How Heat slowed Trae Young and Hawks offense in Game 1: ‘They switch one through five’
The Miami Heat’s defensive game plan against Atlanta Hawks star guard Trae Young didn’t include many surprises. It’s actually just about what the Hawks expected.
The Heat turned up the pressure, physicality and spent most of the afternoon using its switch-heavy scheme to keep Young out of the paint and quickly close off any pockets of space before he could rise up for a clean outside look.
“We know what they’re going to do and we have to execute against that,” Hawks coach Nate McMillan said of the Heat, which switched the second-most screens and posted the fourth-best defensive rating in the NBA during the regular season. “They’re a good team. They switch one through five.”
The result was a dominant defensive performance for the Heat in a 115-91 blowout home win against the Hawks on Sunday in Game 1 of their first-round playoff series. Miami holds a 1-0 lead, with Game 2 set for Tuesday at FTX Arena (7:30 p.m., TNT and Bally Sports Sun).
Young, who averaged 28.4 points per game in the regular season, finished Game 1 with a season-low eight points on 1-of-12 shooting from the field, including 0-of-7 shooting on threes, in 28 minutes. It marked just the third time in his NBA career that he did not make more than one shot in a game, and his only made shot on Sunday came on a transition layup.
“Keep him in front,” Heat star Jimmy Butler said of the key to keeping Young in check Sunday. “He’s constantly breaking down defenses and causing you to help. If you don’t help, it’s a layup, it’s a floater. If you do help, he’s hitting the right guy every single time. I think we did a great job of not fouling and moving our feet and staying in front.”
From the first seconds of the game, the Heat deployed its switching scheme against Young.
The first Hawks possession: Heat guard Kyle Lowry started on Young, then wing Max Strus switched on to him, then forward P.J. Tucker got the assignment after a screen, then Strus found himself back on Young with Tucker stunting over to push him toward the left side of the court as the other Heat defenders stood ready to help on any dribble penetration attempt. All the while, the shot clock wound down to the final seconds. Young attempted to take advantage of the attention he was getting and catch the back line of the Heat’s defense sleeping by throwing a rushed lob to center Onyeka Okongwu that couldn’t be completed.
When the game was over, the Heat switched 21 screens involving Young as the ball-handler in Game 1, according to Second Spectrum. Miami allowed just 0.8 points per each of those screens, which made the Hawks’ go-to action an inefficient one on Sunday.
“I thought their pressure sped us up and we didn’t have the proper spacing a lot of times in our sets,” McMillan said.
It didn’t help that Hawks center Clint Capela wasn’t available to capitalize on the attention Young drew from the Heat with strong rolls to the basket. Capela, who could miss most of the series because of a hyperextended right knee, scored 1.37 points per possession as the roll man in the regular season to rank in the NBA’s 87th percentile in that category.
“Showing bodies,” Lowry said of the Heat’s defensive strategy against Young. “Listen, he’s going to make more than one shot, he’s going to have more than four assists, he’s going to explode. But we just got to stay patient and stick to what we do. If we stick with the game plan and he makes shots, then you just go on and move forward.”
The game plan includes throwing a bunch of different looks at Young by using various defenders and coverages to try to disrupt his rhythm. The switching scheme is the Heat’s primary coverage with starting center Bam Adebayo on the court, but it also used a press zone, trapped and doubled Young at times on Sunday.
According to NBA Advanced Stats, Lowry spent 36 possessions as Young’s primary defender, followed by 21 possessions for Butler, 16 possessions for Gabe Vincent, 15 possessions for Tucker and 10 possessions for Adebayo. Young combined to shoot 0 of 11 from the field against those five Heat defenders.
“It’s just throwing different bodies, fresh bodies and just being there for whatever he does,” Lowry said. “Jimmy can be length, P.J. can be physical, me and Gabe [Vincent] with quickness, Bam [Adebayo] being Bam. We all just have different types of things.”
Young added: “They do a lot of switching things up too, not just switching. They do a lot of trapping. You have to be ready to read off of what they do.”
It takes a total team effort to bother an elite scorer like Young, but Adebayo remains at the center of it all. The Heat allowed just 73.2 points per 100 possessions in the 28 minutes Adebayo spent on the court in Game 1, compared to 122 points per 100 possessions in the 20 minutes he was on the bench.
“He’s the one that’s driving [the defense],” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said, referring to Adebayo’s versatility and ability to guard every position. “If you don’t have a guy like Bam, it’s very difficult to do some of these schemes.”
With Young struggling, the Hawks’ usually efficient offense wilted against the Heat. Atlanta, which finished the regular season with the NBA’s second-best offensive rating, totaled 91 points on 38.7 percent shooting from the field and 10-of-36 (27.8 percent) shooting from three-point range while committing 18 turnovers on Sunday.
“This team can score,” Spoelstra said. “This is not indicative of who this team has been the last two months. Our veteran guys understand that. You got to put this behind us and get to work with that same level of respect knowing what this team can do.”
The Heat will continue to do everything it can to make Young’s every dribble and shot difficult, while understanding that his stat line in Game 1 is the anomaly.
“He’s going to score the ball,” Tucker said. “You can’t think he’s going to score eight or whatever he scored in a game. He’s going to score the ball. It’s one game, we look at it as that. We’ll treat him the exact same way next game, expect him to take a lot more shots, be a lot more aggressive.”
Maybe the quick 40-hour turnaround after Friday’s play-in win to clinch a playoff spot was a factor in Young’s offensive struggles, maybe shots he normally makes just didn’t go in or maybe the Heat’s defense was just that good in Game 1.
Whatever happens in Game 2, the Heat can live with the results as long as its executing the defensive game plan. It’s just that the results were exactly what Miami hoped for on Sunday.
“We all know Trae is a hell of a player and he missed a lot of shots that he normally makes, so we did a good job of making him do that,” Butler said. “But we got to back to the drawing board and figure out how we can do it again.”
