JohnStockton wrote:The Heat should have run a Dragic/Whiteside PnR every single play after Clifford adjusted to put Jefferson in the starting lineup in Game 3.
In Dragic, you have an elite driving guard--and in Whiteside, an elite rolling big. Pair that combination and then send them off to battle against... Al Jefferson, and it should've been a massacre. It was such a glaring mismatch that I kept expecting the Heat to exploit it, but they never really did. Even posted on the Heat board about it, but alas, they kept running the majority of their offense through Wade, and occasionally Johnson.
Today, they finally abused Al the way they should've, not really because of scheme--but just because Dragic got hot, and so they FINALLY decided to let him initiate. Well, that move eventually just let things unfold naturally, and Al got roasted. You could blame Al for getting roasted, but let's be honest, he couldn't do anything about it even at his best. His shortcomings are what they are. He's slow and can't jump.
Whether Dragic could have actually been contained on PnR when the Heat played him as the initiating guard on the PnR is another question--and straight up--I think the answer is that he can't be contained off the first few dribbles unless you trap him--so whether Kemba or Lin were on him on the PnR, Dragic would be guaranteed to always get good separation after the first few dribbles (3-4 steps).
After those initial steps, Dragic would still be pretty open all the way up until the rim (that's why he had a bunch of pull-up Js in this series regardless of who guarded him). As for where his shots in this series changed, his shot selection was heavily based directly on the size of his defender, because if Dragic was going to the rim against Walker (and his lack of size), then Kemba regularly had no chance to stop or contest Goran if he got deep. Lin, on the other hand, gave up the same open baby J's as Walker, but due to his better straight-line speed, he could recover quicker when beat off the screen, and his size allowed for good late contests against Dragic for the majority of the series. Off the top of my head, I'd say that Lin would get a good contest on Dragic drives about 65% of the time or so--while Kemba could hardly contest at the rim at all. The 65 is a decent rate for just man-on-man recovery--but obviously not ideal overall--but that's why there's help defense.
My guess is that, Spo doesn't trust Whiteside enough to scheme for his offense. It makes sense since his assist number is so bad.
I thought towards the end of the series, they were doing a lot of what the Hornets were regularly doing: fake three, drive, kick, fake three etc. It was especially effective with Deng and Frank cuz Deng was so hot and Frank is a bit slower. It worked very well. Don't know if Spo took something from Cliff's playbook while watching film and scouting?
