How the Mavericks Looked To Take away the Rim & How the Heat Countered

The Heat shot 22/48 at the rim thanks to the Mavs defense, but they countered that well to close out the game

This wasn’t a perfect game offensively for either team. The Heat finished the game with 49.5% eFG and the Mavericks with 46.7%. That was even worse in the first half with 41.3% but they made up for it in the second with 59.6% and a lot of that had to do with the 3-point shooting — they shot 5/20 in the first and 4/17 in the second.

But there is a reason they had to rely on the 3-point shooting. They were generating plenty of good shots throughout the game, they just couldn’t knock them down.

All of that had to do with the Mavericks’ approach to their rim protection from everyone. The Heat shot 22/48 at the rim. That’s 46%! When you take Butler out of the equation, it was 13/36(36%). The frequency was there with 45% of their shots coming at the rim but that was also by design. They have the personnel to protect the rim without drastically overcompensating elsewhere.

The Mavericks’ main goal was rim protection from both Daniel Gafford and Dereck Lively, as well as the team collectively being early and contesting everything. They were peel-switching on drives. Tags were coming in early. Making sure to be ready to help if needed. They did their job well throughout the game.

That made life a lot more difficult for the Heat but throughout the game, they were able to sprinkle some counters and counters to counters to get easier looks.

Even before any kind of schematic adjustments, the Mavericks simply played good defense and were able to contest a lot of shots, especially 1v1:

Their one-on-one defense was pretty good. They rarely got beat or allowed easy shots without a hand going up. You can see some of the isolations in the post that resulted in either contested shots at the rim or shots further out in the paint, with bodies behind them.

That’s what was working for them when it comes to protecting the rim and the paint when the shot was going up.

Take this early possession to start the game with Lively defending the PNR and was able to recover to contest the tip-in from Adebayo:

Or there is this defense against Adebayo in isolation:

That’s all great individual defense that forces bad shots or makes easy shots look not-so-easy. That alone was a big factor for the Heat struggling to score inside the paint.

Moving on to how the Mavericks made that even better is by combining the individual defense with having someone else lurk off-ball and act as a deterrence or another body in the paint to force worse shots. That included Lively, Gafford, or Kleber helping off Adebayo, Butler, and Jaquez whenever they weren’t involved in the actions. This had a dual effect: either discouraging or preventing the Heat from getting the shot they’d like and continuing to make life hell at the rim.

They did this right away. Take this possession where you run an action for Butler to get Thompson switched on him and the side cleared;

This is what you’d want. You have Butler isolated against Thompson. You also have solid spacing with three other players where their defenders aren’t helping off entirely. Washington, Irving, and Grimes are all outside of the paint. But that matters less when you have Lively completely ignoring what Adebayo is doing to stay in the restricted area. Butler doesn’t even look to attempt a shot.

This continued to happen throughout the game. Almost every time, they were put on someone they could easily help off, particularly from the corners. Whenever the Heat wanted to run any kind of action, it was quickly negated or forced into a different shot because someone was always lurking.

You can see how many times someone made a kick because Lively was already in the paint. Or check how on some of those isolations, a worse shot is there because there’s a big body next to you.

By having either of the bigs on players they can help off of, that’s what it’s going to look like. The Heat had several counters for that, though, and they were effective at different points in time through various methods. But I should also note that despite those counters, the Mavericks still did a good job at trying harder and still helping.

The adjustments came in a few ways — the first thing they did wasn’t an adjustment per se, but it still worked — it involved playing Love more, taking Gafford out on switches, and involving Lively in more on-ball actions.

First, it involved taking Gafford out.

That was also achieved in a couple of ways. The simplest one was whenever Love was in the game. Love is a shooter at that size and he has a much better reputation than Adebayo, Jaquez, Jovic, or anyone else on the team. That alone dragged Gafford out.

Look at what Gafford is doing here, even when he’s not involved in the action:

You can run your actions for Butler without worrying about help being at the rim. Gafford is on Love in the strong corner and all he does is give a stunt, instead of sitting in the paint. With the big taken care of, the only other possible help would involve Thompson, who is occupied by the Burks pin-in screen for Herro.

But it also involved him in the PNR, which forced a switch. He can’t be the one helping if he’s on the ball or on the perimeter. That’s what happened here:

You first run an action involving Herro-Love. The Mavericks ended up switching that action, so, all Herro does is swing the ball and now Butler can attack his guy without worrying about a big presence inside — he still smoked the layup.

That’s exactly what they did with Lively too. They were getting him involved.

It’s all a similar approach here. Lively can’t help if he’s the one who has to defend either the screener or the ball handler. This is where they went to a lot of possessions with Adebayo as the hub on the elbow.

There were a handful of possessions that also forced him to switch. This was one of the better possessions:

It’s first a Butler double PNR with Adebayo being the second screener. The Mavericks will switch that. Then it’s involving Burks to get Irving on Butler and Burks relocates to the strong corner. That puts Lively in a tough position. This isn’t being the roamer of a poor shooter. This is being on a shooter on the strong side, so when Butler does attack Irving, Lively helps and Butler has the open kick to Burks. Also, note that the lift from Robinson drags Dinwiddie out.

Just a tidbit, but contrast that play with one way earlier:

Similar situation in the end where Jaquez has Irving on the switch and looks to attack but Lively is glued to Butler as he relocated from the dunker spot.

Continuing in the fourth, they spammed that double PNR to involve Lively:

It’s again involving Lively, but the difference here was they didn’t want to switch the initial pick with Robinson and Adebayo slipped before he made any contact. Butler is able to turn the corner and Lively has to account for Adebayo slipping and can’t be in a good position to help.

The following play was a variation of the same goal with a sprinkle of Spain PNR:

Adebayo sets the screen for Butler, but looks to quickly slip but this time you also have Herro setting the backscreen. Butler once again is able to turn the corner with absolutely no help anywhere nearby

This was another good counter but Lively did end up recovering to be in a good position:

They first ran a double PNR for Burks, which forced the Lively switch. This was great to that point. The ball swung for a Butler double PNR and that’s where it took too long and Lively was able to switch the matchup with Irving to be the low man.

But in the end that didn’t matter because what the hell was that from Butler on that finish???

Butler in the fourth quarter ended up going 4/4 at the rim. That’s how the Heat were able to counter one of the better rim-protecting defenses in the game.