Lamar's Game 1 Breakdown
The Charlotte Hornets started their first round series against the Miami Heat continuing to use a reasonable amount of aggressive coverage of the pick-n-roll. Only the Heat were ready for that and blew the Hornets defense out of the water.
When looking back at Cody Zeller's season performance and previewing his role in the playoffs, I noted that his pick-and-roll defense will play a huge role in the playoffs due to the amount of times coach Steve Clifford has Zeller coming up to the level of the screen, if not blitzing it altogether.
As then noted, a coaching chess match of using these traps to their team's advantage seemed like a decent probability. Teams had already used Charlotte's blitzes to create 4-on-3 situations during the season.
Once that pass out of the trap is made, the opposition's big is in a spot where he can really punish the Hornets either by attacking himself or making the correct pass outside.
Little could all of us know that Clifford might be forced to tone this coverage back after Miami capitalizing on it already in the first game of the series.
