And they’ve been slightly more successful with it (0.94 points allowed per possession, seventh in the league) than the Heat (0.97, 10th).
The Toronto Raptors have played the second most possessions of zone this season. Playing zone against NBA offenses is no easier than playing man-to-man. The players at the top of the zone are high and active, running shooters off the 3-point line. They made 3-pointers on the first two, but the Heat made them work late into the shot clock on all three possessions and the first of those two threes came after Seth Curry got away with a travel. The game turned when Dallas went scoreless on its first five possessions (all against zone) of the fourth quarter, but that was with both Luka Doncic and Kristaps Porzingis off the floor, and the Mavs got some decent shots in that stretch.įollowing are the Mavs’ first three possessions against zone in that game. The Mavs were more efficient against the zone (53 points on those 43 possessions) than they were otherwise (65 points on 61), according to Synergy. And when the Mavs played the Heat last week, it was Miami that played 43 possessions of zone against the league’s No. That’s 12.3 possessions of zone per game. And this year, they’ve played almost twice as much zone (764 possessions, according to Synergy) as any other team. After playing less than 50 possessions of zone two seasons ago, the Heat played zone for more than 1,000 possessions last season. But the Miami Heat have led this new zone defense revolution. When they won the championship nine years ago, the Mavs played almost 800 possessions of zone in the regular season. The Dallas Mavericks have been playing a healthy share of zone for several years now. A lot of teams are utilizing it to good measure and with a lot of success.” 1. It’s becoming more and more relevant in the league these days. But what it is is a great way to expose a couple of weaknesses or change the tempo, change the pace of the game. “It’s not a great way to shut people down. “There’s a reason teams don’t run it all the time,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said.
Note: Synergy tracks possessions differently, in that an offensive rebound is the start of a new possession. And a well-timed zone possession could be just what a defense needs to take the opponent out of its rhythm. But some teams have been more successful with it than others. That may not seem like a lot, but it’s more than six times as many as there were in ’17-18 season and up from 3.1 possessions per game last season.Īccording to Synergy, offenses have been more efficient against zone (0.99 points per possession) than against man-to-man (0.96). There have been about five possessions of zone defense per game this season. That’s up from 10 teams last season and just two in 2017-18. According to Synergy play-type tracking, 18 of the 30 teams have played at least 100 possessions of zone through Thursday. A couple of years ago, a zone defense, unless it was being played by the Dallas Mavericks, looked completely bizarre in an NBA game.
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