2023 NBA Finals Game 2

A Focus On The Heat's 5-Out Offense Into Ballscreens

There was always going to be a lot of chatter about the Heat “limiting” Jokic to only 4 assists, but he scored 41 points and it wasn’t really much about the Heat defense doing anything spectacular compared to game 1. Sure adding Love allowed Butler to slide over onto Murray and that helped, but really the Heat’s offense was unlocked when they went to more 5-Out actions around Bam handling.

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The biggest difference from game 1 with Bam was his ability to recognize when to attack and how often to attack but really play through the players off the ball more to put pressure on the Nuggets defense. He still went after Jokic at times on drives, but much less in Isolation and more of an attack off the rolls after a couple of actions.

For example, here he gets the ball ahead and starts to attack in his usual handling but instead of forcing any issues after the ballscreen from Vincent, he looks the other way and finds Butler.

Then at the same time he goes into a ball screen, Vincent cuts backdoor to clear space and then relocates to the opposite corner from the dunker’s spot. This tricks the help man KCP at the rim and allows Butler to find the open corner 3.

Another example here where Bam flows into an empty pick and roll for Butler out of 5-Out and watch MPJ low here, he overcommits outside the lane so when Butler snakes this he gets taken completely out of position and in no-mans land.

Normally, this “pre-load” is for a ISO look to overload one side of the floor and have help already committed to stop any easy drives. A good example of this from Brown here against the Suns:

Here Butler snakes and Jokic has it contained since Bam is not rolling hard, so when KCP drops down nobody is there to rotate to the open shooter allowing another Vincent made 3.

Delay Flare DHO

Out of “Delay” or 5-Out the Heat can run multiple flow actions with turning screens into backscreens, flare screens or pindowns depending on the defensive coverage.