After a thrilling, defense-first victory in Game 4, the Lakers enter Friday’s Game 5 just one win away from their first NBA championship in a decade. Here are three things to watch for as Miami tries to stave off elimination and L.A. looks to close out the series:
How will Miami answer AD-on-Jimmy?
After spending just 16 possessions guarding Jimmy Butler through the first three games of the Finals, Anthony Davis asked to take over defensive duties following Jimmy’s dominant Game 3. Butler scored 11 quick points in Game 4, taking advantage of the Lakers’ willingness to switch pick-and-rolls and shedding Davis whenever possible. Once L.A. changed its tactics, though, and Davis stopped switching and started ducking underneath screens to stay with Butler, the gambit worked like a charm.
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AD’s unique combination of length, quickness, and athleticism limited Butler to just 1-for-5 shooting over 27 possessions, a massive reason the Lakers stifled the Heat offense to take a 3-1 lead. If the Lakers come out with the same matchup on Friday, the Heat will need to manufacture some ways to get Butler loose, and give him a chance to attack the paint free of Davis’s 7-foot-6 wingspan. (The need will be especially acute if Miami is once again without Goran Dragic, whose deft hand in the pick-and-roll and high-volume 3-point shooting would be an awfully nice alternative option to have right now.)
Erik Spoelstra could look to have Butler run more side pick-and-rolls, emptying out the strong-side corner by bringing a shooter up to set the screen. That sort of alignment has gotten Butler a few clean right-hand drives into the lane over the past couple of games; it removes a one-pass-away help defender from the equation, while making it harder for Davis to go under and meet Butler on the other side before he can build up a head of steam. And—when L.A.’s playing small—it also prevents its best rim protector from lying in wait at the rim:
When the Lakers sag off of Butler up top, he might look to take a page out of Bam Adebayo’s book, pivoting into dribble handoffs to try to get his shooters a clean look or create a crease in the coverage through which he can slip to roll to the rim:
If he’s going to make that pivot, though, he’s got to do it quickly. “We’ve just got to get more movement,” Adebayo told reporters Wednesday. “I feel a lot of times we get stagnant and caught up into the clock. There’s seven seconds [left on the shot clock] and we get ourselves in [tough] situations.” To wit: When the Heat have gotten a shot up in the Finals with between seven and 18 seconds left on the clock—what NBA Advanced Stats identifies as either an “early” or “average” time to shoot—their effective field goal percentage is 56.3 percent, higher than the Bucks’ league-best regular-season mark. When they fire with fewer than seven ticks left, though, that eFG% drops down to 49.3 percent—a tick below the Warriors’ league-worst regular-season mark.
There’s also the elegant solution of Butler actually taking the 3-pointers that the defense is daring him to take. It’s not how Jimmy likes to roll; he attempted just 2.1 triples per game during the regular season, his lowest number in seven years, and made only 24.4 percent of them, his worst mark since he was a rookie. It is possible for him to make ’em, though. He shot a respectable enough 34.1 percent over the course of his career before this season, and hit a shade under 37 percent in Miami’s run through the Eastern Conference playoffs. If he can confidently step into and knock down a couple in the early going, the Heat offense might start looking dangerous once again.
Will the Lakers start small?
Dwight Howard has started all four games in this series, a nod to both his effective work defending Nikola Jokic in the Western Conference finals and the Lakers’ season-long commitment to overwhelming opponents with size. He hasn’t had much of a role, though.
When Miami has gone without a center, or played stretch bigs Kelly Olynyk and Meyers Leonard, Dwight hasn’t had anyone to guard. When they’ve played more traditional lineups, the Heat have looked to attack him in the pick-and-roll whenever possible. And while he’s tried to be active on the offensive glass, his presence allows his defender to hang in the paint, clogging the driving lanes for LeBron James and AD. The result: The Lakers have been outscored by nine points in Howard’s 54 minutes in the series, the worst plus-minus on the team, and have outscored Miami by a whopping 33 points in 98 minutes when Davis is on the court without Dwight.
Lakers head coach Frank Vogel doesn’t have to change a damn thing off the bat if he doesn’t want to; that’s the benefit of having a 3-1 lead. But given how quick a hook Vogel had for Howard in Game 4—he exited with 4:11 remaining in the first quarter and never returned—and how much success L.A. has had playing Markieff Morris and Kyle Kuzma (a combined 21 points per game in the Finals, both shooting better than 39 percent from deep while playing solid defense), might he just decide to damn the torpedoes one win away from a title and play the Lakers’ jumbo-sized version of small ball from the opening tip?
Can the Heat spring Duncan Robinson?
The sharpshooting forward hasn’t been quiet, per se. After taking just three shots in Game 1, Robinson has fired 23 3-point attempts over the past three games. But he’s been absolutely blanketed on nearly all of those tries, with the Lakers’ wing defenders—chiefly Kentavious Caldwell-Pope—matching him stride for stride in his nightly marathon, doing their damnedest to stay attached around all those off-ball screens, and running him off the line whenever possible:
It’s a credit to Robinson that, despite being a frequent target of LeBron on defense and shooting just 30.8 percent from distance, he’s still made a positive impact in his minutes, thanks largely to his off-ball gravity. But after losing the long-range battle in all four Finals games, the Heat—who finished sixth in the league in total 3-point makes and second in team 3-point accuracy this season—could really use one of those “six 3s in a half” kind of games from Robinson to stretch out the L.A. defense, take some pressure off of Butler and rookie Tyler Herro, and expand Miami’s razor-thin margin for error.
One potential cause for optimism: In Game 4, the Heat outscored the Lakers by 10 points in 29 minutes with Adebayo and Robinson sharing the floor, scoring at a 125.5 points-per-100 clip with their All-Star center back to resume the duo’s devastating handoff partnership. Maybe, with a few more reps under their belt to rediscover their rhythm, Bam can help dislodge KCP and Co. long enough to give Robinson the daylight he’s been missing. If he can, Robinson could provide the sort of lift Miami sorely needs to keep its season alive.
