Playoffs Film Study: How Heat are finding some holes in Knicks' defense

Jimmy Butler has been a member of the Miami Heat for four seasons. Over those four years, the Heat have had the league’s eighth-best regular season record (181-128, .586), but are tied with the Boston Celtics for the most playoff wins: The Celtics are 32-26 over the last four playoffs after their win in Philadelphia on Thursday; the Heat are 32-21. And both teams are now one win away from a third trip from the Eastern Conference finals, where they met in both 2020 and 2022.

The Heat have had valuable contributions from everybody in their rotation in this conference semifinal series against the New York Knicks, but Butler remains the straw that stirs the drink. That’s why it was somewhat of a surprise that he had a relatively quiet night as the Heat lost Game 5 in New York on Wednesday: Butler scored just 19 points, his fewest in 11 postseason games (including the Play-In Tournament).

While Butler didn’t finish a lot of plays (registering his lowest usage rate), he did have the ball quite a bit. He had possession for 6.7 minutes in Game 5, most on the Heat by a wide margin. And Miami set 48 ball-screens for him, 15 more than they set in another other game in this series.

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1. Two screens x Six possessions

A lot of those screens were sequential. As they tried to complete a comeback from 19 points down, the Heat ran the same action with Butler handling the ball on six straight possessions late in the fourth quarter. It began with him on one side of the floor, with Bam Adebayo and Duncan Robinson coming over to set a pair of picks:

The first time the Heat ran the play, Jalen Brunson blitzed the second screen, but then tried to recover back to his man (Robinson). With Quentin Grimes caught in the first screen, Butler attacked the available space, drawing RJ Barrett off Caleb Martin on the right wing. Martin blew by Barrett’s close out, collapsed the New York defense, and made a pretty incredible kick-out pass for a Robinson 3 that put the Heat within four:

On the next possession, the Heat ran the same action – from the other side of the floor. Brunson again left to recover to his man before Grimes was able to get back in front of the ball. Neither Barrett nor Julius Randle committed to help from the weak side and Butler got all the way to the rim, finishing over a recovering Isaiah Hartenstein:

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2. A different setup

On the next possession (and after a timeout), Butler went back to the left side of the floor. But this time, Martin and Gabe Vincent were on that side too. Brunson again didn’t contain the dribble, but Hartenstein was in a better position to stop a drive. So Butler just pulled up from 18 feet:

The next possession was the same as the last, with Butler, Martin and Vincent all on the left side. This time, Brunson switched the second screen, knowing there was nobody else on the right side to take the assignment. Butler attacked him and drew a foul:

Butler missed one of the free throws, but the Heat had four scores (eight points) on the first four possessions they rank the double-screen for Butler.

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3. Finally, a stop

They still couldn’t catch the Knicks, because they weren’t getting enough stops on the other end of the floor. After a tip-dunk for Hartenstein, Butler got the ball up the floor quickly, but the screens were still ready for him. Brunson contained the dribble, but Grimes didn’t give up the switch. With two to the ball, Butler got it back to Robinson.

And then Brunson, who had played all 46 minutes at that point, made a great effort to run Robinson off his initial look from beyond the arc. Robinson side-stepped the close-out, but missed the off-the-dribble look with Grimes (who had also played all 46 minutes) making another great effort to make some kind of a challenge:

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4. Scramble and dig in

As noted in this space before Game 4, the Heat have often been playing late in the clock, and the Knicks’ defense has been good, but just not good enough. But the final time Miami ran the double-screen action, New York played a full possession of good defense, even though they were playing 4-on-5 for a few seconds.

Grimes got taken out of the play when he collided with Adebayo’s screen, but the Knicks were able to switch and scramble, not allowing any Heat player to break free for more than a split second:

Butler then tried to take the hobbled Grimes 1-on-1, but the Knicks guard stayed in front of him and took the ball away:

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5. More coming

Eight points on six possessions is still a good return on that action. Robinson will get attacked on the other end*, but Max Strus can fill that roll as the second screener. Having the guy that Brunson is defending setting the second screen makes him work on defense, which can benefit the Miami defense, which has struggled to stop the Knicks’ star at times.

* Fourteen ball-screens were set for Brunson by the Knick that Robinson was guarding in Game 5. That was as many as were set by Robinson’s man over the first four games combined.

So we can expect to see more of the double-screen for Butler in Game 6 on Friday (7:30 ET, ESPN), and we can expect him to look for his shot (or to get to the free-throw line) more than he did in Game 5. The Knicks will have a plan for it, but the success of that plan will depend on the effort of the defenders on the floor.

The Heat (4-0 at home) are one of three teams – the Nuggets (6-0) and Lakers (5-0) – that have yet to lose on friendly terrain in these playoffs. Two of those teams, amazingly, qualified via the Play-In Tournament. And both of them can reach the conference finals with a home victory on Friday night.

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John Schuhmann is a senior stats analyst for NBA.com. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here and follow him on Twitter.

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