On paper|Replay Nuggets vs Heat: Yomer plays strongly Malone cleverly breaks 1-3-1

Let's talk briefly about the Nuggets' G3 vs. Heat, let's talk about the look and feel first.

They are the two best coaches in the playoffs, after G2 Spoo 4 improved their attack and added a 1-3-1 joint defense to regain home advantage; Marlon's response was equally brilliant -

The main focus is on how to limit the Heat's three-point gap and break the 1-3-1 joint defense from multiple angles.

Then this game is still in line with the conclusion that I said in G1: the Heat want to win, and the three-point shooting rate returns to the average level of around 38%; Or Butler chop 40+. This one did not meet this target, and in the end, after G1 scored only 93 points, this game only scored 94 points. The 93 and 94 points were also the Heat's lowest points in this year's playoffs.

The Nuggets' offense has basically maintained the average level of 104 points, 108 points, and 109 points.

So, at this point in the series, if the coaches of both sides don't have further surprises to take the blow (the author thinks the space is already quite small), the trend of the series will evolve into Jokic and Murray's three-point shooting ratio vs Heat.

Let's first focus on some of the Nuggets' 1-3-1 cracks.

In the last review, the author talked about it: from the perspective of dismantling the Heat, this new way is actually not complicated. The fundamental logic of the Heat's defense is to compress the offensive combing time after sacrificing the bottom corner of one side; Then insert a player in advance at the free-throw line to prevent Jokic from breaking the multi-level defense in this area.

The player could be Vincent, Martin, or Butler; The defensive form is mainly based on strong forward defense to catch the ball.

Then under such a defense, let Jokic cut in from the corner of the flank to receive the ball (because the defensive intensity here will be low, and there may be Dunroe; and encounter fewer assistant defenses); Or simply let Jokic dribble the ball from the top of the arc and force it into the wrong position and attack directly. But such an attack will lead to Jokic's individual singles, and the rapid consumption of physical energy.

And that's what the Heat want to see.

Malone handled it more cleverly:

There are 3 time periods for the Heat to use 1-3-1 intensively: the beginning of the second quarter, the end of the third quarter and the beginning of the last quarter, and the figure above is the first time node.

The Nuggets' first clever point is that they don't simply have Jokic cut in from the flank and receive the ball directly; Instead, after the wing enters the three-point line, it cuts horizontally to the opposite side to catch the ball. From the figure we can see that Jokic cuts in from the Dunrow side at 45° on the left; Dunroe made a defensive mistake here -

The key to the 1-3-1 defense is that the "3" defense line must be locked quite firmly, and the three people echo each other to assist in the defense pinch. Once the defense of a corner collapses, it is difficult for only one person left on both the upper and lower lines to make a rotation. Therefore, Dunroe did not give enough strength to intercept in this layer, directly allowing Jokic to easily "drill" into the free throw line or even deeper.

The author's point is that this kind of ball would rather pull down the foul directly without the ball end than put it in easily.

At the same time, the Nuggets played a two-man block on the opposite side of Jokic on the upper line. This is where the whole cracking idea is very interesting, because the two-man block + Jokic's later cross-cut instantly increased the pressure on the Heat's right defensive side; Therefore, more defensive resources need to be dispatched to force pressure on this side. (This is important in the follow-up)

At this point, we can see that Butler's instinctive defensive reaction is actually to ensure that the position goes around the front and jams Jokic's free throw line to catch the ball. By this time, the Heat's defense line was already out of order. So, this is the second defensive error that the Heat have; Or in the original database sample, the Nuggets revealed something different——

Jokic did not insert from the flank and waited at the free throw line to catch the ball; Instead, cut crosswise to a flank where two people are blocking, to catch the ball at close range. We watched Butler's gestures, at which point he realized that the receiving environment on Jokic's side was too comfortable, and motioned for Adebayo to come up.

In this way, the Nuggets achieve a back-and-forth echo, which is what we just called the effect of forcing offensive resources to one side: with Adebayo rising from the bottom line, the ghost area of Braun in the back line will be left unattended.

In other words, the Nuggets inserted by letting Jokic flank insert and cross-cut to the opposite side to catch + same side double block; It was cleverly turned a strong Jokic hit into an assist.

In the next round, from Butler's gesture command, we can find that the Heat still want to defend the 1-3-1 joint defense, or another set of 1-2-2 joint defense that is very similar to this general idea.

But Jokic advanced quite quickly, and caught a hole where Dunrow was exposed to the front line and became the "1" of the top ball carrier; Quickly made a hand-to-hand cover with Braun. Dunroe's defensive intensity was severely lacking when chasing the defense, and Braun broke through and hit.

At this point, with the Nuggets facing 1-3-1 joint defense for two consecutive rounds, the Heat changed back to staring mode.

By 1:30 in the third quarter, the Heat had once again made it 1-3-1, the second phase of the game.

It can be seen that from the point of view of the defensive formation, Martin spends as an arrow that harasses the ball carrier; On this side of the free throw line, Dunrow + Butler + Lowry are respectively. So this time Jokic is different from the first shot we gave, in a simpler way -

Directly squat on the flank, grab Lowry's huge size to catch the ball, and then play strongly; But it was disturbed by the Zeller assistant defense that came off the line. This is the simple pattern that I said in the last article.

In the next round, Jokic made another change.

Let's look at the picture above, the way to crack the joint defense in this round can be said to be a combination of the first two shots.

Jokic still found a flanking position directly, but he landed further down than in the previous round; It is close to the state of emptying the side of the low back body and eating strongly. Therefore, at this time, Zeller, who has only one man off the line, must empty Jeff Green to match Jokic.

Meanwhile, Murray and Brown reappeared on the same side as Jokic. So this is the same as we just said, three people appear on one side of the offensive area at the same time, which actually empties Butler's defensive position. It's clear from the graph that Butler's defensive involvement is grossly inadequate when the Nuggets are constantly dispatching on the right side.

This is the logic of the whole set of cracking the 1-3-1 free throw line joint defense. So, when we look back at the game of coaches on both sides: Spor puts the traditional joint defense first; Jokic free-throw line cracked; Spall again swings 1-3-1 to pinch the free throw line to join defense; Marlon stacks one side of the resource disassembly.

Jokic then received the ball, Butler recovered, Braun followed up with an empty cut, and Jokic assisted his empty cut. So in fact, if we take a closer look at this round, Jokic's dismantling of the joint defense is actually related to the appearance of Zeller's "cash machine" -

Because in the first few games, Jokic beat Zeller too hard. On the one hand, Spoh is reluctant to take the lead in pulling Adebayo's playing time like the East finals G6 and G7; On the one hand, they are reluctant to disassemble the combination of Adebayo + Dunroe at the beginning of the second and last sections. Therefore, when Butler saw Zeller being "beaten", he subconsciously wanted to recycle it to protect.

And this also reveals Braun's empty cut line.

Therefore, here we can also see the limitations of the Heat's 1-3-1. In the case that Lowry + Dunrow themselves are on either side of the "3" and can provide little defensive contribution; At the back, Zeller is protecting, which is actually adding to the defense. Jokic can also go directly to eat Zeller without taking assists.

In the next round, Jokic remained active in the bottom position; There are still three of them on the left side of the attacking area.

Of course, this time the defense was a success for the Heat, because they gave Braun, who was already a poor three-point player, a chance to shoot from the outside. And it was the only goal he conceded in the game.

Let's look at the third stage of the game to crack the joint defense, the early stage of the final quarter. This is Braun's solo show.

Jokic is still active at the bottom of the free throw line, trying to give Murray a no-ball cover; In fact, at this point, the Nuggets' routine of dismantling the joint defense has not yet been fully formed. But Braun's enthusiasm this time, or the mentality of "daring" to fight, directly changed the trend -

He forced through Martin's outside defense one-on-one, pushing Martin, who should have belonged to the first line, close to the reasonable impact zone. This is actually a situation that has not happened to all the Nuggets' previous 1-3-1 joint defense, and the ball carrier on the line has not appeared.

and accompanied by a single point of direct blasting, and it is the explosion of Martin's single defense + Vincent's assistant defense card; caused a gap in Jokic, who should have been entangled; The latter hit the ball with ease.

In the next round, the ball hits Braun in the bottom corner. As mentioned earlier, the bottom corners on both sides are weak spots for the Heat's defense, because only Adebayo is defending in the last layer; But at this time, Braun and Jeff Green in the bottom corner are again players that the Heat are willing to give some space.

But Braun didn't choose to shoot, but forced a breakthrough that compressed the Heat's defensive formation; This gave Jokic behind him another chance to shoot. This time, it was Butler's foul.

At this point, the contest and game between the two sides between 1-3-1 came to an end.

Let's talk briefly about the Nuggets' changes to the defensive Butler.

That is what I said at the beginning, how to block the three-point gap that appears in the Heat. Because of the content of this piece, the author said in the possible adjustment of the Nuggets mentioned in the last review, so I will briefly talk about -

The Nuggets should think more about defending Butler, even when he's facing misplaced singles like Murray and Pope. In the previous two games, the Nuggets used large contractions when emptying one side of Butler Gordon singles; And Butler also plays very smartly, whether facing Gordon or non-Gordon defense, using the Nuggets' contraction or Jokic's sinking characteristics, using himself as bait to kill the inside and then look for outside opportunities.

This time, the Nuggets really changed.

Gordon interview after the game: "In the previous face of Butler's breakthrough, we over-assisted the defense, and Butler would give the ball to the shooters. Today we did a little better. This view is also confirmed.

This is the opening stage, after Butler changes to Murray once, and then uses Adebayo to block the breakthrough shot.

We can clearly see that except for Jokic who has to sink back as always, giving Butler a three-point stop and fewer mid-range opportunities (here solved with a roundabout cover, Murray executed well); The remaining three players are not over-recycling, optimistic about the pitchers they are opposing, especially not recycling into the box.

Even Pope's defensive position is that the more Butler goes inside, the more he pounces on the outside; Several people released signals that they were mainly choking the pass route and pitcher. After that, the protection of the restricted area was handed over to Jokic; Then Mr. Yo's defense on the inside is also quite good.

Let's look at a more obvious shot:

This time it was Butler who picked Murray again, and he chose to eat directly 1-on-1 without calling for a block. We look at the defensive positions of Brown, Gordon and Pope -

All of them are defenders who keep a firm eye on themselves, and Brown and Pope on the near side do not make easy swipes; Pope didn't even look at the side of the ball at all, just stuck to Martin. After that, the offline interference was all handed over to Jokic.

Let's make a comparison:

This time it was Butler who singled out Jokic. Watch Porter's defensive position, as long as he pays more attention to the ball end; The defensive position penetrates deep into the penalty area and has a vague sense of the position of Loafer behind him. Butler's pass was immediate, and Love's three-point score was immediate.

That's why three points can't be given. From the side, Porter's defense has a lot of room for improvement. (And the ball, although he entered the box, did not materially interfere with Butler; is to simply give up their defensive position)

(Jokic is too steady.) Although the two goals were exchanged for a small misalignment, the defender jammed the confrontation and the next set very firmly; Still able to hit the ball with a soft feel)

Let's go back to the point made at the beginning:

Why did the series evolve into Murray's condition vs. Heat outside?

Jokic is too stable, a game does not pull, if you want him to score, you can score, if you want him to assist, you can assist; Scoring + assists is also a two-pronged combination. The Nuggets also played more simply this game, since the essence of the Heat is to cut off the connection with other teammates during Jokic's dealing; Then play Jokic and Murray's two-person turn.

This is also why the proportion of blocking and demolition of these two people has increased significantly. (Let's talk a little here, is Butler's opening defense against Murray a little loose?) ）

And Jokic is quite stable, holding up the entire chassis of the team very firmly, and moving forward when the starting two guns Pop and Porter play poorly at the same time; Murray's performance in the Finals was equally fantastic, or "underrated."

The Heat have no problem with his defensive strategy, and in the handling of many two-man turns, they also adhere to the idea of prioritizing strangling Murray and projecting space for Jokic or corner three-point space. This is completely true in the general direction. On top of this, the Heat also aligned Butler to Murray in G2, and added pinch hits and strong delays to control Murray in G3.

However, he handed out 10 assists in 3 consecutive games. Although the number of pinch errors in this game has risen to 7, the 3 times in G1 and 1 time in G2 are still eye-catching; This is the best job that I think Murray has done.

In other words, this series, with the Heat's defensive strategy against Murray not wrong; As the Heat, they can only wait for Murray to lose accuracy or face the rapid increase in the number of errors under the pinch. And after the Nuggets came up with a better strategy to deal with the Heat's three-pointer; This means that the chances of the Heat three-point explosion due to a large number of open spots are decreasing.

Therefore, at this point, it actually means that the game has entered such a rhythm:

Jokic's chassis remains the same, Murray is still as good as he is now, and Pope and Porter continue to be poor. For the Heat to win, they must throw more than 38% three-point shooting and in potentially more difficult shooting conditions;

Jokic chassis unchanged, Murray did not play well, Porter and Pope continued poorly; The Nuggets are likely to become Jokic's solo struggle. This means that the Heat's defensive strategy has finally worked;

Jokic remained the same, Murray played well, and Porter and Pope also opened the pot. This goes without saying, if Spall hadn't come up with a miracle move, the Heat's finals would have been high-probability to be explained;

Of course, there is one more situation that can override the above 3 situations -

Butler once again played the first round to burst all the opposition; And he is also the only player who I personally think has the hope of turning the Finals situation on the table again. Because once that happens, the Nuggets will have to measure their defensive gains and losses again.

Remember what I wrote about in a game about the Nuggets in this season's preseason,

"Jokic and Murray could be one of the league's top blockers..."

Now it seems that one of them can go; The limit of the word blocking and demolition, if you win the championship, you may also be able to go...