Hoops Tonight - Game 3 Breakdown: How Jokic & Nuggets bounced back, Heat adjustments

bit further back on the YouTube feed. Today we're diving into the film watch it all this morning, dug into the numbers, have a bunch of stuff to go over with you guys. You guys know the joke before we get started. Subscribe to the Volumes YouTube channels. You don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at Underscore Jason lt so you guys don't miss any show announcements. And if, for whatever reason, you guys miss one of these videos and you can't get back over

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night's game. You know, it's funny. We talked about how the two things that Miami had done to kind of disrupt my Denver's offense was Jimmy Butler on Jamal Murray and bam on Nikol Jokic kind of credibly guarding the Jokic Murray two man game two on two, which was allowing them to stay home off the ball and then

some of the success that their own defense had. And one of the many counters that I had put out there was like, hey, try to run more dribble handoffs in action with maybe some off ball action like wide pin downs for KCP and Michael Porter Junior, to try to get them into a rhythm more in game three so that they're more available to you to make big shots when it matters. And that was the exact opposite

of what Denver did. They leaned entirely into the Murray Jokic two man game, which ended up being a smart decision. You saw it, like KCP and Michael Porter Junior both played way better than they did in Game two, particularly on the defensive end of the floor. I thought Michael

Porter Junior actually had a really good game. I was talking with liv Liv Moods are resident Nuggets fan here at the volume in a show two days ago, and she was like, over under MPG game three fourteen points, and I said, under, but I expected him to play way better. And I said, it's because I don't really expect as part of the scheme for him to get a ton of points. But he is a six to ten athlete and he's got to make plays on the defensive end of the floor. And those guys were much better.

But it was the two main game for Denver that they just leaned one hundred percent into on the offensive end of the floor. And it was working in large part because Jimmy Butler in particular wasn't as good as he was in game two. In Game two, Jimmy Butler's back pressure was hillatious. He was right on Jamal's backside the entire game. It's a couple of different things, like Jokicic not doing quite as good of a job screening as he did in Game three, Jimmy just being more

locked in defensively. He was clearly a step slow last night, and Jamal just made him pay for it. To give you an idea, there were only five possessions in game where Jamal Murray was able to either get a shot off in pick and roll or make a pass to a guy who was able to get a shot off. Only five in the entire game. He had six in just the first quarter of Game three, fourteen total in the game. So he was able to shake free of Jimmy Butler far more frequently in this particular game than

he was in Game two. And this is like where that unguardability concept comes in. Jamal kind of provides that unique combination of pull up jump shooting that forces you to stay attached chasing over the top. And he's kind of an underrated rim attacker. He's got a good amount of size in athleticism, He's got a great floater, he

can finish around the rim with either hand. He just flat out for the record, has played at a superstar level in this entire postseason through the playoffs so far to this point, twenty seven six and seven on sixty percent true shooting in the finals, twenty six, seven and ten on sixty one percent true shooting. That's tennisis per game. That's thirty assists. He's leading the series for both teams, including Jokic in assists. He's having an amazing playmaking postseason.

Seven assists per game in an entire postseason tennisis per game in a finals. That's really impressive playmaking from Jamal Murray. That, in combination with everything we said last night about Nicolea Jokic being the master of size, leverage, shot making and playmaking together makes that action extremely difficult to guard. And if you guard that two on two, you have to be nearly perfect in your defensive execution, and Miami just wasn't as sharp as they were, And like it's hard,

I get it. They're an extremely difficult team to guard. I mean, they can even go to a pick and pop type of thing with Nikola Jokic and he's shooting damn near fifty percent from three in this playoff run. So I'm not sitting here acting like it's just like, hey, go do your job and it'll work. But we've seen in game two that Miami has been better at guarding this action than they were in Game three. A couple of things i'd like to see again. Jimmy just has

to do a better job chasing. But i'd like to see the mix in some switching, particularly in late clock situations. So if you run a switch and there's fourteen seconds on the shot clock, they have plenty of time to

target you in a post up. But if they run a two man game because you dissuade the first one and they turn around and run it again and there's only seven seconds on the shot clock, you can get away with a switch there, because it's just gonna be really hard if they come off the action seven six, five, Okay, you identify it's a switch, You dribble back out four.

Now he's posting up. You throw it to him. He has to turn and shoot right away to get a decent look, which allows your defender to not have to worry about pivots and fakes and things along those lines from Nikole Jokis. So i'd like to see them mix in some switching in late clock situations. I liked how

they brought out the blitz a little bit too. I'd like to see them use that specifically, just not like repping at every single possession, but just randomly because there were possessions where Jamal was caught off guard by it and he just started retreating out to half court because he didn't know what to do. And then there were possessions where Jamal made the read quickly and got that drop off pass and started that four on three and

Denver got good looks. So the timing of the blitz I think has to be very careful, if that makes sense. But I do think Miami's capable of doing a much better job in that two man game than they did in Game one. Denver's defense, like I said at the beginning of the show last night with Colin, they cut it off in the YouTube one, but we talked about it on AMP for those of you guys who listened to it there. But I thought Denver's defense was by far the biggest element to their win last night and

on tape, and just everything was better. Just the execution was better. They're over the top, pursuit on guards was better. Their rotations were better, especially on pick and roll situations with bam Adebayo. To give you an idea look at these numbers. In pick and roll, Miami scored one point four to seven points per possession in game two down to zero point eight to one points per possession in game three. That's almost half so so so so much better.

Rollman possessions two point one to three points per possession in game two, one point per possession in game three. That's less than half. Spot up situations Miami one point sixty seven points per possession in game two, way too many comfortable in rhythm catch and shoot shots for good shooters. In game two they limited those a little bit. In game three they were down to one point zero eight points per possession. I talked about this a lot with Live in the show that we did two days ago.

But like, again, to me, there is luck in any one shot, right, Like if I have a catch and shoot jumper on the move, I might you know, a good NBA shooter in a game, if it's a good look from three, he's gonna make fifty percent of them, right, like a good looks. Right, So there's luck, right, half of them he's making, half of them he's missing. They're

pretty good looks. But the thing is is that over the course of a game, your team might take forty or fifty jump shots, so the luck kind of evens out. It's kind of like I was talking about with the voting pool for MVP and the eye test. I think I was having this conversation with uh, I'm trying to

remember who it was I was talking with. I think it was with my Titus from barstool, But I was talking about how like the voter pool compensates for the mistakes and the eye test, Like the eye test is imperfect, but get one hundred guys together. There are one hundred men and women together, they're probably going to center around what the reality is. Right. That's kind of the way

I feel about shot variants. If you're taking forty to fifty jump shots in a game, while there is luck or variance in any one shot over the course of forty or fifty jump shots, it's probably going to result in something based on what the defense is allowing. Right, If you're getting good in rhythm looks, the vast majority of those luck situations are gonna be favorable for you. In over forty or fifty jump shots, you're gonna get

one point sixty seven points per possession. But when you defend better and the easy in rhythm catch and shoot jumpers are few and far between, and as a result, all the shooters are in less rhythm all of a sudden, it is more likely that over forty or fifty shots, you're gonna hold them to one point zero eight points per possession in spot up situations. Generally speaking, I think it's a loser mantality, and I think it's a loser mentality to focus on luck as it pertains to shooting

and as a team. If that was the case, then what's the point of doing anything If it's literally just a slot machine. That's not the case. Your defense controls the shooting outcome. Denver had, I thought, their worst defensive performance of the postseason. In Game two, they gave up a million good looks. Miami made him pay. In Game three, they were much better. Miami came back down to earth. That's the reason why it wasn't just because they hit

the slot machine again. In the zone I talked a lot about and again we're still staying on Denver's defense, but for their zone offense, if you guys remember I listed a bunch of potential counters. I mentioned like bringing the guy out of the corner to screen away, which we did not see any of. I mentioned driving the zone, which we saw a lot of which we'll talk about later.

And if you remember, I said defense, defense, defense, I said, by far, the best way for them to get away from attacking Miamis zone is just get stops, because Miami will not run their zone unless it's a made basket or a dead ball situation. So by getting stops, you avoid having to attack Miami's zone. Well, I tweeted at the end of the third quarter, I was like, Denver's in great shape, but the zone is coming in the fourth quarter. They've got one last test they need to

pass to get out of here. Well, Denver got stops on ten of their first thirteen possessions in the fourth quarter, ten of their first thirteen. As a result, by the time that thirteenth possession had happened, they were already up eighteen. The game was over, and so Spolster barely used the zone. He only used it four possessions in the fourth quarter. So Denver's defense literally kept them from having to attack Miami's zone and put them on this massive run and

the game was over. And I thought Spolstra kind of smartly pulled back from the zone the rest of the fourth quarter, essentially saying we're not getting this one. Let's save it because maybe we can disrupt their rhythm a little bit in a later game in this series. So let's now into Denver's offense against the zone. Because in the four possessions they ran it. In the fourth quarter, Jokic had a miss in an offensive rebound, they immediately scored,

and then they scored on the last two. So it was four possessions, but technically three total defensive stops that flew in that flowed into Denver possessions, and Denver scored on all three of them. So I want to talk a little bit about what they did. Angie's list is now Angie your Home for everything Home. Angie doesn't just get your home projects done, Angie gets them done well.

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And just a few taps and the Angie app or clicks on the site, you can have Angie tackle your home service project from start to finish. Download the free Angi mobile app today or visit Angie dot com. That's a NGI dot com. First of all, the defense, like we talked about, by defending, you keep them out of their zone. But they did. One of the interesting counters that Mike Malone had was, if you remember, Miami Zone was taking a top guy in fronting Jokic at the

high post to prevent the high post entry. Which is the best place to enter a zone. Why is that the best place to enter the zone. It's the one place where it kind of overlaps a bunch of responsibilities. Right. If I've got two guys at the top, a guy under the basket, and two guys on the wing, the guy in the high post is right in the middle, and so it's very easy to get the defense to collapse as multiple guys kind of converge on that spot. Well, the other best place to enter is the short corner.

Same concept on the wings. The zone is lined up for you, they're ready for you. If you're in the corner on the wings, they're ready for you. But that short corner in between where Bam is and a guy on the wing is another soft spot where if you catch there, you can attract multiple bodies. They ended up getting two buckets out of Jokic operating out of the short corner in this game one at the late third quarter.

Actually the Spoltra actually brought out the zone a little bit earlier, but they dumped it to Yokic on the short corner. Multiple bodies came in. Christian Brown attacked a cut out of the top of the key, Yokic hit him for a layup. In the fourth quarter, the mist that they had was another action where they started Jokic in the short corner on the left side, and what they did is they waited, and they had Jamal Murray

downscreen on BAM and Jokic flashed high posts. They hit him on the move before the front could come, and he actually ended up getting a nice little fl one that Jokic normally makes. He just missed it off the right side of the rim, but he saw it come in and chase it down, got the offensive rebound, and

they got back into their zone attack. So I thought that was a really interesting wrinkle, either catching Jokic in the short corner or starting out of the short corner and quick flashing so that the guard doesn't have an opportunity to front the post because he's catching before he even gets there. Even so smart adjustments from Mike Malone and then the other one. Like I said, if you guys remember driving the zone. I broke this down after Game two. I said, in his own defense, they're not

double teaming you. Like, if I'm dribbling the ball on the left wing and Jokic is at the high post and he's getting fronted, Kyle Lowery is coming out of the top to deny that swing pass and Duncan Robinson's over here and he's denying that swing pass and Bam

is waiting under the basket. Yeah, they're taking away the post entry, but the fundamental beginning of the defense is still Jamal Murray dribbling the basketball with one defender in front of him, and so if he can beat that one defender, he will engage another defender, which will start

to create openings. That's like the driving the zone. You don't see it a ton at the lower levels because ball handling is not good enough in high school and in college for guys to penetrate the zone off the dribble, But in the NBA it's one of the best ways to attack. That's why a lot of times in the NBA teams will run their man to man offense against zone defenses, because if you can get dribble penetration, it

accomplishes the same thing as the pass. Well, those three buckets that they scored three for three in the fourth quarter, all three of them were on dribble penetration. First one, Jamal Murray dribbling at the top. He's got Caleb Martin

on him, beats him to the right. Caleb Martin takes a couple hard recovery steps, but Jamal like does a little bump off dribble, Caleb's gone and he's shooting a wide open, like ten foot jump shot at the lane line that he of course makes because he's in good rhythm. And then back to back possessions were Christian Brown, who

was phenomenal last night. I'm not gonna go too much further into it because I talked about it a lot with Colin Coward last night, but he just beat Caleb Martin off the dribble, drew that second defender, dropped it off to Nikole Jokic, who made a little short jump shot. And then there was another possession where Christian Brown caught it in the corner on the left side and did a rip th remove over the top on Jimmy Butler, beat Jimmy Butler to the middle, brought Bam up, occupied

Bam dropped it to Jokic. Bam was out of position, so he closed out too hard on Jokic and ended up fouling Yokic, and he made both free throws. So all three of their buckets against the zone in the fourth quarter were from just driving the zone, so a very good adjustment there from Mike Malone, and it was kind of the obvious adjustment when they're denying the easy

entry passes. If they're going to do that, that's the only counter you have, really is I mentioned a couple others, some complicated screening things, but it's a lot easier to just be like, hey, I'm faster than you and I'm a better ball handler. Let me beat you to the basket and we can go from there. But big time game from Christian Brown. I excellent, defensively, excellent in transition. He's just so athletic, so difficult to guard. I tweeted

this out last night. But he's the latest in a long line of kind of like smaller guards that are succeeding at this level I should say, smaller wings that are succeeding in the late rounds of the playoffs. These guys that are between like six three and six six, but are built like trucks, freaky athletic, low centers of gravity, that are difficult to screen, that run and transition well, that can beat guys off the dribble. All that stuff

is super valuable. You saw that this year with Christian Brown. You saw this year again with Bruce Brown has been a very similar type of player for Denver last year, a guy like Gary Payton, the second impossible to screen, brings a bunch of stuff to the table. There. As an athlete Alex Cruso on the twenty twenty Lakers, Pat Conneton was a little bit like this. In the twenty twenty one Bucks. We talked so much about these six to eight wings that are super long armed and can

do all these things defensively. The problem with most wings is most of them are very upright, have high centers of gravity and aren't as strong, and so they're easier to screen, and so they can struggle. Sometimes in these situations, they're the guys that you can bump off their spots. So sometimes those lower center of gravity wings have more success. I think that's an interesting trend in the NBA, So

shout out to Christian Brown. But I thought, even in spite of all that stuff that I said, I still think zone is the best option for Miami to get stops. So Denver had some nice counters. They got three buckets against the zone in the fourth quarter, two buckets in a foul for two free throws in the fourth quarter, but they ran eight zone possessions in the second and third quarters and got stops on six of those six of those eight possessions, including three stops in five possessions

with Nikolea Jokic on the floor. They were right over just over eight tenths of a possession overall eight tenths of a point per possession overall in last night's game against the zone, which is not very good. Right, So Miami's defense has consistently been better in this series. When they run zone versus man de man, it takes Denver out of their two man game, it disrupts their rhythm.

That's been clearly one of their best options. So for Miami, they might have to consider running their zone after missus.

They might have to consider like at least giving Bam the authority to call out zone and transition situations when he's back, and he could just be like zone, zone, zone, and everybody kind of gets into it, and then when Denver's really pushing the pace and attacking in transition, maybe they stay with man to man, but they might have to try to at least experiment with running zone and live ball situations instead of made baskets and dead ball situations. Because I think they need to try to find a

way to get more than twelve possessions a game. In of zone Miami's offense, I thought their process was fine. When I went back and looked at the film. They had twenty five spot at possessions for one point zero eight points per possession, which is better than Denver did. So like Denver didn't shoot well, Miami Astra shot better again, But I thought the difference of the game was they just missed way too many shots in the paint. They were seventeen for forty six, and the paint Jimmy and

Bam miss a ton of bunnies. That's just thirty seven percent. By the way, I do want to give Denver's defense credit, they were much better rotation to Cooley, Jokis was much more active with his hands around the basket to suading guys.

But Bam and Jimmy both missed a lot of bunnies, and so that's something they're gonna have to clean up, and that causes a chain reaction, like if you have rim misses against Denver, that equals death, especially when Jimmy and Bam are your two best athletes and they're under the basket they're under the opposing basket, Denver's looking to push in transition. A miss at the rim often leads to transition opportunities unless you can get an offensive rebound,

and look, Denver missed. Here's the thing. Miami had ten offensive rebounds last night, but that's just because they missed so many damn shots. Denver usually is going to control the defensive glass and get out in transition. Those paint misses are the beginning of an ugly chain reaction. Not only those transition situations, but every time you make one of those bunnies, that's an opportunity for you to set

your defense or to set your zone. Like we talked about, more paint makes equals more reactive help from Denver's wings. If Jimmy and Bam go twenty seven for forty six instead of seventeen for forty six when they get into the paint, it's human nature that those wings will just coalesce more around them while they're trying to shoot as part of Denver's health defense, which generates the higher quality three point shots that they got in game two. So

that is the chain reaction they need to reverse. Instead, they got the opposite of that so better focus and lyft in particular around the rim from Jimmy and Bam will go a long way to reversing that trend for the heat, so kind of insummation Miami's adjustments. Jimmy has to do a much better job of chasing Murray overscreens, and we know he's capable of it because he did it in Game two. They need to switch any Murray Yokic action that happens with less than ten seconds on

the shot clock. It'll make it much more difficult for Denver to post up mismatches were in the posts they continue to dominate. They need to mix in the occasional blitz to throw off Jamal Murray's rhythm and just the overall rhythm of the action. They need to run more zone. It's been by far their most effective defense in the series, and they need to consider running it on misses when Denver is not on the attack. Give Bam that leeway

to kind of call it out. Last, but not least, Jimmy and Bam have to make their short shots in the lane to start the chain reaction of drawing more help, getting more high quality three point shots, and allowing them to set their defense so after Game two I did say with liv I predicted Denver would win comfortably in Game three and that Game four would be the most competitive game of the series. I do believe that's what's going to happen. I think Jimmy Butler will have his

best defensive game of the series. I think the Heat will finish in the paint better and make more threes. I also think Denver will shoot better. They really haven't shot well in the last couple of games, so I think this is going to be a really close game with a crunch time situation that's going to come down to the final few possessions. I really don't have any idea,

and I hate making predictions. If I have to, I'll pick Miami to win closely and tie the series at two, but I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if Denver came out on top of that situation. I think Game four is going to be the most entertaining game of the series, and I am very, very excited to see it. We will be going live with Colin Coward again after the final buzzer of Game four, before we break down the film on Saturday morning. As always, I sincerely appreciate

you guys, and I'll see you tomorrow night. The volume