If you came here looking for something on last night's Magic-Celtics game, I can't help you much. I'm glad it was a close game, but I wish it was a little less ugly. The most striking thing to me about that game is that the Magic clearly tried much harder than in Game 3, throwing out all the stops in terms of coaching adjustments and execution wrinkles, and it still took overtime for them to finally finish off a Celtics team clearly not playing their best. That says a lot about the kind of juggernaut the Celtics have become.
NBA Playoffs Tuesday Night Viewing Guide: Allowing Zone Defense Makes Following The NBA More Fun
Once upon a time, zone defenses weren’t allowed in the NBA, but if the Suns continue to hold the Lakers’ offense in check, it could be a big victory for innovation.
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So even though it would be one hell of a worse-case scenario, I don’t see that series lasting too much longer. Boston will win, and we’ll forget Game 4 ever happened.
The Lakers-Suns series, on the other hand, is now interesting after the Suns' Game 3 victory. I'm on record (sort of) of thinking the Lakers are still in really good shape to close this series out quickly, but at least there's some legitimate intrigue in this series. For that, we have one thing to thank: Phoenix's zone defense.
Because really, Phoenix won Game 3 solely because the Lakers couldn't solve their zone defense. Dan Devine of Yahoo! Sports' Ball Don't Lie already spelled out how here, so I won't break down why the zone worked. Instead, I'll try to put last night's coaching adjustment by Alvin Gentry into a proper historical context.
Once upon a time, zone defenses weren't allowed in the NBA. The only thing you could do legally was man-to-man, though pretty much every team had figured out a way to "hide" the zones they ran. If the referee caught someone not playing man or sagging too far into the lane, they called an illegal defense. That made for some odd situations where a player rushed too fast off his man to double team or gingerly moved their toes so they weren't too far away from their man. There was also the time in the 1991 playoffs when Don Nelson told his centers to stand 35 feet from the hoop just so David Robinson couldn't legally protect the basket. (Don't ask me how I remember this). That was awkward basketball.
Eventually, the NBA allowed teams to play full on zone defenses starting in 2001/02, so long as one person wasn't in the lane for three seconds. But even then, zones took a while to catch on. Nelson was the first to use it with the Mavericks, and he was universally scorned, even though his zone helped Dallas steal Game 1 on the road in San Antonio in the 2003 Western Conference Finals. Flip Saunders was next to implement a regular zone, doing so for the Pistons in 2007 with a lot of success. Unfortunately, both coaches had their zones shredded in the conference finals by Tim Duncan and LeBron James, so the zone defense movement was slow to catch on.
Until now, perhaps. In general, more teams play zone now than in 2002, but it has still been casted as a gimmick defense not suited for winning basketball. If you don’t think that perception still exists, just read what Seth Pollack from SB Nation’s Suns blog Bright Side of the Sun wrote after the zone didn’t work well in the Suns’ Game 2 loss.
What’s worse, is a Suns team that doesn’t look like they truly believe they can win.
It shows in the gimmick zone, fronting and double teaming defenses that were an early admission of defeat. I get the strategy -- let the other guys beat you -- but what message does that send right out of the gate? It was the kind of thing that the Suns were doing in the middle of the season when there was no confidence in the defense.
The subtext is obvious: you only go zone when you can’t defend. It’s not real defense, it’s a gimmick. I do this not to single out Seth, but merely to prove a point. The truth is, Seth’s perspective in that spot is pretty close to mainstream.
And it’s too bad, because when executed correctly, a zone defense can really add a new layer of strategy into a short series. Coaches suddenly become less powerless, because they can throw out a zone defense as either a long-term fix or a short-term way to throw off a team’s rhythm. Players now have to be able to posses the knowledge to defend their man or an area when appropriate. The offensive team, like the Lakers, now has to venture outside their patterned offensive system (in this case, the Triangle).
Finally, as fans, we can involve ourselves in yet another layer of discussion. Did the Lakers attack the zone improperly, or did they miss shots? Should Phoenix play zone as often as they did in Game 3, or should they keep the Lakers’ off balanced by switching up their looks? These are now questions we have to ask. The coaching chess match suddenly becomes even more interesting to follow.
All in all, zone defenses, if used correctly, have the potential to make a short series more interesting to follow for serious NBA fans. I don’t know how well they work as a long-term strategy, but it’s nice as a fan for coaches to be able to have the option to go zone. For that reason, I’m rooting for the Suns to win tonight. The worst thing that can happen to the future of zone defense in this league is for the Lakers to shred the Suns’ zone to the point where coaches hesitate to deploy zones altogether.
And as a person who loves to pretend I can coach a basketball team, that would give me one less thing to talk about.
As for tonight’s game, I really think this is as simple as how the Lakers’ adjust to Phoenix’s zone. As much as I want them to continue to struggle against it, I think the Lakers will make the proper adjustments and come away with a 3-1 series lead.
Prediction: Lakers 117, Suns 111.
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