Miami Masterpiece

A breakdown of how Miami found success against Houston's elite defense.

Coming into last night’s game against Miami, Houston’s defense ranked 4th in KenPom adjusted defensive efficiency metric and had only given up more than 1 point per possession in 3 out of their 36 games. Until their matchup with Miami, the highest previous game was on January 25th where UCF scored 1.06 PPP.

Miami just scored 1.22 Points Per Possession and put up 89 points. Let’s dive into the film and find out how they did it.

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Houston’s Defense

It’s important to understand some of the mechanics of how Houston defends and why Miami was so successful, since Houston plays an aggressive defense and really makes their opponents uncomfortable.

Trapping Ballscreens

Houston plays an aggressive style of ballscreen defense that can be considered hard hedging and in certain examples a trap. The whole goal is to take the ball out of the guards hands and rely on the aggressive style to force turnovers.

This can be effective and create turnovers by putting two players on the ball and forcing the guards to make quicker decisions than normal.

The goal of getting two on the ball here is to make the ballhandler go back toward half court and not allow a drive or creation off the ballscreen.

Then overhelp behind it with players who don’t normally make decisions in their offense.

Trap Post

Houston also will trap the post and ISO if its even near the paint either on the catch if it is on the block or the drive if they try to play 1 on 1 around the wing or elbows.

Putting this all together we can see here when the aggressive ballscreen coverage is executed that the low man from the opposite corner is tagging the roll man until the big can recover.

Then as the ball is driven into the post (Barkleys) the trap comes with the opposite wing jamming the big low and the other two players on the wings playing in space as athletes.

Spacing

A big key for Miami’s offensive success not only in the matchup but for their offense this season is their 5-Out spacing and how they can stretch the floor with great spacing.

This spacing allows for easier drives with little or no help since the defense has to be concerned about the backside help and corner spacing at the 3 point line.

Another example of driving but with a kickout and then another drive with their spacing that allows an easy layup.

Ballscreen Attack

Miami does not run many actions or post up that much, but they prefer to run a spread-out ballscreen attack with multiple ballscreens in every possession so attacking the aggressive style defense of Houston was a key for both teams in this matchup and Miami did an amazing job.

For more on how to attack aggressive ballscreen defense:

Utah Jazz Pick & Roll Attack vs Trailblazers Hedging

Drag It Out