Portland Trail Blazers at Miami Heat: The Blazers need to switch on pick-and-roll coverage

Coming off a win in Orlando, the Portland Trail Blazers are traveling to Miami in hopes of achieving the same result. One big thing to watch for in this game will be Jusuf Nurkic’s pick-and-roll coverage against a shooting big man in Kelly Olynyk.

Four games into the Portland Trail Blazers’ season, and already one glaring defensive deficiency is rearing its ugly head: Jusuf Nurkic‘s ability to guard against the pick-and-pop.

Nurkic’s assignment is often the screening man, and he likes to drop away from him to contain the opposing ball-handler around or below the free throw line. While this usually works fine when the screening man rolls to the basket as Nurkic’s length allows him to disrupt this action, when the screener pops to the three-point line, the Bosnian Beast is left in no man’s land.

In NBAs past, Nurkic’s desire to drop low and contain probably wouldn’t be a talking point. The league’s bigs were built to do damage down low and rebound like monsters.

But in today’s association, the number of “traditional” centers continues to dwindle…

Now, everyone can shoot. Everyone can put the ball on the deck. Players who were small forwards are now power forwards. Power forwards are now centers.

Ten years ago, Nurk probably wouldn’t have been tasked with guarding the Washington Wizards’ Markieff Morris. But with Washington missing center Dwight Howard to injury, Morris was their de facto five.

Morris is a career 34.2 percent three-point shooter, and Nurkic’s coverage in the pick-and-pop made him look like a deadeye sniper. Morris hit six three-pointers against the Blazers in their game. It wasn’t all Nurk, but he gave up some of the most important ones – you know, the ones that kept the Wiz in it at the end of regulation and the ones that sealed it for them in overtime.

From John Wall‘s penetration, Nurkic sunk down into the paint, leaving Morris wide open to drill another bomb.

This brings us to the Blazers’ game against the Miami Heat.

Although Nurkic’s matchup to start the game will likely be Hassan Whiteside, the Heat also use Kelly Olynyk at center. Olynyk is a career 36.9 shooter from beyond the arc and is always primed to do damage from the outside.

Among the Heat’s dribble penetrators in Josh Richardson, Goran Dragic, and Tyler Johnson, Nurk may be lulled into dropping down low to contain them. Doing so could leave Olynyk wide open to splash shots in his face.

The scariest part of all of this: Olynyk is not some gimmick big man in the league. Almost every team now has a power forward or center who is a legitimate shooter from deep. And the league’s most elite big men all have this shot in their arsenal with capable penetrators around them. Think of those damn New Orleans Pelicans, with Anthony Davis and Nikola Mirotic to shoot from the outside and Jrue Holiday and Elfrid Payton to run the pick-and-roll action.

It could be a long year for Nurkic against stretch big men if something doesn’t change.

And this is why I’m proposing the Blazers begin switching pick-and-roll coverage. If Nurkic wants to drop down low, then allow him to do so without leaving a stretch big open for three.

By switching him onto the ball handler, he can contest a drive to the basket or contain them to shooting a midrange pull-up. The perimeter defender could then contest the big shooter or try and body them up so the pass doesn’t make it there in the first place.

Of course, the Blazers would need to play solid help defense and perhaps even add the scram-switch to their arsenal to make this scheme work effectively.

The Heat seem the perfect team to try working in this idea with. They lack a superstar ball-handler to tease Nurkic or an MVP-caliber big man overpower Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum. The Heat play the right way and can out-execute their opposition, but Portland wouldn’t be giving up panic mismatches by frequently switching their pick-and-rolls against them.

See if anything in the Blazers’ pick-and-roll defense changes tonight at 5:00 P.S.T.