Jimmy Butler shredded the Los Angeles Lakers in Game 3 of the NBA Finals. The Miami Heat star controlled the game for all but three minutes, equally content to get to the rim, get to his spots or create an open shot for a teammate. Butler scored 40 points on Sunday without even making a 3, going 14 for 20 and making 12 of his 14 free throws, with 13 assists, 11 rebounds, two steals and two blocks in a 115-104 win. That is the story.
But the Heat scored more than enough points to win in Game 2 and didn’t get close enough for Butler to play hero. Why that was different this time is another story.
After falling behind 2-0, Butler said Miami had allowed the Lakers too many offensive rebounds and failed to get back in transition, the same mistakes that proved costly in the opener. “Eventually we’re going to have to fix it because that’s how we’re going to win,” he said. This proved prophetic: In Game 3, the Lakers didn’t get their first second-chance point until the second half and finished with only six. And not only were they unable to run often, they weren’t particularly efficient when they did.
All playoffs, the Lakers’ opponents have talked about limiting their easy shots and forcing them to play against a set defense. No one, however, has been able to do these things consistently. That the Heat did — and made Los Angeles turn the ball over on 20 percent of its possessions — without Bam Adebayo and Goran Dragic is remarkable.
Anthony Davis, so dominant just two days earlier, took a seat with two fouls in the first quarter with four turnovers and no shot attempts to his name. It was a rough night for Davis, but look at how Miami is shrinking the floor, showing help and forcing those early turnovers:
Uncomfortable, Davis finished with 15 points on 6-for-9 shooting and missed the only shot he took in the fourth quarter. Much has been made about the Heat having no one who can match up with Davis besides Adebayo, but that’s not necessarily the point. The goal is to make him feel like there is always another defender lurking nearby, regardless of who’s guarding him.
“All five guys on the court’s antennas were up for his sets and for his looks,” Heat forward Jae Crowder said.
The plan was similar against LeBron James, who had eight turnovers to go with his 25 points and eight assists. Miami learned after Game 1 that it could not simply surrender easy switches against James, and in Game 3 it sold out even more on Los Angeles’ shooters to prevent him from getting to the basket. The Heat tried to show and recover on his pick-and-rolls, and if they had to switch, they made sure he saw bodies.
Here, James gets Robinson on him, but the Lakers cannot take advantage:
Here, Crowder double-teams James late in the shot clock and Markieff Morris misses a deep 3:
And here, in a play that is just as impressive as anything he did offensively, Butler pulls the chair against James to force a travel:
All season, Los Angeles has never scored fewer than the 34 points in the paint it mustered on Sunday. (Butler alone had 26.) The Lakers shot 14 for 22 at the rim, essentially an average night for an average team. Los Angeles could have potentially overcome this with 3-point shooting, but it went 14 for 42 from deep. Miami often stopped short on its close-outs, encouraging the Lakers to shoot. Far too often, they either turned down an open look or bricked it:
In the previous two games, the Heat tried to use its 2-3 zone to throw Los Angeles out of rhythm. In theory, the zone should keep a big man at the basket to protect the rim, and it did succeed in terms of tilting the Lakers’ offense toward the perimeter. It failed spectacularly, though, when it came to keeping Davis off the glass and forcing misses when playmakers flashed to the middle. Miami played much less zone in Game 3.
Regardless of coverage, though, the Heat were focused on stopping dribble penetration. Here they are in a 1-2-2 zone against the Lakers’ five-out lineup:
Morris got a clean look there, illustrating the costs of this approach. But the Lakers didn’t burn Miami enough to make it reconsider its strategy — in crunch time, it triple-teamed James on the baseline and Morris couldn’t convert:
The Heat weren’t perfect defensively, but they had their priorities straight. If they were going to go down 3-0, they were determined that it wouldn’t be because Los Angeles got a bunch of layups and dunks in transition and mismatches and putbacks in the halfcourt.
“We just couldn’t really get into Lakers basketball tonight,” Morris said.
Miami coach Erik Spoelstra loves to talk about “moments of truth.” When the other team extends its lead or cuts into yours, “you have to be able to respond to it,” he said. He added that you must respond with discipline and poise, not just intensity.
In Game 3’s moments of truth, Butler delivered. Afterward, he deflected credit to his teammates — “I got the easy job, those guys create so much space for me” — and surely inspired some eye rolls. But his modesty isn’t completely false: Butler did have space, and he was able to find the matchups he wanted and attack one-on-one. The way the Heat played, James and Davis didn’t have that luxury.
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