🆕LA Lakers Incredible Playoff Defense ➡ Shutting Down The Houston Rockets Potent Offense

We got James Harden and the Houston Rockets just one of the most potent and prolific offenses in the NBA with James Harden's ability to drive, create off the dribble pass, averaging 36 points a game. He's an extremely tough guard for most teams and with his ability to hit the step back jumper, it really forces teams to pressure the ball and not play traditional help defense. Now with Russell Westbrook here, most teams play retreat defense where they sag and allow him to shoot while packing the lane, taking away the drive because his strength is the drive. Now as you can see again here, the Lakers continually forced Russell Westbrook into retreating. Now we see the Bucks here, their strategy was to force Harden to the right. They forced him to the right and he drove right into the help. Again, the Utah Jazz, same strategy, forcing him to the right away from his strong hand into the help. And again, this strategy did have some success to a certain degree. Boston Celtics, they use gap coverage. They force Harden to the middle of the court and allow gap coverage help to protect the rim. Now when we look at game one, we're looking at game one of the NBA Finals where the Houston Rockets had success. Now we're going to be looking at game one of the NBA Finals where the Houston Rockets actually had some success before the Lakers modified their defense slightly to adjust to what the Rockets were doing. Now what the Lakers were initially doing, they were allowing the lowest guy to be the help defender. And in all actuality, what this did was it created a scenario where the rotations were extremely late. Because of the defensive three-second rule, the Lakers were not able to help. As we can see here, Caruso, the lowest man late on the help, James Harden gets to end one. This is not a very good strategy, especially when you're forcing middle. LeBron James can't help because Gordon is the three-point shooter. He's pointing to Caruso. That's his help assignment. When you're late on that help, this is where the Rockets had a lot of success in game one. Same here, LeBron James, lowest help defender. This was their strategy game one. Now right here, Jabell McGee is struggling to decide when to go because of the defensive three-second rule. And because of that defensive three-second rule, he has to go in and out the lane, and he was late on that help. James Harden got the bucket. Again, the help defense, again, low help. Same here, same principle here. And this is how the Rockets were able to pick most teams apart, especially in the regular season. That low help, a lot of times, unless you have a very athletic power forward or center, it's really hard to cover that much ground. Again, Danny Green, low help, late. Danny Green, forcing the middle. James, help. Again, it's really hard to help. And then what you do is you allow James to see everything on the court. Good job, Anthony Davis, getting that steal. Now what you can see here is how the Lakers attempted to switch their defense up mid-game in game one, and they went to a help zone look. But again, that presents its own challenges because we see now LeBron on the weak side has two players to guard, and you have to rely on guys like Morris to give an extra effort, an extra effort just to get the stop. And you see how it created holes in the Laker defense, created a large number of holes in the Laker defense, especially in game one, where the Lakers struggled. Look, the low help, easy kickouts because of the low help. This was their strategy game one. This is the reason why the Lakers lost game one. They had a game plan. They stuck to that game plan. Unfortunately, it just did not lead to a lot of success. And we're soon going to start going over what subtle changes they actually did make to find success. This is one of the things we give Frank Vogel a lot of credit for. He's able to identify issues, and he's able to make changes game by game. Now, this is one of the changes that they made going into game two, which was all out trapping the ball, but they still hadn't perfected it yet in game one. Again, it's about understanding everyone's role on defense to find success. But I think for a period in game one, they saw that throwing this particular trap at James Harden could be effective, but you would have to mix up how you trap the ball. All right. Sometimes we would see full traps, or as we see right here, soft traps. We're around those just faking the trap, faking the trap, faking the trap, reaches in. It's still not a full trap. So what they did, they did a good job of throwing different types of traps at James Harden. All right. Guys gave great second efforts. So they're playing a help zone right now. We see Caruso running at the ball. The open shots aren't necessarily there. Now we see the Houston Rockets because D'Antoni did not do a good job of making adjustments, as we see right here. Now we have a situation right here where, again, they're forcing the Houston Rockets. They're forcing the Houston Rockets to swing the ball over the court. And what the Lakers did a great job of was giving a second effort. The second effort on the play is what made the biggest defensive difference for the Lakers in this series. Caruso coming out, guys zone up. So we see Kuzma and Rondo zone up. Everybody rotates perfectly. All right. Bad shot at the end of the shot clock right there. I mean, great defense for 15 seconds can lead to teams taking really bad shots. The Lakers did a really good job of doing that. Now look, look at Danny Green. Now what James Harden has started doing was he started driving and attacking away from the trap and he has some success there. As we can see here, the trap comes, he goes away from the trap with the jumper. All right. So he started attacking away, you know, and this is, this is another issue where the Lakers would trap, but they will allow Harden to get the ball right back, which kind of defeated the purpose of even trapping. What we see the Lakers do, and we see the Lakers make that same mistake right here. And James Harden gets the ball right back. That defeats the purpose of the trap because James has the ball right back. Eric Gordon gets a great shot off. So now let's watch the changes on this. Watch the change. Just again, these are subtle changes that kind of implode what the Houston Rockets are doing. Now after the trap, watch how guys stay with James Harden, as opposed to allowing him to get the ball right back. That was a great trap right there. And Kuzma does a great job of, they double team, but he denies. We see Kuzma deny. Great job right there. That subtle change can blow up an entire team's offensive strategy. By not allowing James Harden to get the ball back, the Rockets are forced to take a bad shot at the end of the shot clock. Once again, we see a great defense. They zoned up perfectly. Rondo's pressed up on Harden. Again, Westbrook is one of the guys that you're going to allow to beat you. All right. We see a Rondo still denying Harden, denying Harden, denying that pass. And we see a turnover. Again, James Harden, James Harden, you guys, James Harden off ball stands. And we saw that right there. And James Harden did not know how to adjust to what the Lakers were doing, especially when they started to deny him the ball after the trap. This is, again, this is something that could have easily been fixed by Mike and DeAntoni by simply relaying the importance to James Harden of being able to play without the ball. And the Houston Rockets failed to do that. So the one thing that we've seen in this playoff so far is that the Lakers defense has extremely high adaptability. They can adapt to what any team does best. And then they learn along the way. It's not just about adapting. They see what works. And then when teams counter what works, they also counter that by implementing things that take away the Rockets, even the Portland Trailblazers second and third offensive options. And when you're an NBA team and you're forced to take shots, when the shot clock is winding down, almost every possession, you're not going to have success in the NBA. So again, this was just a breakdown on how the Lakers adjusted their defense to shut down the Houston Rockets. I'm really curious to see how they're going to adjust their defense for the Denver Nuggets. Now we saw Jokic. Jokic is a seven footer who can pass the ball. So he's going to present a number of challenges that they haven't seen yet. And so I'm really curious to see how Frank Vogel implements a defense that can slow the Denver Nuggets down and not just implement a defense that can slow the Denver Nuggets down. But I'm really curious to see what adjustments they make if their initial game plan is not effective. And we saw the Lakers initial game plan against the Portland wasn't effective. They made adjustments and they were dominant. Their initial game plan against the Rockets wasn't effective. They came back out games two, three, four, five, and they were dominant. So again, I'm curious to see how they come out against the Denver Nuggets tonight. It's going to be a really fun and exciting matchup with Javon Murray and those guys. And for me, you know, just as a student of the game, I love seeing coaches who can adjust on the fly to give their teams the highest probability of winning the game. But again, make sure you guys like comment and subscribe, hit the notification bell. 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