The Miami "Heat's" Wheel offense is a system; like any system it can be defended, as it was last season in Memphis.
Like soccer's tiki-taka, the Wheel aims to create space. That is a fiction. Space cannot be created. In the NBA it is fixed at 94'x50', 47'x50' in half court. Those spaces are occupied by ten very large men and two referees. The Wheel aims to increase the distance between offensive players so that they're not bumping into each other. Therefore, to defend the Wheel, or tiki-taka, defend the space, not the man.
The players in the Wheel offense are, for the most part, functionally interchangeable parts. They don't play numerated, 1-5, functional positions, point guard through center, for the most part. They are functionally "positionless" and are expected to pass, dribble, and rebound as well as the next spoke. In a spatial sense however, the players in a Wheel occupy fixed positions, at least before movement. The Wheel usually begins full court, of course, but the the formation takes place in half court.
That is a standard half court offensive formation, is it not?
As well as occupying fixed positions in space, the Wheel players move in fixed ways. This makes the Wheel doubly predictable and defensible. The offensive player, the "point guard", near the mid-court circle starts the Wheel movement by going (dribbling, passing) clockwise or counter-clockwise. Bam Adebayo demonstrated this on national television. The below diagram is the Wheel's movements clockwise, as I have seen Davion Mitchell, our "point guard" do. Dashed lines are passes, solid lines are player movements.
Everybody clears out of their space in the same direction. Now, the guy receiving Davion's pass at the top of the left three-point circle, Norman Powell in one play I saw, can do whatever he wants, shoot, pass again, drive. You can't operate the Wheel with egotistical ball hogs, the system is designed to get the best, highest-percentage shot to an open shooter.
Basketball can be defended man-to-man or zone (and the many variations). To counter an offensive system that puts the premium on space rather than the man, why would you do something so stupid as to defend the Wheel man-to-man?
What can move faster, an NBA man or a pass? I saw Davion throw a one-handed bullet to Norman. It was in Norman's hands before either defender could react. As I recall, when the defender on Norman closed, Norma drove around him inside the line and just outside the paint and scored a lovely, floating mid-range shot.
No (with one exception), playing man-to man defense against the Wheel makes no sense. You must play defense by occupying the spaces between offensive players, that is, a zone defense.
The one exception is related to the speed of the "Heat's" wheel. You've heard that (until recently, when defenses caught on) the "Heat" led the Association in "pace", which is defined as points per 100 possessions. We're fast. We're young. A defense against a fast-paced wheel has to slow the "Heat" down. Defensing Miami's wheel benefits from picking up Davion early, even playing him 94'. Again, this is like the defense against tiki-taka, to "press high". In neither offensive system you must not play a strict, passive zone defense. Don't give Manchester City time to set up in the buckyball and Kevin DeBruyne time to pass (although soccer defenses did both) or the "Heat" time to get set in the Wheel and Davion time to pass. You only have 24" to shoot in the NBA. Press the playmaker! Don't give him time and space, make him work for every second and foot.
In the last few games, opponents have been contesting space and time against the "Heat". What can the "Heat" do to reinvent the Wheel?
