How Sam Merrill’s shooting can break a defense

Merrill’s fourth-quarter explosion shows why he’d be a good fit in a potential second-round series against the Pacers.

Every opponent knows they can’t let Sam Merrill shoot threes. That gets taken to another level when he’s on a heater like he was at the start of the fourth quarter in the Cleveland Cavaliers' loss to the Indiana Pacers on Thursday night.

Merrill hit two quick threes to open the fourth. Both were the result of sloppy transition defense from Indiana. This forced the Pacers to pay extra attention to Merrill from there.

That is when he’s most impactful.

The Cavs countered that extra attention by using De’Andre Hunter, a 40.4% three-point shooter this season, as a screener in a dribble handoff.

Clearing out the side of the court that the Merrill and Hunter action is on makes this extremely difficult to guard. The Cavs are essentially creating their own two-on-two game, where you need to stay with both shooters.

Switching this action would be the easiest way to combat this, but Hunter just showed that he can easily take a guard in the post if you let him. As such, Pascal Siakam didn’t switch the screen to give Hunter a mismatch inside. This was all the daylight Merrill needed to drain his third triple in three minutes.

Merrill’s greatest value isn’t the fact that he can make threes. Instead, it’s the gravity he creates for others on and off-ball. That showed through after his third three.

The play below is a good example of that. Merrill comes off a Dean Wade pindown screen. Merrill’s defender (Andrew Nembhard) fights over the screen, trying to prevent the three-point look. This gives Merrill a lane inside.

Wade’s defender (Aaron Nesmith) helps prevent the drive. Wade quickly relocates to the corner. An on-target pass from Merrill results in an open look for a 41% corner three-point shooter.

The Pacers were insistent on not switching any Merrill screen. This meant that his defender had to stay connected to him no matter what. That can cause issues for the defender of the other Cavalier involved in the action with Merrill.

That is illustrated in the next play. Merrill slips a simple screen with Hunter after tossing him the ball. Bennedict Mathurin stays connected with Merrill through this, but that forces Nesmith to be a step behind Hunter to make way for that.

Hunter senses his defender is off-balance, snatches back his dribble, and drills an uncontested three to extend Cleveland’s lead.

Merrill then added one more triple for good measure before he was subbed out for the remainder of the game. In total, he accounted for 18 fourth-quarter points in just seven minutes, thanks to four threes and assisting on two others.

That’s pretty impressive given who Merrill was sharing the floor with, and that the Pacers were desperately trying to win this game.

The playoffs start in just over a week. Head coach Kenny Atkinson has stated that he wants to stay with his 10-man rotation in the postseason. Although well-intentioned, that probably isn’t something he will be able to stick with once the series becomes tighter.

Merrill is at risk of losing minutes or his spot in the rotation entirely if you’re forced to cut things down. And while that’s understandable, performances like this show just how much offense he can provide as a shooter, especially in a matchup where the defense is hesitant to switch screens.

This was a good reminder of just how impactful Merrill can be.