ATLANTA -- It's hard to say you ever truly win a matchup against LeBron James in a series. Despite failings in more NBA Finals than he has rings to counter with, LeBron almost always wins his individual match-ups as teams game plan to slow him down and take him out of his game. You need a lot of weapons at your disposal to be a championship team and in today's NBA, one of those weapons has to be a defensive specialist on the wing to throw at stars like LeBron.
That's the challenge set forth for Atlanta Hawks' fifth starter and ultimate x-factor DeMarre Carroll. He's the guy who is going to be asked to be the first line of defense against LeBron James, and he's going to have to be the guy who is able to manage his energy, manage his fouls, and attempt to take away the spots on the floor LeBron is looking to get to in order to hoist his shots. It's not an easy task, but for someone like Carroll, it becomes relatively simple.
James is going to play his game and Carroll is going to play his game. The two will meet in the middle at some point and try to knock the other player back. Sometimes that middle is mental and often times it will be physical. The strength and savvy of Carroll as a defender will be tested, and that seems to be something he relishes. Here's what he had to say after Monday's practice about how he'd describe himself and his assignment ahead of him.
The Junkyard Dog mentality isn't anything new for the NBA. We've had multiple players given this moniker or description, and we've had numerous players exemplify that mentality on the court throughout their careers. For Carroll, it fits perfectly. His story is pretty well known with how he's seemingly come out of nowhere.
It's odd to describe a former first round pick as coming out of nowhere, but after being traded a year and a half after he was drafted 27th in 2009 and then getting waived twice within the next year, Carroll's emergence as one of the most important role players in the NBA has been a great find by Mike Budenholzer, Danny Ferry, and the Hawks' entire front office brass.
In a way, Carroll has been the best and most consistent player for Atlanta during the first two rounds of the playoffs. He's leading the team in scoring at 17.1 points per game. His 3-point percentage (43.9 percent) is a lot higher than Kyle Korver's 3-point percentage (35 percent). He's also the only Hawks starter shooting over 50 percent from the field (52.4 percent). It all comes from being passed over with being waived by the Rockets and Nuggets, and keeping that chip on his shoulder.
“Helps him a lot," Al Horford said about that chip on DeMarre's shoulder, "just because I feel like DeMarre never says anything and he always does what is asked of him. I feel like he always gets the tougher challenges and he just sticks with it and goes for it and doesn't care if he's guarding a point guard or a center. He's just going to go out there and play hard and work hard.
“I think he's just a hard-nosed player. I feel like he's very grateful of this opportunity he has and this team that he's in. He's OK with the challenges. He knows everybody is going to try to single that match-up out, but it's our team. We all have his back. We're all there to get stops.”
Make no mistake about it; the Hawks will defend LeBron as a team. They'll build a wall with different looks behind Carroll to attempt to confuse LeBron. They'll attempt to shade him away from the middle of the floor. They're not going to strand Carroll on an island and ask him to defend James by himself. But the first line of defense comes from Carroll and if he can slow LeBron down then it makes the help defense that much more effective.
“DeMarre has a big heart," Kent Bazemore said about his mentor. "He's got a lot of dog in him. He's going to do everything he can to try to make it tough on him. Obviously, LeBron is a great player – a very special player. He's got his eyes on the prize right now and we've got to go through him to get where we want to go.”
Bazemore will have moments defending the Cavs' perimeter weapons, and he takes his cues from Carroll. He studies how Carroll is going defensively, and looks for the advantages his teammate creates to try to replicate them for when he's called upon to be the defensive worker on the perimeter. It sets the foundation for how Bazemore wants to defend on the court.
He calls DeMarre the "nucleus" of the team's energy, and always delivers the message before the opening tip of every game that everything starts with the Hawks' fifth starter. It allows Paul Millsap and Jeff Teague to harness that effort and energy and build off of what Carroll is doing.
That will be tough to do while defending LeBron, but it takes a special type of person to embrace that challenge, even if it is an assumed loss before the starting lineups are announced.
During the regular season, Carroll had success against James, even though it was just a modicum of the play on the court for both teams in their respective campaigns. With Carroll on the court against LeBron in 54 minutes, James shot just 41.7 percent from the field and the Cavs had a net rating of minus-10.2. He shot eight shots with DeMarre as the closest defender and made just one of them.
With Carroll on the bench, the Cavs were a plus-4.7 points per 100 possessions and LeBron's field goal percentage rose to 64 percent. It's just a few moments of regular season basketball, but it's something Carroll can draw on as situations to replicate during the Eastern Conference finals.
“DeMarre all year has taken the challenge of guarding the opponent's best wing and best perimeter player," coach Mike Budenholzer said after practice on Tuesday. "He has a high belief in his ability to guard. He knows that his teammates are there to help him and participate with him. He just loves the challenges. He's a great competitor.”
Budenholzer can see the comparisons between DeMarre and someone like Kawhi Leonard, who had so much success against James during the 2014 NBA Finals. Everything starts with the way they impact games on defense, and then from there they can look into making the smart cuts, knocking down open jumpers, and keeping James and the other perimeter players honest when the Hawks are on offense. However, their focus never wavers from being the defensive stopper first in what is an increasingly unsexy assignment.
Game 1 Wednesday night in Atlanta will be the first chance in a truly meaningful setting that we'll see how the junkyard dog mentality fairs against LeBron. He may just be the right weapon for the Hawks to unleash in this series.
