Miami Heat: There Was This One P.J. Tucker Wrinkle That Should Remain
You can blame it on the players, you can blame it on coaching, or you can blame it on both. The fact is that the Heat were simply whomped on Monday night and as great as they have been defensively, Monday’s loss proved that they’re not invincible.
Nonetheless, the Heat did provide a valiant effort about halfway through the third quarter. There was an adjustment that head coach Erik Spoelstra made and one that he had yet to do for a single minute this season.
He implemented a 2-3 zone that featured Bam Adebayo and Kyle Lowry defending above the break, with Jimmy Butler and Duncan Robinson near the corners, and P.J. Tucker in the middle. This was to, potentially, neutralize Denver’s interior penetration while also sending multiple bodies to crash the boards.
It gave Miami life between the end of the third quarter and the beginning of the fourth but it was ,perhaps, too late. Even with that new thing to deploy and though effective, Denver was still able to close the game.
Spoelstra allowing Tucker to defend larger front court players is something that he should consider more often. While P.J. is greatly undersized, he still uses his strong lower base to contest shots and box out, which made him valuable during his previous Houston and Milwaukee stints.
- In a combined 9:34 minutes, Jokic was 7-8 from the floor when guarded by Butler and Adebayo, but went 0-2 in 1:28 minutes with Tucker as the primary defender.
Throughout this season, the Heat will be capable of winning games off of their defense, alone, as there are enough High IQ defenders on this roster for them to do so. The effort is already there, while this is an opportunity for Miami to instill more trust and communication going forward.
If not, they’ll see their opponents score 15-20 points above their season average for points allowed more often and in the new NBA, it could all happen rather quickly.