With his season over and while recovering from the knee injury suffered in the Los Angeles Lakers’ final game of the postseason, LeBron James has had plenty of time to watch and analyze everything that’s happening in these playoffs. And one thing that some teams have turned to at different points has been the zone defense.
Zone in the NBA has always been something used pretty sparingly, but this year more teams seem to have turned to it at points in order to slow down these high-scoring offenses. And in the latest episode of the “Mind the Game” podcast with Steve Nash, LeBron broke down why he feels teams have been turning to it and the positives the zone can bring:
“The whole nuance and the whole mind behind playing zone early on was to just break the rhythm. This offensive team, they’re in too great of a rhythm vs. the man. We’re trying everything we can do as far as pick-and-roll coverage, iso coverage, all these coverages and they just have a rhythm. So the best thing to do, OK, just drop into a zone, break the rhythm, you can get em out of this action, maybe get them out of this action. Or, it’s not even about the action. When you come down and you see a zone, the mind now, you’re starting to think instead of move. Instead of just going and reacting to whatever happens, now it becomes a thinking game and we know that all five guys on the floor, the thinking game is not suitable for them. I think it’s a great piece to have in your package to be able to go to something where you can just change the momentum, change the landscape of what it looks like out on the floor and that could be like you said, a 3-2. You look at Cleveland having the Defensive Player of the Year [Evan] Mobley was voted this year at the top of the key. He’s 7-foot with all that long wingspan to be able to change that. Miami does that sometimes with Bam [Adebayo] at the top. I think it just changes the landscape of teams and it’s great. Or just having a roamer like you said. You have Denver being able to just, Shai [Gilgeous-Alexander] brings in a lot of pick-and-rolls and once you get Christian Braun off him or Russ [Westbrook] off him or whatever the case may be. But then those guys roll out and Russ or Chris just stay right there. Just stand in the middle of the floor. And I’m talking to you ‘Send them right!’ or I’m on the other side ‘Send them left, I’m right here!’ I just think, it’s really chess. Especially right now. I know your sets, you know my sets. I know your personnel, you know my personnel. I know what you like to do, the cons, the pros. I know if you heavy going right, I know if you heavy going left. I know if you come to a two-foot jump stop in the lane, which way you like to pivot. I know if you drive baseline how you like, all of that stuff when it comes to guys like myself, when it comes to guys like yourself, everything is dialed in. So I think coaches with the zone are just trying to make you just come down the court and be like [pauses, looks around], and that’s all you need.”
As LeBron noted, with certain stars being so dominant, teams can turn to a version of a zone in order to contain them as best they can while other squads can utilize the zone to deploy their best defensive weapons to be as disruptive as possible.
For someone like James or his high IQ Lakers teammate Luka Doncic, the zone is something that can be picked apart with smart ball and player movement. But if it can bring just a couple possessions where it forces them to stop and think, and breaks a team’s rhythm, than the zone has done its job.
Lakers’ LeBron James enjoys increased physicality of the postseason
Something else that emerges in the postseason every year is an increase in physicality with officials letting things go in the playoffs that wouldn’t be allowed in the regular season. And this is something LeBron James likes.
The Lakers superstar called the more physical play ‘fun’ and would love for that style of play to be allowed all season long but knows he has the body to withstand everything and understands that it is beneficial for the NBA as a whole to have rules in place that allow for a more open game.
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