The Miami Heat can't adjust. They play one way, especially now that Wade is supposedly injured (and mainly being defeated by Father Time) and Bosh is intimidated by Tim Duncan.
Basketball is like a game of chess, and Gregg Popovich plays it better than every coach in the league right now.
People are going to assume that the Heat adjusted for Game 2, but they didn't. They just hit their shots, and the small adjustment that the Spurs made gave Chalmers an open window to take advantage of the different P&R strategy.
In Game 3, Popovich made other adjustments, and he realized that the Heat are playing on tired legs. Tired legs lessen a team's ability to get back out on open shooters, and that tortured the Heat tonight. It's incredibly difficult to close out on shooters for a full 48 minutes if you're coming off of one night's rest, a big series against Indiana, and a Game 2 that required a lot of effort for 3 1/2 quarters.
At this point, the Spurs are going to go under screens, and let LeBron fire away. There's no reason not to. But, not enough is being said about Tim Duncan's role in defending LeBron, either.
Basketball isn't always a simple game, even though a guy like Duncan makes it seem that way. He's a basic player (fundamentally) that's anchoring a complicated defensive system...but, when you have the entire team buying into it, you shut down superstars, and that's what the Spurs are able to do. A simple way to explain it, though, is to push LeBron baseline, into the anchor, and there's no need to collapse all five players on the court...so when James chooses to kick the ball out, their shooters are covered, Bron comes back out to reset, and there's not enough time on the clock to draw an ISO. Do that, and it becomes Leonard or Green, with Duncan's help, versus LeBron...and Bron is forced into the jumper he really doesn't want to take.
Now, any coach would choose to post up their star player, or someone. Bosh can't post up Duncan. LeBron wears down in the post, even though that's clearly where he needs to be. Will James rely on his teammates more than he has in the first three games? He will have to, if he plays in the post for most of the game...and something tells me he wants to conserve energy for the 4th quarters of every game.
You can also see the struggle on the glass. The Spurs position themselves very well for rebounds, and most of their players aren't dragging their feet to get there. Players like Duncan and Splitter have the length, but a guy like Leonard is crashing boards similar to that of James. Difference is, Leonard is young, not carrying that big of a role offensively, and he's reaching the peak of his vertical on those offensive boards.
One night, and we have Game 4 on Thursday. The Spurs, once again, pulled their trio out before Miami, despite the blowout. The big three in Miami played the leading role, once again, when it came to making plays and taking shots (not necessarily making them)...but it was Green, Neal, and Leonard, for the Spurs, who took initiative tonight. It makes Duncan and Parker (and Manu, but I don't want to go too far with that, because he's a big question mark) FEEL like role players on the offensive end, and role players are usually refreshed by the next game.
Pop answered the LeBron/Chalmers P&R (Chalmers going from leading scorer, with 19, to zero points the following game, tells a story here). He answered Bosh trying to stretch the floor. He answered LeBron getting to the rim, Birdman getting easy buckets off cuts, he answered Allen coming off screens and getting open looks. He showed Spoelstra that the Spurs can drop the ball into Duncan, that they can win with heavy Duncan/Parker P&R, that they can win with perimeter shooting, and that they can hold a three-star team containing at least 6-7 capable shooters to just 77 points in an NBA Finals game.
The Spurs have it made. Pending a Parker injury that shuts him down, I'm not sure how they can lose this. LeBron is faced with what ailed him back in 2011, against a Dallas Mavericks team that threw Shawn Marion/Jason Kidd and Tyson Chandler at him, while being able to stretch the floor back on offense with a plethora of shooters AND go into a big man when needed. It seems history is trying to repeat itself.