What's Been Heating Up: Lillard Cooking Until Spo Adjusted To Take Him Out

A breakdown of how Lillard cooked in the 1st before Spoelstra adjusting to cut off the whole Bucks offense

What’s been heating up? Here, I’ll be breaking one key takeaway from the games. Whether it’s a reason they won or lost, a key adjustment, or answering a question about anything that is interesting enough.

Man, this was a show from Damian Lillard, especially in the first half. He was straight-up cooking everything and everyone. It was surprising to see the Heat come out with that kind of approach. A lot of it was tough shot-making, particularly in isolation, but a lot of the 3s the Bucks generated were off-defensive lapses.

The Bucks had a 141.3 offensive rating with a 73.5% TS in the first half. Lillard scored 25 points on 2/3 2pt, 6/9 3pt, and 3/3 ft with 7 assists. The Bucks as a whole also scored 13/21 3pt. Almost everything started with Lillard. Without Giannis Antetokounmpo, that was their whole offense for the entire game.

Everything changed in the second half, though. Erik Spoelstra made adjustments to how they treated Lillard and how they defended every action involving him. As simple as it is, everyone's intensity and effort were on a whole different level. This wasn’t the same team in the second half.

I don’t remember the last time I’ve seen a team look so in sync offensively and have the offense flow for easy shot after easy shot only to have disappear in an instant after the break. I said that this wasn’t the same team in the second half defensively, but the Bucks were also not the same team offensively. On many occasions, they looked shell-shocked.

But that’s what can happen when the defense steps up.

So, let’s go through how the Bucks started the game and how the Heat’s defense allowed such a show only to take it all away in the second half.

Lillard cooked early. He had 17 points on 1/2 2pt, 4/5 3pt, and 3/3 ft with 3 assists — he almost outscored the Heat(20) by himself. He was gunning for 3s:

On pretty much all of the 3s, the defense is simply not good. In the first clip, he was inbounding the ball and as soon as he passed, he was gone and Highsmith was trailing. It was at that point, that I knew it was over — him making that first 3pt had that feel he was going to cook.

The next clip was also bad defense by Highsmith. The Bucks also showed great action. It’s a few things going on and you don’t know what is going to hit you. It starts off with what looks like a stagger for Prince until he looks to set a screen for Lillard, turning that into a double PNR for Lillard. But Lillard was picking up the dribble at the same time, which looks like confused Highsmith. All that space meant, he can throw the pass to Lopez for the handoff and Adebayo is… in a drop?

Are we playing DROP against the LILLARD? Okay then. We did see another case of drop against Love:

That’s just inexcusable. You do NOT play drop against Lillard and give him that much room.

But we did see an adjustment right away when it comes to that with them looking to switch everything:

It’s another double PNR but now they’re switching… with some miscommunications. Was Highsmith even expecting to switch? He looked like he was ready to go over the screen. Butler switched but then Adebayo is looking like he’s switching and stopped when he sees Butler in front. Butler must have thought the same and retreated. So, you get another open pull-up 3pt from Lillard.

We finally get on the right track with Adebayo fully switching here:

It was Lillard and Lopez spamming handoffs and screens just going at both Highsmith and Adebayo. He got Adebayo on the switch and hit him with the stepback.

Those were a few of his shots, which you can see in the compilation above where he hits some nasty stepbacks. That was his scoring, which was as a result of poor miscommunication, poor defensive decision making, and quite simply put, tough shot making — he cooked nevertheless.

What cooked the Heat even more is his passing and how he created offense for everyone else:

He was starting to draw so much defense that everything else opened up for everyone else.

He got Robinson on the switch and that draws a double from Highsmith, which forces help elsewhere as Lopez rolls. But then you see the defensive miscommunication and overhelping from everyone that gives Prince a wide-open look.

This showed up a few possessions later, but the Heat got lucky that Green missed the corner 3pt:

But the approach was similar. It’s Prince screening to force confusion with the defense, he pops and it’s a swing to the corner.

The Heat’s defense wasn’t clicking at all. Lillard’s shot-making aside, they were making so many errors away from the ball that was uncharacteristic.

When Love was in the game(he never came back after he checked out), they were showing with him and this is what they got:

It’s Lopez rolling into the paint. Robinson makes the right rotation but that’s still a significant size advantage and Lopez is able to rise above for a clean look.

Or this happens and this shows how much pressure Lillard puts on defenses.

It’s spamming Lillard's actions to get something going. Love shows and the defense does a good job recovering on the first go. They flow into another screen that Highsmith switches. So, they bring back Love again to show for the second time, and this time the positioning of the screen makes it more difficult. Pat pops, which forces Herro to come over from Prince, and gets beat on the closeout to the rim.

Defenses can show and recover the first time. But do that again and again, and again. At some point, something is going to break.

They continued to press the same buttons. Here’s another Lillard-Prince PNR to hunt Robinson:

Robinson shows hard, which does stop Lillard but with Lopez cutting inside, that takes Love with him and that’s too far for Love to close out, which forces him to overcompensate and bite on the fake.

So, to start the game Lillard got himself cooking with plenty of easy 3-point shots that came as a result of miscommunication and poor defense. He continued to exploit that in the second quarter by hunting players on shows and making reads out of that. That worked exceptionally well for the Bucks.

That was until the Heat adjusted in the second half. The first adjustment was having Butler on Lillard. That alone played a huge factor. Lillard didn’t want to or couldn’t attack Butler in the same way.

The switches were also much cleaner and more with intent. But the biggest change was the aggressive doubling. They were NOT going to get beat by Lillard and force the ball out of his hands:

All of this meant that the possessions took longer and longer to get anything going. The mismatch-hunting offense made it less effective. They still hunted. They still looked to attack Herro or Duncan on shows but they were aggressive. They aggressively showed and doubled and blitzed.

We did see that the Bucks did press again earlier but now you’re also running against the clock. Now, will you continue to risk getting a possession within the last five seconds?

Here’s the Bucks’ pace with Lillard on by quarter: 14.9 → 15.56 → 19.05 → 21.29!

That’s insane. Like WTF is that pace? It took them on average 21.2 seconds into the possession to get a shot off. That’s why the Bucks struggled to get anything going. Their source of offense was getting the ball out of his hands over and over again and they were running out of time. That’s why their last resort offense was a bad shot. The worst part for them was that Lillard had no opportunity to get open either.

The first change shows up the first time Lillard runs a PNR:

Butler starts on Lillard and any of the screens with Adebayo are 100% switches. There are no miscommunications like we saw earlier.

They were also more aggressive in their doubles pushing him towards poor spots on the court:

He’s getting blitzed near the sideline where he doesn’t have much space to make anything else happen.

All of that made his life so uncomfortable. He didn’t get any daylight to even attempt to do anything. With the only source of offense being cut off, the Bucks had nothing else to go to and they were simply running out of time.

This was an A+ adjustment from Spoelstra and A+ execution from everyone else.