NBANBAAmen Thompson vs. Steph Curry. Cade Cunningham vs. the Knicks’ leaky defense. From players to coaches to tactics, these are the most critical matchups of Round 1 of the NBA playoffs.
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By Michael PinaApril 18, 12:49 pm UTC • 11 min
With so much talent, depth, and parity throughout the NBA, the specific ways two teams match up in a playoff series are increasingly more relevant than how successful each team was during the regular season. Most squads that get this far are able to exploit (and be exploited by) their opponents. With the postseason starting on Saturday, here’s a look at four particularly intriguing matchups worth keeping an eye on as the first round unfolds.
Before the season, my colleagues and I were asked which Eastern Conference team presented the greatest threat to Boston. My answer was the Orlando Magic, partially because I did not know that their three best players would share the floor in just six measly games.
Injuries ravaged this team. Pretty much from the jump, Orlando’s chemistry was disrupted, its talent was depleted, and its depth was hemorrhaged. So, today, with Cory Joseph starting at point guard for Jalen Suggs while Mo Wagner sits behind the bench dressed like an assistant coach, the Magic don’t scare anybody. They finished the regular season ranked 27th in offensive rating and 28th in true shooting. Yikes.
But even in this splintered condition, Orlando is very large, employs two All-Star-caliber forwards, and, for the purpose of this conversation, executes a defensive scheme that was built in a lab to slow down the defending champs.
It starts and ends behind the arc. The Celtics launched 3,955 3s this year, which was 480 more than any other team. The Magic, meanwhile, allowed just 2,570 3s, which was 263 fewer than any other team. When we look at 3-point differential (the total number of 3-point attempts each team had minus how many they conceded), Boston is, to nobody’s surprise, first. Orlando ranks fourth, which might shock those who watched it stumble through the season playing porous outside threats who couldn’t space the floor.
Even without Suggs, the Magic are stingy, versatile, long, and fast. In their play-in face-off earlier this week, they held the Hawks, who averaged 37.7 3-point attempts per game this season, to 21 tries and just four makes, sprinting shooters off the arc whenever the situation called for it. The Magic don’t want to contest 3s. They want to eradicate them.
In two relevant games against the Magic, Boston attempted 33 and 37 3s, its lowest- and fourth-lowest outputs of the season. Watch those games, and you’ll see a formula that Orlando should be able to carry into this playoff series—possibly with even more success, considering that Franz Wagner did not play in either of the two games.
The Magic switched screens, lived with mismatches, didn’t help off the perimeter, and ran shooters off the line. The clip below is the aftermath of a side pick-and-roll with Derrick White and Kristaps Porzingis. Anthony Black and Tristan Da Silva switch it, then let Black fight Boston’s unicorn alone, despite the obvious size disadvantage.
This isn’t special treatment. The Magic double-team post-ups less than any team in the league, per Sportradar. They pressure the ball, force drives, converge at the rim, rotate without losing their balance, and smother all efforts to go one-on-one by staying as connected as they possibly can. Here’s what it looks like at its best:
This season, no team sent help less often against opposing drives. The Magic were also first in full closeouts and last in closeouts that stopped short. They don’t treat every shooter with the same level of urgency but also aren’t beholden to opponent 3-point percentages. It’s simple. They want to run you off the line. If a foul happens when they do, that stinks, but so be it. They’re also first in the percentage of closeouts that result in a foul—a combination of their determination in open space and what happens at the basket to prevent an open layup.
Of course, what makes Boston’s offense so difficult is that it pretty much always has more individual offensive talent than the defense can keep up with. Even the most resilient defensive game plan starts to bend when Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, Jrue Holiday, White, or Porzingis can still score easily against red meat defenders for multiple possessions in a row. Here are a series of possessions in which Orlando stopped switching the ball screens that were having success in taking away Boston’s 3s, with predictably devastating results:
The Celtics are also loaded with smart players who know how to get what they want. Inevitably, over the course of a game or series, they’ll put the opponent in rotation and force adjustments. They can foresee the coverage and take advantage of it with a useful counter. In the example below, Orlando’s decision to stick Wendell Carter Jr. on Holiday was quickly sniffed out when Jrue didn’t just set a ball screen for Tatum but flipped it at the last minute, anticipating a switch and giving his superstar teammate an extra second to knock down the open pull-up.
There are other interesting variables in this series. The Magic commit the third-most personal fouls per 100 possessions, while the Celtics commit the second fewest. Orlando gets to the line a ton, and Boston does … not. Both teams are extremely slow. The Magic average the third-most points off turnovers, and the Celtics allow the second fewest.
But the rock vs. hard place confrontation that will occur along the 3-point line is the most significant subplot in a matchup that could be more competitive than most people expect.
As tempting as it is to write about the battle between Ime Udoka and the referees, whose tolerance his aggressive defense will test—which will be a factor, given how antagonistic the Rockets could be in a series that includes Dillon Brooks and Draymond Green—sometimes you don’t want to get too cute with this stuff.
Steph Curry vs. Amen Thompson is box office. What could be more entertaining than the greatest shooter who ever lived trying to shake free from a 6-foot-7 Tony Allen with Olympic-level athleticism who, at 22 years old, is a virtual lock to make an All-Defensive team? The last time they faced off, Curry had more turnovers (four) than points (three) and finished 1-for-10 from the floor. When Thompson wasn’t his primary defender, the Rockets switched off-ball screens and blitzed every pick-and-roll. Curry’s gravity did create some fantastic open looks for Jimmy Butler at the basket:
But even with Butler on board and Houston’s offense riding the struggle bus in half-court situations, it’s hard to see Golden State advancing unless one of the most dangerous scorers in NBA history can open cracks in Houston’s defense for teammates and himself. That last meeting back on April 6 either foreshadowed something Curry can’t overcome or was the learning experience he and the Warriors needed.
In the second half of that game, we didn’t see much pick-and-roll involving Golden State’s three best players. Some of that’s because Steve Kerr doesn’t particularly enjoy such a predictable brand of basketball, and some of it’s because the Rockets are loaded with versatility, featuring the likes of Brooks, Tari Eason, and Fred VanVleet—guys who can just switch up onto the ball and close off any airspace.
Will the Warriors repeatedly attack Alperen Sengun, drag Houston’s center 25 feet from the basket, beat Houston’s blitz, and make Udoka dial back his aggression?
Will they tinker with Curry’s minutes and align them with every double-big lineup that features Sengun and Steven Adams? (Something Udoka successfully avoided the last time around.) Despite that duo’s success on both ends—mashing the glass at historic rates, getting stops with their zone, and generally overwhelming every team they’ve faced over the past several weeks—a few Curry 3s will likely break them up.
Houston’s primary focus will be making Curry work for every inch. Golden State’s primary focus should be to give him some breathing room—or punish the Rockets for being so hostile. There’s a chance that Thompson will have a breakout performance for the ages. The flip side is Curry finding a way to overcome yet another defensive scheme that’s devised to slow him down.
There may not be a player vs. player first-round duel more fascinating than this one.
Here’s another series that we can’t evaluate based on regular-season matchups. Watch three of Minnesota’s four previous encounters with L.A. and you’ll see Anthony Davis’s head on a swivel as D’Angelo Russell escorts his man to the rim for an open layup. In the only matchup that came after Luka Doncic was traded to the Lakers, Julius Randle didn’t even play.
That doesn’t mean each side isn’t plenty familiar with the other, though. We’re not even one calendar year removed from Doncic obliterating a Rudy Gobert–led defense in the Western Conference finals, and two years ago, Minnesota lost to L.A. in a tight play-in game that went to overtime. There is plenty to chew on, with high-wattage star power and fluid lineup-related decisions that will be dictated by various mismatches all over the floor.
How long will it take for Dorian Finney-Smith to permanently replace Jaxson Hayes at center? If Mike Conley can’t guard anyone in the Lakers’ starting five, will Nickeil Alexander-Walker or Donte DiVincenzo grab those minutes? Will Jarred Vanderbilt commit more fouls per 36 minutes than anyone in NBA playoff history while also never having anyone on Minnesota’s roster come within 15 feet of him when L.A. has the ball? What happens if Luka is, um, less than cordial to Gobert? And, also, in his first playoff series since the NBA Finals, how will Doncic hold up against a Timberwolves offense that will probably attack him as often as it possibly can?
All those questions are fascinating, but the most interesting, meaningful, big-picture subplot, to me, is JJ Redick’s approach to guarding Julius Randle, one of the worst playoff performers who’s also made multiple All-NBA teams that I’ve ever seen.
The assumption is that Los Angeles will swarm Anthony Edwards with discipline, length, and positional size. They’ll be physical and show bodies. It won’t always work, but they’ll blitz pick-and-rolls to take away Ant’s pull-up 3 and force a pass into the pocket, or switch and then load up on the strong side and tempt him to drive or swing it along the perimeter. In transition, they’ll attempt to build a wall to keep him outside the paint. All of this is much easier said than done, but Redick’s schemes do a pretty good job of making the opposition’s best player uncomfortable.
The strategy here, in effect, is executed for two reasons: (a) Ant is a waterfall who can drown you in buckets, and being drowned in buckets is not a recipe for success; and (b) it leaves the door open for Randle to assume even more offensive responsibility. Randle’s numbers haven’t been terrible. He finished the regular season with the third-highest true shooting percentage of his career and assisted more of Ant’s baskets than any other Timberwolf. Fantastic.
But the playoffs can be bizarro world for someone who doesn’t space the floor and will gladly isolate against defenses that could not be happier watching him Sideshow Bob his way into an inefficient jump shot.
The irony here, for Redick, is that deploying a scheme that indirectly requires Randle to make more decisions and potentially sabotage his own team’s offense may have the opposite effect if it convinces Chris Finch to cut his starting power forward’s minutes. Why? Randle’s defense, particularly in transition (an area the Lakers are happy to exploit with Doncic and LeBron James on the court), makes him a net negative player.
In half-court situations, Randle is an unofficial league leader in losing his man off the ball and then pretending nobody saw instead of raising his hand to acknowledge the mistake:
There’s always a chance Randle will make enough open shots to alter the strategy Redick is likely to milk early in the series. The Lakers would be wise, though, to trust the ugly they’ve watched from Randle’s 15 career playoff games and years of evidence beyond, which suggest he doesn’t impact winning at a high level.
There’s a decent chance the outcome of this battle will be decided by how effective Cade Cunningham’s well-proportioned pick-and-roll attack can be against Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns, two of the more vulnerable pick-and-roll defenders at their positions. All series long, Cunningham will do everything in his power to make both of them guard him coming off a ball screen, while the Knicks will finagle matchups in an effort to deter Detroit’s most effective pick-and-roll combinations.
In three games this season, Cade mostly had his way against KAT’s flimsy drop coverage—particularly during a brilliant 36-point effort at Madison Square Garden in January. As Jalen Duren and Isaiah Stewart stonewalled his defenders with some of the hardest picks you’ll see, Cunningham feasted on pull-up 3s and, when Towns stepped up to take those looks away, Cunningham blew by him on a drive into the paint.
In their most recent clash just last week, Towns started the game on Duren, but by the start of the third quarter, he shifted onto Ausar Thompson, daring Cunningham to leave his primary lob partner alone and instead have Thompson set his picks. It didn’t work well.
When the Knicks did get stops, it was thanks to everyone else’s help. Here’s OG Anunoby ignoring Tobias Harris on the weak side to chuck Duren’s roll as Josh Hart comes all the way off Thompson to turn the paint into a mosh pit.
Or Hart, again, stunting way off Jaden Ivey (this game was on November 1) to thwart Cunningham’s drive and force a turnover.
This is one line of attack we’ll see a ton throughout the series, but there’s an opportunity cost I can’t help but obsess over every single time I watch Brunson play defense in the playoffs: Going at Towns is all well and good, but more often than not, it means Detroit can’t directly take advantage of the other weak link in New York’s defense—its point guard.
J.B. Bickerstaff now has an opportunity to feast on something he only pecked at a few years ago, when his Cleveland Cavaliers didn’t engage Brunson as often as they probably should have. To be fair, Bickerstaff also didn’t have a primary ball handler as large as Cade, who’s able to create the type of glaring mismatch New York wants no part of. During the Knicks’ regular-season matchups against Detroit, Brunson did everything in his power to avoid a switch, hedging and recovering as often as possible whenever his man set a ball screen for Cunningham. There were times when it worked, but more often than not, even when the action didn’t send the Knicks into a rotation, Detroit got a pretty good look right away:
This type of strategic chess match is what makes playoff basketball a perfect form of entertainment. There are meaningful stakes hovering over every adjustment, and coaches must decide on the fly whether their scheme is wrong or the players executing it are doing a poor job. For Tom Thibodeau, a fantastic coach whose steadfast self-belief borders on stubbornness from time to time, the choices he makes to try to slow Cunningham down could be the difference between keeping his job and finding a new one a couple of months from now.
Michael Pina is a senior staff writer at The Ringer who covers the NBA.
