 2013 NBA FINALS : Heat (1) vs Spurs (2) |
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posté par i33 : | Article intéressant sur la D des Spurs, face à Lebron James.
The Lebron Wall
Four series deep into these playoffs, James has seen just about every defense in the league designed specifically to stop him. The Chicago Bulls turned Joakim Noah and Taj Gibson into linebacker spies as they played the part of a one-man zone whenever James had the ball outside of the paint. The Indiana Pacers didn’t zone as much as Chicago, but they had Roy Hibbert to root in front of the rim and discourage face-to-face challenges. Slightly different strategies, both, but what each had in common was a trust in the big men to contain dribble penetration and protect the rim while giving up as few open perimeter looks as was humanely possible.
The Spurs don’t have quite the same luxuries as those teams. Tim Duncan is a brilliant defender, but he doesn’t have the manic foot speed of Noah nor the pure mass of Hibbert. As such, while the Spurs run a scheme that could easily transform into more of a Chicago-Indiana look, their strategy for discouraging James from attacking the painted area relies a bit more on the entire team.
As a team, brick by brick, the Spurs build a wall in front of James whenever he is a threat. And James is a threat whenever the ball is in his hands.
There are a couple different ways this philosophy presents itself. The Spurs use a strongside zone a la Chicago in the right situation, as they did here when Tiago Splitter drew James on a switch:
But San Antonio actually zoned with their guards more often than with their big men, allowing Duncan and Splitter to manage their three-in-the-key count on the weakside of the paint, ready to pounce whenever James made his move. So instead of that second defender zoning James from the block, Tony Parker or Manu Ginobili were dancing around the free-throw line in hopes of making James choose the outer route to the rim.
Those are some particular examples, but Popovich’s plan wasn’t particular at all. It was all-encompassing. The moment James even thought about going in the general direction of the rim – off a high screen, along the sidelines, from the elbow or the blocks – there was that Spurs wall.
We’re being a little selective with these possession images to give you the best idea of what the Spurs are doing, but that’s in part because the defense was selective itself. The Spurs didn’t just stand in place and allow James to pick them apart. They waited for the right moment to wall up, showed James the look and if the possession continued they dispersed to find shooters. It didn’t always work as the HEAT made eight threes and James had 10 assists, but James only had five attempts at the rim.
And even when James did get to the rim, he had to find a way to punch right through the heart of the wall and take advantage of a slow rotation or two.
Again, the HEAT’s arsenal is far too vast for San Antonio’s wall to provide total coverage. Every time you overload one part of the floor another zone is going to open up. If Chris Bosh makes half of his jumpers in Game 2, as he’s more than capable of doing, he could reduce the wall to ruins and force an adjustment. If James hits more than one jumper – this was just the fifth time all year he only made one jumper on at least five attempts – then maybe the Spurs have to play up on him a little more rather than hanging back in the paint.
If. If. If. These are things that could happen. What already happened is that the Spurs won Game 1 by cutting off the HEAT in transition and building a wall in front of LeBron James. And it’s going to be that way until the HEAT do something about it and find other ways past San Antonio’s borders. That’s just how the playoffs work, and fortunately we should have plenty of time to see how this series plays out. |
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