2023 NBA Finals Preview
Can the Heat take their Cinderella story to its fullest conclusion or will the Nuggets reign supreme?
The 2023 NBA Finals will pit a pair of unexpected contenders against one another when the Denver Nuggets square off with the Miami Heat on Thursday night. The Heat’s emergence as the Eastern Conference representative is particularly surprising.
Miami finished the regular season with a middling 44-38 record, just barely squeaking its way into the playoffs by winning an win-or-go-home matchup with the Chicago Bulls in their second game of the Play-In Tournament. The Heat have transformed since then.
What was once a collection of unreliable spare parts around star players Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo has evlolved into an army of reliable role players seemingly incapable of misisng shots from beyond the arc.
Miami sported a 27th-best 34.4% three-point percentage (on 34.8 attempts per game) during the regular season. That mark is at 39.0% (on 33.6 attempts per game) for the postseason, ranking first among playoff teams.
The Heat’s quartet of Kyle Lowry, Caleb Martin, Max Strus, and Gabe Vincent have always been reliable in terms of decision making, motor, and defensive scheme execution, but their inconsistency knocking down shots throughout the year torpedoed Miami’s overall offensive effectiveness.
With those four clicking and Duncan Robinson back to being an elite-leve shooter, the Heat have built a potent offensive machine, providing tons of space for Jimmy Butler to dominate in isolation and keeping threats in perpetual motion around Bam Adebayo as either a screener or handoff hub, when Butler is on the bench or taking a play off in the corner.
If Miami can keep up its hot shooting (a fairly big if) then it’s got the goods to create some serious headaches for Denver. The Nuggets have a great individual defender to put on Butler in Aaron Gordon, but the Heat are experts at manipulating matchups to get Jimmy G. Buckets into more advantageous situations. Denver has players he can pick on.
Jamal Murray simply can’t guard Butler and while Michael Porter Jr. has the size to be disruptive, Butler will almost certainly view him as baby food, given his limited competence defensively. Even Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, a highly gifted defensive player, is a bit light in the shorts to take on the Butler challenge consistently.
The Nuggets will do their best to keep one of Gordon or Bruce Brown on Butler as much as possible, but that will create small cracks in Denver’s defense that Eric Spoelstra will be glad to help his team take advantage of and that give Butler a bit of space to operate in. He’s hell to deal with once he gets you on his hip.
Miami will also inevitably stress test Nikola Jokic’s ability to defend in space, which is limited. He’s been up to every challenge in the playoffs thus far. The Nuggets toggle between drop coverage, playing Jokic up-to-touch, and aggressive doubling of the ballhandler against the pick-and-roll.
Denver probably could have stayed in a drop against the regular season version of the Heat, but if Miami keeps up its hot shooting it will force the Nuggets into a less conservative approach. Amping up the pressure that they put on the ball is actually Denver’s sweet spot defensively. The Nuggets have a year’s worth of practice rotating behind the play and do so with great effect.
The Heat are a fast-moving machine full of good decision makers though, and consistently giving them an advantage by sending multiple players to the ball in the pick-and-roll could be a recipe for disaster, particularly if they maintain their marksmanship.
Such is life with a defense built around Jokic. He more than makes up for it on the other end of the court.
Big Honey is an unsolvable riddle. He’s incredibly difficult to deal with as an individual scorer and so good as a passer surrounded by so many smart cutters and good shooters that sending any sort of help his way almost always yields points for the Nuggets.
Jokic can diagnose and pick apart nearly any coverage as its being deployed. He’s almost certain to disect the zone that Miami has found so handy throughout its postseason run. The Heat will be better served staying in man-to-man coverage and hoping that Adebayo can pull off a defensive miracle.
No one has proven capable of taking on the Jokic assignment AND defending in the pick-and-roll AND dealing with the Nuggets handoff actions AND keeping Jokic off the offensive glass once a shot is in the air. Adebayo is an incredible defensive player who has the skills to do each of those things, but Denver requires that its opponents do multiples of them on basically every possession. Not to mention that each situation has threats outside of just Jokic that need to be accounted for.
Let’s use just a simple handoff between Murray and Jokic as an example. The easiest solution for stopping Murray is to switch the action. Adebayo is arguably the best on-ball big man defender in the NBA. His ability to handle Murray off-the-bounce is a massive weapon, but taking advantage of it requires leaving the man who was defending Murray - likely someone small - to deal with Jokic, a massive human being and one of the most effective post scorers in all of basketabll.
The Nuggets force opponents into these kinds of quandries constantly and Jokic is their fulcrum for doing so. He’s such a good facilitator that he doesn’t even really need to do anything other than hold the ball to put massive pressure on the Heat defense. Spoelstra will inevitably have some sort of unconventional plan to attempt to slow him.
It’s just hard to imagine anything that’s going to work.
X-Factor: Gabe Vincent is going to play a critical role on both ends of the court. He’ll likely get the first crack at defending Murray. Vincent is a smart hardworking defender, but he’s not lightning fast or particularly long. He doesn’t have to stop Murray completely, but if he can keep him from going supernova and keep Miami from having to tire out Butler by tasking him with the assignment, it will go a long way.
Offensively Vincent has the pull-up skills to punish Denver if it relies on drop coverage and the blend off-ball movement and shooting to cause trouble if the Nuggets approach things more aggressively. A version of Vincent who is a threat as a pick-and-roll operator and hot from beyond the arc transforms the Heat offense in wonderful ways.
Prediction: Miami has more strengths it can lean on than it feels like it’s being given credit for, but Denver has Jokic. He’s about to validate those MVPs he’s been stacking up. Nuggets in 6.