1 Fix Every 2022 NBA Playoff Team Desperately Needs to Make

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Matt Slocum/Associated Press

Patience is usually a virtue, but not in the NBA playoffs.

Short series remove the option to see how things shake out over time. When elimination is looming, teams don’t have the luxury of adopting a long view or trusting a process. Problems need to be identified now, before it’s too late.

In some cases, our trouble spots will hit on a season-long weakness that is still cropping up. In others, it’ll be a matchup-specific issue or a particular statistical shortcoming. Finally, for teams that are already eliminated, we’ll list something to remedy over the summer.

Every team—even the ones currently dominating—has something to clean up. Whether facing elimination or gearing up for the second round, time’s running out to fix what’s broken.

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John Bazemore/Associated Press

If the Atlanta Hawks don’t want to look at last year’s conference finals run as the high point of the Trae Young era, they have to get their All-Star point guard some help.

The Miami Heat are smothering Young, surrounding him with multiple bodies to force the ball out of his hands. It’s a level of defensive single-mindedness that only pays off if the target’s teammates can’t capitalize against a scheme that, even when well-executed, leaves vulnerable spots to attack. 

During the regular season, Bogdan Bogdanovic helped solve one of the Hawks’ biggest problems by giving the team a dangerous offense in the minutes Young was on the bench. Atlanta put up 117.3 points per 100 possessions with Bogdanovic on the court and Young off.

That figure is down to 111.0 through the Hawks’ first four postseason games. In that span, Young is 20-of-57 from the field with as many assists, 24, as turnovers. Even if we’re dealing with small samples, and though the Heat’s defense is particularly ruthless, Atlanta has to know now that it needs another star—the kind who would stop opponents from trying anything so extreme against Young.

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John Minchillo/Associated Press

Nitpicking the Boston Celtics after their 4-0 sweep of the Brooklyn Nets is a little like suggesting the guy who just ran a four-minute mile could have, you know, maybe run it a little faster?

To recap the proceedings, Jayson Tatum was the best player in a series that involved Kevin Durant, Boston’s size produced overwhelming advantages on the glass and everything that made the Celtics the league’s best team during the last few months of the season carried over into the playoffs.

If forced to do some concern trolling about a team that has no clear concerns, one could point to the fact that Brooklyn still managed to put up the second-best effective field-goal percentage of any playoff team. That’s partly a testament to the Nets’ offensive talent, as Patty Mills, Bruce Brown, and Seth Curry shot a combined 25-of-50 from long distance.

Boston sold out to limit Durant and had to concede some open threes elsewhere. Considering the 4-0 result, it’s hard to argue with the approach, and it’s not necessarily an indictment of Boston’s stopping power. Anyone who watched the series knows Boston made Durant look more uncomfortable than he ever has in a postseason series, and Kyrie Irving was a non-factor after his 39-point Game 1.

Question the Celtics’ defensive prowess at your own risk. This group dominated opponents all year and seems built to sustain that trend in the playoffs.

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Seth Wenig/Associated Press

The Brooklyn Nets’ controversy-riddled 2021-22 season is mercifully over after a thorough 4-0 sweep at the hands of the Boston Celtics. If next year’s campaign is going to conclude differently, the Nets’ best players have to set a more committed, professional tone.

Granted, injuries played a major role in Brooklyn’s downfall. The Nets got just 14 games from Joe Harris, the league leader in three-point percentage during two of three preceding seasons. His spot-up shooting would have created breathing room for Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving all year and especially in the playoffs.

KD missed six weeks with a knee sprain, and Ben Simmons never played at all.

But this season didn’t go sideways because of bad luck on the health front. It started with James Harden showing up out of shape, and it continued with Irving’s refusal to get vaccinated and subsequent unavailability. Durant gave his best effort, but his track record suggests that while undeniably talented, he’s not the most galvanizing force from a leadership perspective. Russell Westbrook was the alpha in Oklahoma City, and Durant joined a Warriors squad that already had a preset hierarchy—one he ultimately failed to fit into.

At this point, counting on Irving to put his team first is out of the question. Harden is gone, but Ben Simmons may not be an upgrade in the leadership department, which is saying something.

Can Durant hold his teammates accountable in ways he hasn’t before? Might the Nets look to move Irving so they don’t have to deal with whatever higher off-court priority he comes up with for next year? Is Simmons ever going to be a real part of the team?

Something has to change, and it starts with Brooklyn’s best players taking responsibility for the team’s culture.

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Nam Y. Huh/Associated Press

The Chicago Bulls lost Games 3 and 4 to the Milwaukee Bucks by a combined 54 points, so there’s clearly more than one trouble spot that needs addressed.

Of the many options, Chicago’s shortage of three-point shooting stands out most strongly.

The Bulls produced the worst offensive rating among all playoff (and play-in) teams across their first four games of the first round, and a lack of long-range weapons was a major contributor to that woeful performance. Efficiency is a bigger issue than volume, as Chicago is 10th among 16 playoff teams in three-point attempts per 100 possessions but 15th with a 28.0 percent accuracy rate.

You could see this problem coming during the regular season. The Bulls actually shot 36.9 percent from distance for the year, a top-five figure, but they took two fewer threes per 100 possessions than the Washington Wizards, who ranked 29th in long-range frequency. After the All-Star break, everything came to a head, as Chicago slipped to 21st in accuracy and remained last in volume.

This will have to be an offseason free-agency fix. Lonzo Ball’s return to health in 2022-23 should help, but the Bulls simply need more players who can generate threes at high volume—ideally ones who can also hit them.

DeMar DeRozan’s mid-range wizardry is a valuable weapon, but when a whole team trades threes for twos, it’s too hard to overcome the mathematical disadvantage.

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Tony Gutierrez/Associated Press

The Utah Jazz’s inept perimeter defense makes it tough to judge, but the Dallas Mavericks may have finally landed on the best version of themselves.

Surprisingly, that version is not “Luka Doncic does everything while we all watch.”

Doncic has been fantastic since returning from his calf strain, and he stunted on the Jazz in a 25-point Game 5 blowout win. This is not a plea to take the ball out of his hands. Instead, it’s an acknowledgment that, finally, Dallas has someone else who can do something with said ball.

Jalen Brunson torched the Jazz during the first three games of the series, with a 41-point explosion in Game 2 highlighting the run. His ability to get into the paint and either finish with an array of fakes or kick out to shooters allows Dallas to generate good shots independent of Doncic. For a squad that has struggled to keep its franchise star from wearing down under heavy workloads, Brunson’s emergence as a reliable primary creator is basically a golden ticket.

It’s not hard to imagine this Mavericks offense in its final form, with Doncic drawing maximum attention and Brunson destroying defenses from the weak side. If Dallas can get those two operating synergistically, and not so much in a “my turn, your turn” tradeoff, look out.

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Jeff Chiu/Associated Press

We can’t be too hard on a Denver Nuggets team missing its second and third options, but the absence of Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr. doesn’t excuse a playoff-worst defensive performance.

The Golden State Warriors have had immense success attacking Nikola Jokic in space and running Denver’s suspect guards and wings through a confusing series of cuts and screens. The Warriors are a unique challenge to defend, especially when they trot out the downsized Poole Party lineup, but the Nuggets are getting roasted at all times, against all personnel groupings, and it doesn’t seem to matter whether their defense is set or not.

Golden State is putting up an obscene 113.4 points per 100 possessions in the half court, best among postseason participants by a mile. In other words, even when Denver has its defense organized and positioned how it wants, it can’t do anything to slow down the Dubs.

Granted, it’s going to be difficult to succeed when some combination of Will Barton, Monte Morris, Austin Rivers and Bones Hyland are chasing championship-tested Splash Brothers and an ascendent Poole around the floor. But this is also the part where we have to mention Jokic, whose inability to defend the basket in drop coverage and (understandable) difficulty staying in front of guards on switches compromises the Nuggets defense 30 feet from the bucket, at the rim and everywhere in between.

Denver should devote its free-agent resources to a big wing who can switch screens. Aaron Gordon can’t guard everyone by himself.

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David Zalubowski/Associated Press

One reason the Golden State Warriors’ small-ball attacks have worked so effectively over the years is because they chaotically speed up the pace of the game. It’s easy to see on offense, as their five-out lineups spread the floor for play designs that look like spirograph doodles—endless whirls of handoffs, looping flares and slipped screens that conventionally-sized opponents lack the stamina to cover.

The same hyperactivity manifests itself on defense in the form of switches, double-teams and sprinting closeouts. The Warriors want to play with as much speed and aggression as possible when they’re small because the whole point is to make the larger opposition dizzy, panicked and mistake-prone. 

Sometimes, Golden State loses its discipline in the maelstrom, committing too many fouls.

We saw it when the Dubs collected 27 personals in their Game 4 loss to the Denver Nuggets. Draymond Green poked Nikola Jokic in the eye within the first few seconds of the game and fouled out with two minutes to go. Klay Thompson was on fire and scored 32 points on 20 shots, but he had four fouls by halftime. If either player had been a little more careful, there’s a good chance Golden State would have completed the sweep.

“I have to be better. I can’t foul out of the game,” Green told Anthony Slater of The Athletic. “I can’t start off the game fouling. We had a great trap. I get a foul. I feel like it set the tone and we were fouling the rest of the game.”

The Warriors are still in fine shape because the Nuggets are a dream matchup in their shorthanded state. But bigger picture, Golden State has to curb its hacking in order to play at the tempo that makes it most dangerous. Stopping the game so frequently and putting opponents at the line trims transition opportunities and allows defensive personnel to get set. The Warriors want a fast pace and scrambled situations so they can do this.

The foul issues won’t hurt them against the Nuggets, but they could be an issue in subsequent rounds.

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Brandon Dill/Associated Press

During the year, the Memphis Grizzlies started 18.9 percent of their possessions with a transition play (first in the league) and put up 126.9 points per 100 possessions in those situations. Through four games in the postseason, those numbers have fallen to 15.5 percent and 107.4, respectively.

One of the great, time-tested truisms of the playoffs is that the cheap buckets disappear. We’re seeing that with the Grizzlies, a team that relies more than most on it its athleticism (and the lapses of an inattentive defense) to score.

Case in point: The Grizzlies were particularly deadly off live rebounds in the regular season, which they turned into transition chances 34.6 percent of the time, second-best in the league. They’re only running on 24.1 percent of live boards in the playoffs (through Game 4), and their overall offense has suffered as a result.

Not to be overlooked, the removal of Steven Adams from the rotation has also eliminated the Grizzlies’ other great source of stress-free points: offensive rebounds. Memphis’ offensive rebound rate is 28.4 percent through Game 4, down from a league-leading 32.7 percent in the regular season.

The Grizzlies need Ja Morant to compete on defense, and it would also help if Jaren Jackson Jr. could quit fouling himself off the floor. But a subpar half-court offense that isn’t getting its typical boost from all those runouts and second-chance opportunities is Memphis’ main point of concern.

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Brynn Anderson/Associated Press

Jimmy Butler’s sore knee put him on the shelf next to Kyle Lowry for Tuesday’s Game 5 against the Atlanta Hawks, so health has to rank atop any list of the Miami Heat fixes.

Other than that, it’s difficult to find fault with what Miami has done so far.

Duncan Robinson lost his starting role during the year and has seen his minutes diminish, but he caught fire for 27 points in Game 1. Victor Oladipo’s defense was a major factor in a Game 4 win, and those two players’ vastly different skill sets illustrate the variety of looks Miami can put on the floor. Top-end players determine a team’s postseason ceiling, but even squads with stars need options. The Heat, equipped with diverse personnel, have more than most.

The only troubling stat for Miami is its free-throw attempt rate. The Heat only averaged 21.3 foul shots per contest through Game 4, right in line with the figure that ranked them 19th during the regular season.

There’s a fine line to walk when it comes to reliance on free throws in the playoffs. We sometimes see foul-reliant players lose effectiveness when the whistles quiet down in the postseason, but it’s also true that easy points are even more critical in a pressurized seven-game series against defenses that take away a team’s first, second and third offensive preferences. The Heat could benefit from working their way to the line a little more often.

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Morry Gash/Associated Press

Up 3-1 against the Chicago Bulls and fresh off a couple of blowout wins, the Milwaukee Bucks are in the driver’s seat. That makes it tricky to zero in on any points of desperation in the short term.

Zooming out while also getting very niche, Pat Connaughton is going to have to knock down a few more shots.

The Bucks will compensate for Khris Middleton’s absence by committee. They have shooting from Grayson Allen, generally trustworthy defense from Wesley Matthews and just enough third-string playmaking from Jevon Carter while George Hill remains sidelined. But there’s going to come a point against a more dangerous opponent when Milwaukee will need to get all those qualities from one player—not three.

In the regular season, specialists are fine. But those guys get played off the floor in the cutthroat playoffs, where every team attacks exploitable weaknesses.

Pat Connaughton canned 39.5 percent of his threes during the year and posted the best Defensive Box Plus/Minus of any rotation wing on Milwaukee’s roster. He’s just 5-of-22 from deep through the series’ first four games, which hasn’t mattered because the Bucks have the Bulls so badly outclassed. Later, though, Connaughton will be a critical two-way factor—and that’ll still be true if Middleton’s knee recovers enough for him to rejoin the rotation in top form.

If Middleton remains out longer than expected or is limited in his return, Connaughton’s shooting will only become more important in the Bucks’ pursuit of a second straight title.

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Brandon Dill/Associated Press

Karl-Anthony Towns has led the NBA in total fouls twice and was just a little off that pace this season, so it can’t come as a surprise that he’s amassed his share of violations against the Memphis Grizzlies. His two worst efforts of the series, Games 2 and 3, were both direct results of playing time limited by foul trouble. He had five personals in both, leading to series-low scoring totals of 15 and eight points, respectively.

The Minnesota Timberwolves lost both contests.

If the Wolves are going to do anything of consequence in the postseason, Towns has to at least get rid of the blatantly obvious fouls that have knocked him off the floor and limited his defensive effectiveness—such as it is.

Towns’ failure to limit aggression is the root of the problem. He seems to lack the control necessary to stay out of early foul trouble and doesn’t play carefully once he’s already piled up a couple of personals. This shove to Brandon Clarke, a clear offensive foul, is a perfect example of how the problem starts. There’s nothing subtle, it’s committed right out in the open and, most importantly, it came four minutes into Game 4. The Wolves would go on to win by a final of 119-118, so it didn’t hurt the team. 

But Towns has committed similarly egregious fouls in contests that Minnesota lost, like this one. And he’s shown even worse timing and less restraint in do-or-die moments.

There’s no questioning Towns’ offensive talents, but he can’t put them to use if he’s on the bench.

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Matthew Hinton/Associated Press

It’s all gravy for the New Orleans Pelicans at this point. They’ve gone from a 1-12 start to giving the top-seeded Phoenix Suns all they can handle. In the process, the Pels have seen Brandon Ingram take a leap, CJ McCollum guide the offense and Herb Jones wreak unholy havoc on D.

Whatever happens the rest of the way, the Pelicans are major playoff winners.

They haven’t been perfect, though.

Part of it owes to the quality of the opposition, but New Orleans is struggling to force turnovers while also giving the ball away on offense a little too often. Only Utah is forcing opponent miscues less frequently, and the Pelicans are in the middle of the pack with respect to their own giveaways.

It’s difficult to consistently win games when you lose the turnover battle, but it helps that the Pels are pummeling the offensive glass to create extra possessions. So far, that has offset their negative turnover differential. But New Orleans will need to clean things up if it wants to extend this run.

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Chris Szagola/Associated Press

Lest anyone dismiss the Philadelphia 76ers’ struggles to put the Toronto Raptors away after building a 3-0 series lead, here’s The Athletic’s Rich Hofmann with some important context: “The stakes could not be any clearer. No team in the history of the NBA has ever lost a series after holding a 3-0 lead. This would be another enormous stain on the checkered playoff résumés of Harden, Rivers and Embiid. This would be a second colossal playoff collapse for a franchise that has not been out of the second round in more than two decades.”

The Sixers are still up 3-2, but if they were to somehow blow this series, the ignominy would follow them forever.

To avoid a legacy-destroying choke job, Philadelphia has to make quicker decisions on offense.

Too often during their losses in Games 4 and 5, the Sixers’ primary weapons surveyed and probed when they should have attacked quickly. With the Raptors employing like-sized defenders who can switch, the need to be decisive increases. That’s because the windows of space created in typical pick-and-roll coverage shrink, and the air space afforded by running around off-ball screens diminishes against a scheme like Toronto’s.

Harden and Maxey need to aggressively split defenders up top, get into the lane and spray passes out. Finishing at close range is no longer part of Harden’s slower, ground-bound game, but he can still flip up floaters to keep the Raptors honest. Embiid, too, must operate with more conviction.

He has to run the floor, establish deep position and immediately overpower his invariably smaller matchup.

If Philadelphia doesn’t make quicker decisions, Toronto could force a Game 7 that would heap crushing amounts of pressure onto a team and coach that hasn’t handled it well in the past.

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Matt York/Associated Press

The Phoenix Suns ranked in the top 10 in transition frequency during the season, but they’ve put on the brakes in the playoffs.

The New Orleans Pelicans have noticed. Though the Pels were a good offensive rebounding outfit all year, they’re crashing the glass even harder in their series against the Suns. No team has a higher offensive rebound rate than New Orleans.

Usually, the downside of trying for offensive rebounds is poor transition defense. More bodies on the glass means fewer toward midcourt to slow down the break.

Phoenix’s reluctance to run means New Orleans isn’t paying for its aggression on the boards. So while the Pelicans rack up a postseason-high (through April 25) 17.8 second-chance points per game, the Suns aren’t offsetting that disadvantage with their own fast-break points. 

If the Pelicans continue to dominate the offensive glass with impunity—a possibility given the size they put on the floor with two-center lineups and the rangy combo of Brandon Ingram and Herb Jones—the Suns will have to adjust. That might mean putting more size on the floor, or it could entail getting out on the break at every opportunity, forcing New Orleans to prioritize transition defense.

Either way, something’s got to change for the Suns, who’ve got their hands full with a feisty Pels squad.

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Jessie Alcheh/Associated Press

The small-ball Raptors present challenges for conventional big men—even ones as skilled and (usually) dominant as Joel Embiid. To extend their series, the Raptors need to test the MVP finalist and exploit the specific weaknesses of his teammates even more cruelly than they already are.

That means cackling at Matisse Thybulle from a great distance and daring him to shoot (assuming the series returns to Philly for Game 7; Thybulle, unvaccinated, can’t play Game 6 in Toronto). It also means singling out Embiid and forcing him to guard in space. That approach produced great results in Toronto’s Game 5 win, with Precious Achiuwa, Pascal Siakam, OG Anunoby and Gary Trent Jr. taking turns in a blow-by parade.

James Harden is another vulnerable defender whom the Raptors should involve in as many actions as possible.

Toronto should also run until its collective lungs burst, straining a Sixers team that looked gassed in Games 4 and 5.

There’s no limit to how ruthless and disrespectful the Raptors should be. If it’s diligent enough at attacking Philadelphia’s obvious shortcomings, Toronto has a chance to force a Game 7. And after that, well…for the fragile Sixers’ sake, let’s not go there just yet.

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Tony Gutierrez/Associated Press

The Utah Jazz’s main weakness (non-interpersonal squabbles category) is the least excusable.

They knew after last season’s playoff elimination that their perimeter defense had to improve, and yet the organization’s big free-agent addition was… Rudy Gay?

It used to be that Royce O’Neale was the lone defender capable of consistently staying in front of his man, but now Utah’s most effective stopper might be Bojan Bogdanovic when he plays with wild desperation, like he did in Sunday’s Game 4 win over the Mavs. O’Neale, meanwhile, is losing crunch time minutes to Danuel House Jr., a midseason addition.

Neither Donovan Mitchell nor Mike Conley is providing any resistance, and the price has been steep. No shade intended toward Jalen Brunson, but the Jazz have made him look like 2016 Kyrie Irving.  We’re talking one-on-one blow-by drives galore.

Rudy Gobert often gets the blame for the Jazz’s playoff shortcomings, and he may always struggle against the smaller lineups that appear more often in the postseason. But he can’t be held responsible for such poor point-of-attack defense by his perimeter teammates.

If the Jazz don’t nuke this roster over the summer, they’d better add three or four capable defenders to the current core.

       

Stats courtesy of NBA.com, Basketball Reference and Cleaning the Glass. Accurate through April 25. Salary info via Spotrac.