the lakers' championship-level team defense (part 2)
a play from the 4th quarter of game 5 of the 2020 nba finals
the los angeles lakers have been great on defense all throughout the 2020 nba finals. i've already broken down one of their best possessions from game 1. today i'm going to analyze another one, this time from game 5.
full play:
this is a pretty clever miami heat offensive set coming out of a timeout.
it begins with andre iguodala bringing the ball up, jae crowder setting a pindown screen for kendrick nunn, and andre giving it to nunn at the right wing.
on the other side of the floor, tyler herro is in the corner, apparently waiting to use a jimmy butler screen:
after iggy passes the ball to nunn, both he and crowder turn and run towards herro's corner.
if you freeze it with 16 seconds left on the shot clock, it looks like this is going to be a play to get herro open. tyler even feints with a jab step and jimmy fakes a "come here" with his arm:
at the last second, crowder sets a screen on anthony davis and butler is the one who turns and sprints towards the ball.
tyler, jae, and andre then chill in the corner, as the heat reveal that it was all a ploy to empty the right side of the court for some nunn/butler two-man game to try and get nunn's defender (alex caruso) switched onto jimmy.
they're successful, aided by caruso tripping over butler's foot on the screen:
jimmy begins to take caruso down to the low post, and nunn pulls it back out to wait for an entry pass opportunity.
while this is happening, lebron james (originally on iguodala) takes advantage of the fact that the other three heat players are packed in the corner - and thus can be defended temporarily by just two of his teammates - and calls for a scram switch to get alex off of butler.
(related:Â i did a breakdown of scram switching here.)
(had the alert scram switch not occurred, miami would've gotten a butler post up against caruso with ~8 seconds to work and all of the lakers' best defenders on the opposite side of the court, in poor helping position.)
with the size mismatch gone, jimmy has no choice but to go back out to the perimeter and get the ball from nunn there.
on the hand off, lebron and ad switch to get butler's original defender back on him, 30 feet away from the basket, with 5 seconds on the shot clock.
jimmy forces a long three, and ad blocks it.
after the block, ad sprints the other way. herro, who was originally on danny green, has to defend davis on the leak out.
green ends up wide open for a corner three, lebron makes the right read - as he nearly always does - and it's a splash.
defense to offense!
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Really great breakdown - these plays are much harder to process in real time. I’m trying to envision how Jimmy could have kept his matchup with Caruso: before LeBron makes the switch, since there was no room for a threaded pass from Nunn, could Jimmy have stayed outside? Were they banking on the bounce pass inside > easy layup? It does seem like the weak side bundle makes this play only good once or twice a game before the Lakers adjust exactly how you’ve outlined - so I’m curious what the hoped outcome is if it’s not a jimmy layup.
I think that as soon as Butler was stranded so far out with AD guarding him, Iguodala should have had immediately set a screen which could have allowed Butler to work against Caruso instead of AD.