Denver’s Offensive MASTERCLASS Exposed Miami’s Defense

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This is how you break down zone defense. As you can see the Heat are in a 1-3-1 and Jokic goes to the right block to get the ball and make things happen for Denver. Now as he does that, follow the weak side where Jeff Green screens for Braun who doesn’t wait for a shot, but instead cuts along the baseline behind every heat defender. With 2 guys on him Jokic does a phenomenal job of holding onto the ball and delivering a perfect pass in traffic for the dunk.
This is the exact same 1-3-1 zone here in the third quarter, and Denver goes for the same setup bringing Jokic on the right side to get it.
As soon as he even touches it, both Braun and Green fly in towards the basket and as we let it go, Jokic lobs a beautiful pass for Braun on the move and he makes a great athletic catch and finish.
Christian played a terrific game 3 benefiting a lot off of the attention that Jokic and Murray were attracting. You can see that just by being aggressive and moving towards the basket he got himself some easy buckets on his way to 15 points and 4 rebounds on a fantastic efficiency.
Just what the Nuggets needed for a huge win on the road. But let me show you what else happened.
Miami also tried trapping Murray in the pick and roll a lot. And they had some success with it.
Right here, they chase him down, Jamal gets rid of it, and the ball still finds Jokic inside but in this scramble the Heat are able to bring another body down low to bother Nikola’s view just enough to force the miss.
But a lot of these ended with a bucket as well.
In the first, Jimmy chases him down and Bam steps in as well for this trap. But Murray stays patient and keeps his dribble up to the point where he sees Jokic alone and finds him so Nikola just steps in and floats this one in.
Again with both Butler and Adebayo on him Jamal stops on a dime, turns and finds the big man all alone. So because Bam is trailing, he tries extra hard to contest which Jokic uses against him and just pump fakes, drives inside and lays it in.
And let me show you a funny example where Murray completely faked out Bam. Watch where the ball is and where he’s looking. Nice recovery but he was already confused here and the Joker used it as he finishes inside yet again.
This was a great response to game 2 by Denver with a much improved offensive execution.
You see that a lot of these connections are between Jokic and Murray. An assist from one of them to the other. Well, check out this stat.
Nikola and Jamal have 27 assists between them in just 3 games, while Tatum to Brown or Brown to Tatum only assisted 6 times in 7 games against Miami.
This speaks a lot about the great dynamic that the 2 Nuggets leaders have between them, but it does also say a lot about the Tatum and Brown duo, and not in a good way.
But let’s get back to this game and show you what happened when the Heat flat out switched the pick and roll.
On the hand off Jimmy is lackadaisical here so I guess he communicated that this is a switch.
But this is just too much space for a knockdown shooter like Murray and this is a splash from downtown.
But if you thought that was easy, check out the barbeque chicken here for Jokic who catches Vincent here on the switch. Of course it’s bully ball but as we stop it here you see that Butler is hesitant to leave KCP alone in the corner, and for Love it would mean leaving an open Gordon for the lob and the jam. So as crazy as it sounds they just let Jokic do his thing and destroy Vincent under the basket.
Credit to Miami who’ve tried a bunch of different looks defensively but this was a pure offensive masterclass by Denver in game 3 to take back home court.
Hey if you liked this video, you’ll love this mini documentary about Jokic’s childhood. A lot of research went into this so check it out. Talk to you in the next one. Peace out.