Interested to see how Denver adjusts after game one.
Monty / CP3 did some not so nice things to MPJ by either making him the lead communicator on the action, or the low man tagger with long recoveries. Forced Mike Malone to leave him on the bench for most if not all of the 4th.
Monty is going to continue to spam spain pick and roll so he's simply going to have to communicate on the switch better here (and he did the more he saw it in game 1), but look for Denver to try and ice side ball screens and to switch or top lock the Chicago action out of the corner they like to run for Book to try and keep him out of help and recovery situations as much as possible.
Malone also messed around with bringing the tagger from the strong side, but we saw some blown rotations out of that (rivers was often the culprit here). But that is another way to make that recovery from MPJ shorter. Allowing him to simply stunt at the roller and stay with his matchup that's typically shaking up to the wing or top of the key.
I expect Jokic to defend the pick and roll less aggressively overall. Book and CP tore the trap up in game one and are great proactive passers. Got to mix it up more and game 2.
Suns did a good job against Jokic. A lot of it had to do with losing his touch late in the game, but I liked late switching on ball screens when they chose to go over. Also think Ayton's length makes it a bit more difficult for Jokic to get clean looks in the post compared to Nurkic.
Sons have better defensive personnel, for sure. Especially when it comes to the combination of strength and lateral quickness on the perimeter. CP3 at point guard is obviously huge advantage as well defensively.
But overall their game plan discipline is just at another level compared to what we saw from Portland.