Miami Heat vs Atlanta Hawks Game #56 Notes
Notes on the Heat's short roll offense, Trae hunting, Anderson led offense, Wiggins' drives & a much more
Welcome to my game notes. A simple idea where I’ll be sharing my notes from each Heat game that will look at some observations, key points from the game, actions, themes or just focusing on individual possessions that caught my eye — if you have followed me on Twitter, it’s basically my old game threads with some added thoughts and context. It’s to freely go through anything interesting on the court with little to no structure or purpose.
Firstly, I want to shout out Marc Campbell’s Substack, Low Man Help. A lot of his stuff is so fun and helpful to read. If you are into the nerdy side of basketball and looking at some of the very little, ultra-specific stuff, you need to subscribe to his newsletter. I just recently found out about it and I binge-read/watched pretty much all his recent stuff and I can’t recommend it more.
His recent posts doing the same thing with sharing his game notes gave me the inspiration to do something similar for the Heat.
So, let’s go through the Hawks game. The key stuff:
Open 3s missed
Mitchell’s drives
Wiggins’ rim pressure, paint touches and some solid reads
Anderson led offense & a lot of movement
Short roll offense
Young hunting everyone + picking on Adebayo to switch
Poor transition defense
Offense
This was an awful offensive game. A lot of it was compounded by probably the worst shooting from the Heat all season. That’s why they had a 90.5 ORTG and a 37.2% eFG. They shot 5/34 on open or wide-open looks.
I don’t like using shooting variance as an excuse, especially when there were other issues offensively, too. But you do need to hit some kind of baseline when it comes to 3-point shooting. It doesn’t even need to be average, but it just can’t be 14% either. If they make five more 3s that were practice shots for great shooters, it could’ve been different.
Take a look at some of those open 3s taken:
A lot of the shots are ones that I’d call opportunistic 3s that you simply need to knock down because you ended up with the best possible shot taken by a great option. Whether it’s in transition, a defense making a mistake, or you hit on something that the defense panicked and resulted in a wide-open look, these are all possessions that I see as a huge win.
I enjoyed Davion Mitchell attacking off the dribble in the PNR or in isolation. A couple of times, the offense seemed to have gone nowhere and Mitchell managed to beat his man off the dribble and get right to the rim — he went 3/3 at the rim
I liked that he was able to take advantage when the defense switched.
This is another thing that I enjoy from him where he will look to push the pace and get the ball moving off drives:
It did end in a miss and it was also Jaquez in the corner but with that push from Mitchell, he will either get to the rim as he has done previously or he will force help like this and make the quick pass.
One more thing from Mitchell was this play:
With the defense constantly going under his screens and not seeing him as a threat when he has the ball in his hands like this, it’s good to see him just letting it fly.
Wiggins also impressed me with some of the drives and reads that he was making. He has shown that he can get paint touches more consistently, get to the rim, grift for fouls, and even make solid reads.
The Hawks were showing first and then ending up with a switch. I liked that Wiggins was able to attack once the switch came but before they were able to recover to consistently get those paint touches. That foul drawing in the end tops it off.
He’s shown a couple of good passes too. There was this Wiggins-Bam PNR that got him going downhill(great reject). Help is early inside off Anderson and Young has to sink down to cover that rotation. That opens up a perfect skip pass to Burks.
Or he could get a mismatch against Young, draw the defense in the paint, and make a readout that way:
I liked how you can also get him a touch around that area in different ways:
Starts off with Adebayo at the elbow and takes his defender out. Then Anderson flows up to take his man away from the paint. Wiggins comes off a cross-screen from Burks(who’s guarded by Young), which either forces a switch or allows Wiggins to attack the show. There are still some spacing issues with the defense still being in the paint ignoring both Adebayo and Anderson.
Speaking of spacing issues. That was also a big issue with multiple players getting helped off regularly in different ways and off different spots of the floor.
Anderson was one of the bigger culprits who got helped off. That affected Wiggins’ ability to drive a couple of times.
Wiggins looks to come off a screen from Adebayo with Anderson as the hub, but when he does, Niang is already around the nail looking to take that drive away. Wiggins makes the kick but there’s no threat of Anderson pulling up. That flows into a swing to Robinson off a screen from Burks and that does flow into a good look in the end.
Next time, it involved Wiggins-Anderson PNR:
Even when they used Anderson in the action, Niang was still choosing to help on the drive and force that kick.
Those issues are made worse when there’s also Adebayo that can be helped off of:
It’s another Wiggins-Anderson PNR. That action alone meant Wiggins saw an extra defender in the paint on him, but he was also seeing Capela around the paint because he helped off Adebayo in the corner.
A similar thing with Adebayo happened earlier with Anderson looking to drive on Young but seeing the help of Adebayo again from the strong corner:
The issue with spacing showed so many times.
Here’s a Burks-Adebayo PNR but the defense is already packed in the paint:
Neither Anderson nor Wiggins are being guarded if they are just spaced at the perimeter. This also plays a part if there’s no shooting.
And the biggest issue is that it happens to everyone. Ware, Anderson, Adebayo, and Wiggins. All players that have their defender help off.
Here’s Robinson coming off a screen and as he curls to the paint, he sees Capela because he’s ignoring Ware:
It makes everything so much more difficult. Here’s a play for Herro, but look at all the traffic that he has to go through:
He’s dealing with Capela's showing. There’s no lob available or pass to Ware rolling because the help is early off the weak. On top of that, there’s help off the strong corner, making all of that space even worse.
That’s why you get possessions like these:
There’s no spacing on anything that the Heat want to do. Absolutely nothing. Every drive. Every roll. Every cut. There is someone already helping to make everything harder for the player with the ball.
There were some other spacing issues relating to Anderson. On two occasions, he had cut as a drive went on but the ball handler was expecting him to spot up:
There was a lot of offense revolving around the short roll.
When it comes to the short roll, that had to do with how the Hawks were treating the PNR right from the start.
Two minutes into the game. The first PNR for Herro and he sees this:
The Hawks looked to show and either recover or switch in the end. A few times, the coverage didn’t result in just the ball swinging when the switch happened more smoothly:
But plenty of the other times it was working to the short roll:
That had mixed results.
A few times it ended in a Ware floater.
Another time, I do think Ware had the open kick:
He’s looking to go for the floater over the defender way too quickly. That seems like a pre-determined read. He had a wide-open kick to Herro.
Sometimes the defense reset because the decision maker on the roll took long to make a read. That was also made worse with the help on the roll coming in early, which put the off-ball defenders in the right position from the start:
Look at those defensive rotations. They made any window close as soon as they opened. Adebayo on the roll immediately saw help in the paint. Young rushed quickly to take Ware. And as that is going on, the initial screen defender rotates in time to take the pass.
In the second half, there was a lot more emphasis on off-ball actions getting into the offense. They also continued to attack through the short roll with a bunch of Anderson led actions.
Everything was flowing through off-ball and then into Anderson. Once again, it had mixed results. Anderson is a good, quick decision maker and made reads when they opened up. But some of the issues showed up again with the early defense.
On one of the plays, coming out of an empty corner to flow into a Robinson-Anderson handoff, that draws two on the ball and opens up Anderson on the roll for the lob to Ware. But then it became so predictable that the defense was able to read perfectly where Daniels got the steal.
But I did enjoy the flow they played with. Take this possession that starts off with Robinson just flying around taking different routes, then when that doesn’t get anything, it flows into Herro-Anderson PNR:
There was also this play:
The end result isn’t perfect. Herro did have a potential lob here but opted for a floater. But the process behind the offense was flowing.
Some of it had issues with spacing and the shot at the end because of it, but I do like the idea of how they got to such places.
Finally, here’s a compilation of some other random things that caught my eye or were fun.
This lob from Herro to Bam >>>>
We again see Herro go to his rip through move early when attacking
One thing that has regularly stood out recently is when Herro doesn’t have himself going, particularly from 3pt, he will tend to go and settle for these shots fairly quickly
I liked this drive from Herro against Daniels, but I wonder why he picked up the dribble so early
I need this more from Adebayo. If he goes to attack in isolation, these are the shots that he needs to look to generate
This is where the offense becomes so bad. No one breaking the 3pt line. Ball is just swinging left to right and it ends in a poor, leaning shot
Defense
The big thing that stood out on defense involved everything to do with Young. Despite not making a 3-point shot and not even having a high-scoring game, he controlled everything and made the rest of the team pay.
It was also very smart execution from the Hawks that set their offense even better to attack with Young however they did.
The first thing was, surprisingly, involving Adebayo. There were a lot of possessions that involved getting Adebayo to switch on Young:
Regardless of what happens after, I do think that is the best strategy considering the context of the Hawks team. They rely on Young. He is their engine and the best decision-maker. There are cons to bringing Adebayo out of any other actions and out of potential help position, but you’re also neutralizing the most dangerous weapon in the first place. Whatever disadvantage you may have elsewhere, it should still be the better alternative.
There are also plays like this that Adebayo blows up and forces a turnover:
But a lot of the time, this is the move before the move. It’s getting the best defender out of the way and neutralizing him, which can lead to possessions like this:
Adebayo is on Young and he doesn’t attack and then just relegates to him a statute at the logo but that does give up the size advantage against Wiggins at the rim. This also opens up LeVert to attack Anderson, who also has no rim protector to help.
That’s what they did other times too. They got Adebayo out and attacked elsewhere with a better advantage:
Or it was again a move before the move that resulted in hunting the mismatches. It’s better to get the best defender out and then attack mismatches:
You still have the benefit of hunting a mismatch and putting the defense in rotation that way, but you also get the added bonus of having the best defender on the perimeter.
There were also some questionable decision-making like this:
Adebayo is on Young but then Ware also overhelps from the strongside corner. That is the Heat’s motto and makes sense a lot of the time, but why are you overhelping when you have the best defender on Young? Adebayo shouldn’t need help on drives. Stay home.
Staying on Young going hunting. That was a lot of happening against Herro in particular.
That was basically their offense down the stretch to close out the fourth. The Heat looked to do everything they could. They tried to show and recover. They tried to switch and let him hold his own. They tried to switch and double. All coverages got scored on.
There was this easy slip from Onyeka:
They also tried to switch without the aggressive doubles. That resulted in a simple drive that forced help from Wiggins and that got Mann an open 3pt.
Even when they looked to just show and recover, the execution was just so bad that it let Young still get a drive to the paint for a floater:
I really liked this from the Hawks, and this kind of just showed the level of execution that they had and it all starts way before the main action happened.
It starts with Adebayo above the break covering the guy with the ball. Next comes a backscreen from Daniels to get Mitchell off Young and switch to Herro. That doesn’t happen but then Risacher comes in to set another backscreen that forces a switch with Wiggins(now Mitchell is the low man instead).
The Hawks can now flow into Young-Daniels PNR. That gets Herro on the switch but Wiggins didn’t look like he wanted that to happen. Daniels rolls and it’s Mitchell not giving any help as the low man(that would’ve been Wiggins initially). Adebayo is out on the break.
This was just a great process from the Hawks.
The Hawks weren’t exclusively attacking Herro either. Young matched up with Anderson, which forced help and that just put the defense in rotation:
There were also these two plays with Young-Niang PNP that attacked Jaquez and Mitchell on the show and switched. It resulted in an open 3pt:
Young and the Hawks had so many options. They were able to push every single button. It didn’t matter who it was or what the coverage was. They had buttons to push to either get the shot they wanted or to put the defense in rotation to make it more likely — this was something the Heat couldn’t do as much.
I didn’t like Ware’s defense.
Ware was seen overhelping way too much and it didn’t feel like it was necessary(like the earlier play against Young with Adebayo). But there was also this:
Why is he coming to the paint and letting his man wide open for 3pt?
He was also seen staying around the paint looking to help but also not offering much:
There was this transition defense that allowed a lob.
And there were a couple of poor possessions helping in a bad way that had him leave his feet too early.
Transition defense was non-existent. Lack of effort. Not running back. So many lapses. Poor cross-matching because they didn’t get back:
And finally, a compilation of things that caught my eye:
There was Adebayo helping off the weak corner a bit too much I think. I didn’t see a point needing to be full two feet in the paint. I also didn’t like the closeout from Herro against Daniels. Why are we closing out so hard against Daniels, who wasn’t going to shoot at all(he had a similar possession where he dribbled into a contested shot)
Jaquez was poor on defense and that one possession with Daniels cooking him was just taking things over the top
I did like the defensive intensity and how they started the game but that didn’t last very long
Herro’s off-ball defense was questionable. Twice he was ball-watching that let his man cut and go somewhere else without him even noticing
I love this! Great notes, John! This 100% captures the concept—bring the details and make sure you can connect the thread.