition section an almost even attack, the Green Army series should not be able to accept the Heat's lineup, safely through the rotation.
In the third quarter, when Rowe Single Tower, Mazura came with another magic stroke, Adebayo was present, and it was no problem to take Horford down first, but with Brogdon, the single tower lineup actually used Lowe to go to the right three rounds of Love.
Then Adebayo did these things in misalignment--- eating Tatum a 2+1, counterattacking Brown with assists, and missing a millimeter basket, which kept pumping fresh air to the Heat.
This has to remind people of a sentence--- the playoffs are a stage for fighting details, and compared to the Heat, this Celtics is really too rough.
Unlimited change of defense, in the end it is good or not
Another problem with this green army is how to use unlimited defense.
Throughout the game, the Green Army had three defensive periods of relatively online time.
In the first paragraph, it was with the lineup of Horford-Tatum-Brown-Brogdon-Smart, and played a small wave of climax in the first half of unlimited defense, but at that time, the Heat did not put Adebayo, could not form a pattern that echoed inside and outside, and the quality of cover for Butler was not enough, so Horford and Tatum could safely hold one at the three-point line.
In the second paragraph, early in the fourth quarter, Lowe faced Zeller and Pritchard faced Lowry, which covered up Lowe's single defense problem, and Pritchard finally began to play some of the aforementioned squeeze cover.
In the third paragraph, it is still the lineup that changes defenses indefinitely, this time although the Heat have Butler + Adebayo, but the Green Army is patient, so they gave Brogdon a single defense of Butler, and approached the score with high-quality offense.
Two of the three periods of time are related to infinite defense, but this does not mean that taking out the defense change is the master key to solving the problem at any time.
The final pause came back, the Heat took the initiative to find Adebayo to block and dismantle, at this time the Green Army's change of defense is more troublesome, they don't want Horford to really change to Butler, so Adebayo's advantage in the inside is too great, so they can only walk and retreat, or choose to pinch in some rounds, but here it feels that the Green Army as a whole has not recovered from the previous round, especially Smart gave up the bottom corner to pinch Butler's ball, always feeling that he transformed Butler's ability to shoot the ball at key moments into Embiid ......
So, the conclusion is that the timing of the change of defense is either to avoid Adebayo or to resolutely pinch him, and conversely, with the Heat's current three-point response ability, the pinching of Butler needs to be cautious.
Team god costume and detail maniac ---Butler
The Heat threw a lot of goals today that could shake the will of the Celtics, especially Strus. Theoretically, he was either Jaylen or Otter in that position, but he still snatched a three-point shot each through single and double blocks in this gap.
The Heat team is sometimes so magical, I said in the preview--- the Heat have a group of shooters who can do things in small spaces, so when they are happy, these goals, the Celtics have to recognize, they can't put these points specifically defensive, because once they want to pinch these points, it may evolve into Lowe and Tatum stuck together, under the basket and at the three-point line at the same time.
But in addition to these scores, many of the Heat's high shooting percentage came from Butler's unmarked increase, compared to the first round of the big bag, the second round of tandem priority, in the first game of the Eastern Conference finals, he came up with a different form - detail maniac and team amplifier.
In the first half, he spent two quarters identifying these four things: first, Smart and Tatum are not easy to deal with, and it is better to circle the two of them by name; Second, Brown and Horford, the effect of blocking and removing here is not good, the Green Army will directly change the defense, but playing Lowe is different, Lowe is slow and often has a bad position; Third, although the difficulty of the roll call varies, Brogdon and White are essentially substitutes for Pritchard; Fourth, the Green Army is very sensitive to his name to go inside, and often can help the defense.
After that, most of Butler's game logic revolved around these four points.
In the third quarter, the 61-71 round began, Butler rushed at Horford, attracted Lowe to assist the defense, and Adebayo took a chance.
76-78, it was he who broke through Smart again, watched Lowe jump to assist the defense, delivered to Adebayo, and burst into a basket to get three points---I'll give you a chance, can't score I help you finish."
86-82, point to White again, this time Butler and Horford fought hard, he came in, Horford made up defense, he got up, Horford hurried back to Adebayo, so Butler took advantage of the throw.
95-89, squeezing Pritchard's position, Horford really couldn't help but assist, Butler played with Brogdon again, he jumped up, waited for Brogdon to make an inward move, and then assisted Martin.
The fourth quarter, for Butler, is just repeating the formula of the third quarter--- try to name names, there are clip shots, not clip their own handling, it sounds simple, but Butler can handle the details of each attack well, very exaggerated.
By the way, Butler has two good habits, first, after most of his own near-frame shots, he will consciously rush to the front board; Second, his entry from the weak side is perfect, he almost sees every time Tatum's attention cuts in the moment of the ball carrier, and he can even help his teammates in the bottom corner to get stuck at the same time, a veritable team increase.
So there is a comment that suits Butler--- his strength is not in the data panel, but in the fact that he has been playing the right basketball.
Perhaps this is also the contrast between Butler and Tatum, who is the first star of the series.