Miami's Biggest Threat in the East: The Indiana Pacers

     Unbeknownst to some the biggest road to block to Miami's quest to a repeat doesn't not reside in San Antonio or Oklahoma City for the biggest hurdle Miami will have to climb resides in Indianapolis. A defensive juggernaut with a budding superstar seems to have enough to give Miami  a run for their money.
   
    First off I want to start this by saying I don't think Indiana could beat Miami in a 7 game series. There's a huge difference between giving the Heat a challenge than actually saying they could beat them in a series.That being said Indiana is the only team in the East who actually poses a serious threat to dethroning King James and his Heat.
 
   Indiana's success begins and ends with their stifling defense, a defense that ranks #1 overall according to Synergy Sports. This is a defense that has allowed Indiana to stay solidly in the 2/3 seed range all season despite missing Danny Granger for most of the season. The Pacers league leading defensive rating(points allowed per 100 possesions) stands at 95.3, a full 2 points lower than the next team.The key to their defensive success has been the stand out play of Roy Hibbert.
 
    While having an awful offensive season(shooting a porous 42% from the field, which is pretty bad for 7'2 big man who doesn't stray to far from the rim), Roy Hibbert has been able to back up the max contract with DPOY worthy defense. Using NBA.com/stats I found out Roy possess the league's 5th best defensive rating(Of players who've played at least 40 games playing at least 20 minutes a game to filter out some anomalies). Serving as an elite rim protector Hibbert has helped propel Indiana from 10th in overall defense (Last year) all the way up to #1.
 
      Their biggest strengths on defense lie within defending the pick & roll, defending spot up jumpers and defending Isolation. According to Synergy Sports, Indiana ranks 2nd in the league in defending the pick & roll where the roll man ends the posession(Play ends in FGA, TO or FTs).They rank 5th in defending Isolations and they rank 1st in defending spot up jumpers.

   Here we'll take a video look at how Indiana's bigs defend the pick and roll. Indiana's bigs are exceptional at defending the pick roll. They have a very solid rotation of bigs which inlcude Hibbert,West, and Hansborough each bringing their own flavor to the pick and roll. In the videos below you'll se the different philosophies each big uses in defending the pick and roll.

 Hibbert has a tendency to stick around the foul line, hedging to give his teammate time to catch then rotating back over to his man(the roll man) to contest his shot. In this video he defends two P&Rs between Marcus Thorton and Demarcus Cousins. On the first pick he lightly hedges the screen along the FT line area and is able to rotate back to Cousins and make him hesitate about taking the 20 footer. The 2nd screen is basically the same thing except this time Cousins decides to take it all the way to the rim only to have it blocked by Hibbert. Opponents only score 0.86 PPP (Points Per Possession) on pick & rolls Hibbert defends.

David West is less consverative than Hibbert when it comes to defending pick and rolls. West tends to come out a little further and give a hard but short hedge to the ball handler and is usually able to track his man back down as shown in the video below

In this clip West quickly hedges the ball handler(Pierce) then quickly rotates back over to his man, the roll man(Garnett) to contest a long jumper. Opponents score 0.95 PPP on pick and rolls that West defends.

Backup Power Forward Tyler Hansbrough also has his own method in defending the pick & roll. Hansborugh has kind of the same method of defening the pick & roll as west but his hedges usually last longer so it appears as a semi trap as shown in the video below.

    In this clip Hansbrough initates a semi trap on the ball handler(Calderon) and is able to quickly get back to his man(Maxiell). It should be noted that Synergy Sports has Hansbrough rated as the 3rd best P&R defender when the roll man finishes the play.Opponents only score 0.53 PPP.

     The Pick & Roll being one of the most vital plays in an NBA team's offense makes it important for teams to throw different defensive looks at it and it's why Indiana is so great at defending it.

    On the other side of ball Indiana while not a prolific scoring team they have stayed average thanks to the brilliant season Paul George has put together. Since Danny Granger has been out George has helped keep this offense from completely bottoming out and right now they sit at 18th in the league with an offensive rating of 101.4. George has taken a huge responsibility as his usage rating has spiked by 4 and his defense rating also improving by 4 which led to his 1st all star appearance.

Helping George on offense is the always underrated David West. The bruising big man always goes unnoticed in the national eye but is definitely a huge reason Indiana has had so much success this year. He poses a huge matchup problem to Miami when they play small ball. When Miami plays their usual small ball lineups of Chalmers-Wade-Battier-James-Bosh, West can be an absolute nightmare because Spoelstra doesn't like play James on West and has to resort to having Battier try to guard him. West's size and strength usually proves to be too much on Battier and Indiana is usually able to take advantage of this matchup.

   Regular season meetings aside, Indiana remains the lone threat in the East to dethroning the reigning champs. Their defensive strengths on the court perfectly matches up with Miami's strengths on offense. Indiana is the #5 Isolation defense and #1 Spot Up defense while Miami is the #1 Isolation offense and #1 Spot Up offense. Not a lot of teams in the league really give Miami a scare(only 3 others by my count SA,OKC and MEM) and Indiana just happens to be the only team in the East who seems capable of slaying this juggernaut.