30Q: What will Mike Brown bring to the Kings schematically?

In the NBA Finals, the Golden State Warriors often turned to old friend Nemanja Bjelica off the bench against the Boston Celtics. Bjelica would play critical minutes for the Warriors on their way to a championship. Incredibly, the Warriors would even happily switch Bjelica onto the Celtics’ best players, including reigning Eastern Conference Finals MVP Jayson Tatum.

Bjelica was much-maligned for his defense with the Sacramento Kings, often seen as the weakest link in a chain made entirely of weak links. Surely, Bjelica is BBQ chicken in these matchups, right?

Interestingly, no! Believe it or not, Bjelica held his own, and the above clip wasn’t an isolated incident either.

Tatum when guarded by Bjelica:

0-5 FG
4 TOV

DPOY. pic.twitter.com/nQMjepeUkH

— StatMuse (@statmuse) June 11, 2022

How? How could it be that Bjelica, who was routinely eviscerated as the reason the Kings stunk, could successfully give a team key minutes in a run to the holy grail?

The answer, of course, lies in how the Warriors defend as a whole. Basketball is played five-on-five, and the best indicators of success on defense is the communication, effort, gameplan, and execution by which the five defend.

The brains of the Warriors defense was Mike Brown, who has now taken the helm of the Kings. While we won’t be able to see the other elements of team defense until the team actually takes the floor, here are a few schematic tweaks Brown can bring to rescue a team defense that has languished at the bottom of the league for basically sixteen years.

God of the Gaps

Since the start of the seasons, the Warriors have been playing “gap” defense, which means sending a help defender into the driving gap in the middle of the floor. The idea is to put bodies between the slasher and the rim, making them think twice about driving into the middle of the paint, and if they do, wall off the slasher to prevent paint touches altogether.

Here is how it works in real time:

Curry is switched onto Tatum on the wing, but Wiggins sags far off his man into the driving gap to stay in Tatum’s line of sight. Tatum decides to spin away from the help but meets Kevon Looney at the rim.

Gap defenses are an enormous help for switched defenders, particularly smart defenders who can funnel their mark into help. Watch the Bjelica clip again above and see how he funnels Tatum away from the middle of the floor, while Draymond Green stays in Tatum’s line of sight from the wing, ready to help if Tatum goes in that direction.

Gap defenses doesn’t just help switches. Here, Wiggins stays disciplined against Jaylen Brown, with help in the gap at the top of the key.

Klay is the gap defender here, and notice he doesn’t move from his spot as his man floats further into three point territory; Thompson’s arms are out, focused on the ballhandler, ready to plug the gap if need be. Brown decides not to drive middle, and goes baseline, stepping out of bounds for a turnover.

Now lets look at a defensive possession from the Kings last year, where they didn’t play gap defense.

Brown bullies Justin Holiday all the way to the rim with no resistance… well, anywhere. The key is Davion Mitchell, who is all the way at the top of the arc; the slasher doesn’t even know he’s there as he barrels into the paint. In a gap defense, Mitchell would be much lower near the free-throw line, showing his hands to the slasher to deter the drive into the middle of the paint. This has the effect of both limiting paint touches as well as shielding the backline of defense from constantly having to help on drives.

Gap defense is the Warriors’ main defensive “innovation” this year. I say “innovation” in quotes because really its ripped straight from how defense was played in the early 00s once the zone defense rules were relaxed. Here are the Pistons playing gap defense against Kobe Bryant in the 2004 finals. Watch Rip Hamilton at about the free-throw line showing help to stop Kobe from getting to the rim. His man is left open for three but the defense will absolutely live with that.

Gap defense fell out of fashion in the late 00s at the 3 point boom began. You can almost still hear coaches agonizing over “helping one pass away” because it became so fundamental defensively to stay attached to shooters over the last decade plus. But its time to scrap that rule; leaving shooters to protect the paint is vogue again.  How did this happen? Because…

TIME IS A FLAT CIRCLE.

Gap defense is a great convergence of scheme, team communication, and individual Intelligence on defense. I’m excited to see it come to Sacramento.

Go ahead bro, shoot it

The Warriors scheme was happy to leave low volume shooters open, even if they have solid three point percentages. This would let Draymond Green play free safety to help in the paint while basically ignoring the other team’s worst shooter, In the Mavericks series, it was Josh Green, who shot 36% from three during the regular season, but on a very low volume.

The Warriors basically chased Green off the court, who would not see any minutes after Game 4. Against the Celtics, the Warriors repeatedly left Al Horford open, a career 36% three point shooter.

Notice how Green in both screenshots wanders into the paint, adding another layer of defense at the rim.

And here is how the defense reaps the benefits in action. Green again completely abandons his man, letting Bjelica deal with both Robert Williams in the paint and the wide open Grant Williams in the corner. Note that Williams shot 37% from three in the regular season. Green is able to muck up the paint and help on Brown’s drive at the rim, forcing a tough attempt that isn’t even close.

The absolute priority is protecting the paint. And as it turns out, leaving shooters open to shut off the paint is an enormous mathematical win for the defense. In Game 2 between the Warriors and the Mavericks, the Mavericks absolutely scorched the nets from three: 21/45, for a 46% percent mark. They outscored the Warriors by 21 points from the three point line. And they lost by 9 points. How?

Because they got literally nothing in the paint:

Protecting the paint is king. The three point line doesn’t matter. The 90s are back, baby. How did we get here? Again…

TIME IS A FLAT CIRCLE.

Expect the Kings to put their power forward (most likely Keegan Murray or Trey Lyles) on the opponent’s worst shooter, and essentially let them play free safety sagging into the paint. The key will be the player’s intelligence and instincts to find the balance between rotating into the paint and overhelping without need.

The Twilight Zone

Another thing recently revived from the dead: zone defenses. The Warriors would go to their zone often as a change-of-pace or to blow up plays coming out of timeouts. Their bread-and-butter was the 1-2-2 formation:

But the most interesting attribute about the Warriors is that it shapeshifts. Players don’t stay in one “zone” of the floor the entire possession. Watch here as the Warriors zone changes from a 1-2-2 to a 3-2, as Wiggins takes up a new position at the “nail” on the free throw line while his man clears to the weakside corner.

The 3-2 formation traps Luka Doncic on the baseline as he tries to drive, with helpers ready to rotate on shooters and the paint.

The morphing zone also helped neutralize the Mavericks’ “5-out” spacing. “5-out” means that the offense trots out five shooters on the court, which spreads a defense thin and opens driving lanes for slashers. The Mavericks’ 5-out lineups, featuring Maxi Kleber at center, completely flummoxed both the Jazz and the Suns, who relied upon their traditional rim-protecting centers (Rudy Gobert and Deandre Ayton, respectively) to anchor their defense. But the Warriors’ zone, with its flexible parts and movement rules, helped match up with the Mavericks’ shooters while also protecting the paint.

Watch Kevon Looney and Maxi Kleber in this clip. The Warriors start the possession in a 1-2-2 zone with Looney occupying the right side of the base. Kleber killed both Gobert and Ayton before by using his defender’s natural tendency to sink into the paint against them; while the rim protector goes to the paint, Kleber would find space on the perimeter to launch threes. He tries to do this here, positioning himself on the left wing. But Looney sees this, and you can see him pointing out Kleber’s movement to his teammates. And then the zone does something truly fascinating: it rotates. Looney moves to the base of the zone on the left side, Green moves up to cover Kleber, and on the other side Klay Thompson sinks to the base where Looney was before. Kleber gets the ball but doesn’t have a shot so he passes it back. There is no confusion defensively, everyone is covered, Looney is in his preferred spot near the paint, and the possession ends in a contested three. Its so subtle and easy to miss, but defense is all about small details adding up over the course of a game.

You’ll also see the Warriors run a Box-and-1, a variation on the zone where one player stays with his man and the other four defenders form a “box” around the paint. The Warriors threw this out against Doncic often, like in this clip:

Here you see Wiggins denying Doncic from getting into the middle of the paint, and once the ball is out of Doncic’s hands, he basically bails on the possession by hanging out on the wing. The other four Mavericks struggle to break down the Warriors’ “box” and the possession stalls.

Even more impressive still was how the Warriors disguised their zones, transitioning seamlessly between zone and man defenses.

In this play, the Warriors start in a standard man-to-man scheme. Eventually, the small Jordan Poole is switched onto Tatum. Tatum decides to take Poole into the mid-post, and in response, the Warriors smoothly morph their coverage.

Your man-to-man is now a 1-2-2 zone! Tatum sees a wall of defenders between him and the rim and burps up a contested midrange jumper. That’s a win for the defense.

Seizing the Schemes of Production

Like mentioned earlier, a defensive scheme is only one part of a successful defense. No amount of X’s and O’s wizardry can cover for players who don’t put in the requisite effort, who don’t communicate on defense, and who consistently make mistakes executing the scheme. The team has to buy in to what Mike Brown is selling. But if they do, I am incredibly curious to see how Brown’s schemes translate from the Warriors to the Kings. The Kings definitely do not have the same caliber of defensive talent, and there are some real challenges in trying to make personnel work. But if there is anyone who can figure this thing out, it’s Mike Brown.