Zone defense tonight?

["hironaka@xxxxxxxxx"<hironaka@xxxxxxxxx>]

According to on of the South Florida papers I read last 
night on the bus, Miami has been tinkering with a 2-2-1 
zone defense since this summer. 

You all might even look out for it tonight, if Pierce 
gets on any kind of roll.

According to what was reported, one of Pat Riley's 
assistants had been pushing hard for it, and drew up the 
blueprint this summer, after the Heat missed the playoffs 
for the first time last year.

Riley tested it in practice recently by using eight guys 
on five defenders. He claims that's how you test a zone's 
effectiveness.

The Heat employed the zone for the first time against 
Phoenix this month, after falling behind by 13 points. 
They went on to win that game, but that was a couple of 
weeks ago.

We might see it as a change of pace tonight. Apparently, 
they are working on a more complicated version of it.

But Riley remains the strongest advocate of man-to-man 
principles.

Apropos, Obie's father-in-law is also a huge critic of 
zone defense. In his preseason ESPN column, he said he 
saw the zone work only twice all of last season, and fail 
all other times. Both occasions were in the playoffs by 
the Nets, late in the Boston series (box+1 on Pierce) and 
during Game 3 of the Lakers series. 

These mailing lists (Tammo in particular) have made me 
much more aware of the elements in Obie's "zone", which 
he probably defines less as a "zone" (maybe out of filial 
piety) than a very aggressive and systemic "help" 
defense. 

Joe H.

-------------------
L'e-mail gratuit pas comme les autres.
NOMADE.FR, pourquoi chercher ailleurs ?