If you missed my previous post on the shift in defensive philosophy happening at both the NBA and NCAA level, you're going to want to take a look at that before proceeding since it provides the necessary context. A brief refresher:

• While recent conventional wisdom had been to suppress three-point attempts on defense, more NBA teams are packing the paint instead and forcing teams to try to beat them with jumpers.
• Both approaches can be successful but the very best defenses are mostly packing the paint.
• Those same trends held at the college level last year.

The Milwaukee Bucks under Mike Budenholzer have been at the forefront of the movement towards packing the paint the last couple years. Their approach and its success are discussed at length in the previous post and examined even deeper in a couple articles linked therein. If you prefer visual learning, there are a couple videos that clock in under ten minutes each with a great film room explainer—here's the link to part one, which mostly covers drop pick-and-roll coverage, and part two is below:

Now I want to dive into whether Michigan could be in line to change their defensive approach and whether it makes sense to do so. We start in the logical place: Miami.

What Have The Heat Done?

Howard's old team hints at a future shift in philosophy [Bryan Fuller]

Funny you should ask.

For much of Juwan Howard's time as an assistant with the Heat, Miami's defensive approach looked like Michigan's current strategy: suppress three-point attempts as much as possible. In 2016-17, they gave up the lowest opponent three-point rate in the NBA with only 27% of opponent field goal attempts coming from beyond the arc. They consistently posted top-ten defenses.

In Howard's final year as an assistant, however, Miami completely changed their approach despite returning most of the key players from the previous season's eighth-ranked defense. With threes now comprising nearly 40% of opponent attempts, the Heat moved up one spot in the NBA's defense rankings.

While the Heat defense fell out of the top ten this season while going even more extreme in their new pack-the-paint ways, injuries and personnel changes explain the dropoff. Stalwart wing defender Josh Richardson left for Philadelphia, and while adding Jimmy Butler helped cover for Richardson's absence, an injury to Justice Winslow meant 30 minutes per game of Duncan Robinson—a boon to the offense but not the defense. Meanwhile, they didn't adequately replace backup center Hassan Whiteside, who'd previously formed an excellent platoon with Bam Adebayo.

Given the seamless switchover in 2018-19 and the extenuating circumstances this season, I'd say Miami's shift to Milwaukee's general approach has been a success. Howard was on the bench for its implementation. That feels worth noting.

[Hit THE JUMP to see how Michigan already implemented a similar strategy last year and how it might fit with their personnel going forward.]

Wait, Didn't Michigan Do This At Some Point?

in game two, Cassius Winston couldn't find a path to the hoop [Campredon]

What an astute question, large-type header friend. This year's Michigan State series featured a huge adjustment for Michigan between the two games.

In game one, Michigan utilized drop coverage for a while, and Cassius Winston torched them with pull-up midrange shots. That alone kept MSU's offense going at a decent clip, but what really killed Michigan was the additional efficiency from the other Spartans, who combined to go 12-for-22 on twos and 16-for-22 from the line with eight offensive rebounds.

Even when the Wolverines were able to keep a handle on Winston, their focus on guarding the arc opened up easy opportunities on the interior. On the play below, Brandon Johns drops on a dribble handoff to show a double team on Winston while Jon Teske is planted in the paint, but it's only a show—Johns recovers back out to the perimeter, leaving Teske to contest at the rim and nobody to block out Xavier Tillman:

Johns stepped out to take away a potential kickout to Marcus Bingham. Bingham made five of his 28 three-point attempts this season. While Michigan didn't take advantage of the eight-attempt edge from beyond the arc, making two fewer than State, it wouldn't have mattered because they got slaughtered in the paint. The Spartans won by 18.

In the return game at Crisler, Howard's defense took a different tack. With MSU playing multiple non-threats from the outside, Michigan picked the much weaker poison. On this pick-and-pop, Eli Brooks and Teske focus all their attention on keeping Winston from getting to the basket. Brandon Johns is waiting under the hoop. Winston doesn't have a choice but to kick it out to Tillman, a career 27% three-point shooter:

Franz Wagner plays a little in-between game that messes with Tillman's timing without really contesting the shot; Wagner stays in the passing lane between Tillman and Kyle Ahrens, a better spot-up shooter. Teske's late contest feels unnecessary but Michigan still has excellent rebounding position with Johns patrolling the paint and Wagner checking out Ahrens—plus, one of MSU's two major offensive rebounding threats is the guy who just took a three.

While this next play ultimately ends in an Ahrens putback when Isaiah Livers loses his boxout, it illustrates the pack-the-paint approach as well as any from this game—the strategy and defense is sound, Livers just doesn't finish the play. Twice, Winston attempts to attack the basket. Twice, Michigan's defense ignores the perimeter and constricts on Winston, blocking his shot when he goes baseline and then forcing a bad miss when he chucks a contested pull-up fadeaway:

Look at how hard Michigan commits to stopping Winston. On his first foray, all five defenders are well below the free throw line. You could trap all five Wolverines under a reasonably sized blanket.

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On his second try, Winston again faces a wall of defenders; there's still nobody above the charity stripe for Michigan, which is ignoring Tillman entirely and not showing a ton of respect for Gabe Brown and Ahrens either. If not for a missed boxout, this would've been a dominant two-and-out defensive possession.

Winston finished 2-for-10 on two-pointers with six assists and three turnovers. As a team, MSU went 15-for-40 inside the arc, and their increase in three-point attempts—up to 23 from 15 in the previous matchup—didn't come close to narrowing the gap because well over half of them came from middling-to-bad shooters. Michigan's six blocks equaled the number of State's made three-pointers.

The Wolverines cruised to a nine-point win while holding MSU below a point per possession. Only four teams (Kentucky, Purdue, Wisconsin, and Maryland) posted better defensive performances against the Spartans in 2019-20.

What Best Fits For Michigan?

a Dickinson-Johns-Eastern frontcourt could be hell on opponents in 2021-22 [Campredon]

You've probably guessed I was building to this: I think Michigan is best built to take Milwaukee's approach going forward. I understand why the shift didn't take place in year one under Howard; there were already plenty of systematic changes, the team had great success in the past couple years by suppressing threes, and lineups usually featuring two small guards weren't ideal for packing the paint.

Michigan won't have three small guards in the rotation again; while Brooks and Mike Smith are in the 6'0 range, Zeb Jackson is a lanky 6'3" and anyone else who'd play shooting guard is at least 6'6". The two centers, Austin Davis and Hunter Dickinson, are both far better suited for drop pick-and-roll coverage than anything that draws them out to the perimeter. The rest of the team is big. Johns has played plenty of center; Livers has moonlighted there in the past; Terrance Williams plays bigger than his 6'6" height; Wagner will play the two and three despite being as tall as some centers.

The timing also feels right given how the Big Ten should look this year. There were only 17 high-major players 6'10" or taller who attempted at least 30 three-pointers (about one per game) in 2019-20, per data from Bart Torvik. As a group, they shot 33.1%, and only seven of the 17 made more than a third of their attempts.

Four of the seven were in the Big Ten: Maryland's Jalen Smith (37%), Minnesota's Daniel Oturu (37%), Iowa's Luka Garza (36%), and Wisconsin's Nate Reuvers (34%). Smith and Oturu—along with Kaleb Wesson, who made 43% from downtown at 6'9" last season—are near-locks to stick in the draft. It'll be safer to allow big men to let it fly next season.

A team of local interest had the player who best exemplified the benefits of the "leave the big alone" strategy. Jon Teske is 17th out of 17 on that list after going 16-for-65 from three last season. As you likely recall, most of those shots were effectively unguarded. Statistically, any possession ending in a Teske three-point attempt was a win for the defense.

Even if the personnel doesn't quite work or the offseason timing is too short to implement a full-scale change for the upcoming season, 2021-22 and beyond look enticing. Howard is recruiting a lot of emphasis on length and athleticism. He got his Brook Lopez-type in Dickinson, a skilled behemoth with limited mobility but huge upside in a system that lets him stay near the paint. While Dickinson wasn't an elite shot-blocker in the EYBL as a junior, playing in a drop system that allows him to focus on being tall and walling up plays to his strengths. Look at how Lopez's defense took off once he went to Milwaukee:

Lopez had been a good, not great, defender. Now he's a defensive player of the year candidate. Dickinson could have a similar impact at the rim.

Howard would've also added Isaiah Todd—a Giannis comparison is totally unfair here but he could've been deployed in a similar fashion—if not for the unexpected entry of the G League into the recruiting picture. His only 2021 recruiting targets under 6'4" are point guards.

There's a lot yet to be determined with five open scholarship spots projected for 2021-22 even before potential attrition, but for the moment Jackson, at 6'3", is the shortest player on that projected roster by a full three inches. That squad is going to be a sea of limbs.

I love the idea of that team playing Milwaukee-style. College teams don't have to deal with the NBA's defensive three-second rule, almost always face teams that play at least one functional non-shooter, and need to find ways around having less refined perimeter defenders than the pros. This system fits the college game better than the NBA. Howard has laid the groundwork for running it and he's coached through a similar shift in philosophy at Miami. It feels like just a matter of time before Michigan is riding the next big wave of basketball defense.