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Couper Moorhead

1. You knew the Pacers – to this point posting one of the best Offensive Ratings of all time – were going to come to Miami ready to run. With Tyrese Haliburton leading the way, and then some, speed and efficiency is Indiana’s entire identity, even if it costs them a bit on the defensive end.

Even knowing what was coming, though, sometimes you need to see it, to feel it, to believe it. What the Pacers were doing in the first half, jumping ahead 15-4 early and holding a lead around 10 through two quarter while they sometimes scored in seven seconds or less, was unlike anything the HEAT have seen before this season. Whether there was an adjustment period or not – it would be understandable if there was, but only the team will be able to speak to that postgame – the quickness with which Haliburton (28 points in the first half on 14 shots) had Indiana moving, both in the open floor and in the half-court, was getting the Pacers into the heart of the paint with regularity. By the break it was 73-64, with the Pacers’ Offensive Rating of 146, with 8-of-8 shooting at the rim, topping an excellent-on-any-other-night 128 from the HEAT. Miami also lost Bam Adebayo for the game to a hip injury in the second quarter, with Thomas Bryant replacing him in the starting lineup in the third.

Eight straight from Kyle Lowry to open the half helped matters to get within two as Jimmy Butler went into takeover mode, parading himself to the foul line through contact, but the Pacers could not be slowed unless they were missing from three. The lead stayed at 10. At one point midway through the third, Haliburton had been playing so well that Duncan Robinson was essentially playing full ball denial on Indiana’s point guard even as Haliburton stood within a few feet of the half-court line. A regular supply of free-throws, with Indiana missing a handful of their own, kept things well within a possession or two – one headed into the fourth – as Butler put up 16 points in the third.

As the Pacers continued to miss some freebies (21-of-32 at the line), Miami made their push for their first lead with Butler getting some rest early in the fourth, Jaime Jaquez Jr. getting to the paint for two – followed by a few more – and Robinson draining a wide, wide open three. All those easy scores Indiana was generating in the first half dried up as Miami packed the paint and blitzed the ball out of Haliburton’s (44 points on 15-of-28 shooting to go with 10 assists) hands as Butler hounded him one-on-one, Indiana couldn’t counter from three (11-of-43, with not a single make from their bench) and the paint remained wide open for the HEAT.

The Pacers might have come into this one as the offensive machine, looking every bit the part through the first three quarters, but it was Miami, winning just as high scoring as expected at 142-132, that sustained their own attack behind a veteran All-Star, a remarkable rookie and some good old-fashioned pressure.

2. On any normal night, especially one where you lose Adebayo in the first half, the game ball goes to Butler (36 points on 18 shots, 18-of-20 from the free-throw line) just for doing Butler things as he settled the game down by drawing so many fouls. But this was not a normal night for not a normal rookie.

While Erik Spoelstra probably decided the outcome of the game with his decision to put two on Haliburton – with Butler refusing to allow the switch as much as possible – in the fourth quarter, a coverage Indiana’s other players could not consistently take advantage of – their shot quality on threes eroded the longer Miami stretched their lead – it was Jaquez Jr., with his combination of cunning, guile and footwork, who pushed Miami in front during that early-fourth period without Butler. Whether it was getting behind unsuspecting Indiana weakside defenders for cuts or calmly eating up space until his defender had the rim right over his head, everyone who watched this game will remember it for Jaquez Jr. – stealing the night from both Butler and Haliburton, punctuating it with a fast-break alley-oop from Josh Richardson – down the stretch.

For a player who was taken outside of the lottery without much public fanfare outside of Miami, Jaquez Jr. (24 points on 8-of-13 shooting) has wasted little time making a name for himself and earning respect around the league. One suspects he won’t be getting as much single coverage for long.

3. The other side of this matchup is that Indiana isn’t exactly known for their defense. Even though Miami had a handful of clunky possessions go their way, they were still generally able to get into the paint whenever they wanted. Knowing this, then, they appeared to be passing up some threes – open, but still a higher variance play than a layup or free-throws – in order to take advantage of the advantage staring them in the face.

It's an interesting gambit up against such a potent offense, but a logical one. Until the other team proves they can stop the ball one-on-one, stop fouling or at least help from the right angles, don’t let them off the hook. The HEAT only took 21 threes in this one, but the other side of the coin was 45 free-throws – some from Indiana extending the game down the stretch – while hitting 35-of-57 in the paint, including 15-of-21 at the rim and 20-of-36 in the upper paint, for 70 total paint points. When you’re mauling the other team inside like that, beating defenders one-on-one with regularity and drawing foul after foul, then who needs threes?

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Coup's Takeaways: Jaquez Jr. And Butler Take Down Haliburton, High-Powered Pacers In Fourth Quarter

1. Another game, albeit one with major In-Season Tournament implications, another lopsided stretch – going either direction – in the opening minutes as Milwaukee jumped out to a 15-2 lead while Miami missed nine of their first ten shots.

And once again, that early lead didn’t amount to much of anything. Late in that first quarter, thanks to Bam Adebayo dropping in jumper after mid-range jumper, it was tied. In the second – where Jaime Jaquez Jr. went on a personal 6-0 burst, Josh Richardson worked his way to the paint and Kyle Lowry hit a handful of tough shots – Miami had a small lead more often than they didn’t. Jimmy Butler, Tyler Herro and Haywood Highsmith were all out of the lineup, but after those choppy early minutes where nothing would fall Miami was chugging along just fine, the good looks coming along with regularity. Miami 62-59 at the break, with Giannis Antetokounmpo (31 points on 15 shots) and Damian Lillard, scoring in ways you’ve seen them score a thousand times before, the only Bucks players in double figures.

Even as Milwaukee made a run in the third to jump out in front, Miami did what they always seem to do when their rotation is running short – make threes. Midway through the period, the HEAT had made five shots and four of them, two from Richardson, were threes. At 12-of-24 from deep after three, Miami scored 73 points between the second and third quarters, headed into the fourth up by four while the rest of the league watched scoreboards to see who would win Tournament groups and come out ahead in multi-team tie-breaker scenarios.

By the mid-point of the fourth it was clear that Miami’s Tournament hopes were all but faded after New York beat Charlotte by double digits. But the game itself was still tight, still nip-and-tuck, one of the best regular season crowds of the past few seasons living and dying with every rebound as Adebayo shouldered the load while Lowry and Richardson (combined 6-of-12 from three) hounded Lillard full-court. The Bucks pulled ahead late thanks to a series of Lillard (32 points on 17 shots) drives and free-throws, with Khris Middleton turning in a couple vintage one-on-one scores, winning this one 129-124 – but that’s with who Miami, otherwise playing a great game, had available. &nbsp;

2. Miami isn’t in this game without shooting extraordinarily well – 14-of-30 – just the same as they wouldn’t have made their run to the NBA Finals without historically good performances from deep.

They also might not have been anywhere at all without Adebayo, showing no signs of slowing in his best season yet. Adebayo proved himself in a big way during the First Round last season, showing all of his improvements and adjustments against Milwaukee’s drop coverage were finally paying off. Not only was Adebayo not hesitating to take the shots Lopez conceded in the upper paint, he also wasn’t settling for those shots. But as we’ve said countless times at this point, where last season was Adebayo coming into his own on the offensive end, finding a real comfort level with his game, this season has been about him owning that identity, and then some. Yes, it was crucial that he make 8-of-17 between the upper paint and mid-range, but more important was how he got them – not just stepping into open looks but creating the tough ones that any team needs to survive the non-beautiful possessions. And yes, the jumpers make up the bulk of his usage, but there’s real force in between as he posted up both Lopez and Antetokounmpo, going body for body rather than just trying to go over the top.

It's not always going to look perfect – 13-of-27 isn’t typically Adebayo’s sort of efficiency when it comes to volume – but that’s half the point. He took 27 shots to get to 31 points and had to create half of them on his own. Adebayo (adding 10 rebounds and five assists) appears willing to do the things that won’t always work out but must be attempted by someone, all while remaining at the peak of his powers defensively, taking Lillard on a late, long switch and blocking his shot. He just keeps getting better.

3. In the past five seasons of HEAT-Bucks matchups, playoffs included, Miami has never made more than 14 shots at the rim against Milwaukee. A low total, to be sure, but a logical one given Milwaukee’s interior length and a scheme that for years has been designed entirely around protecting the rim – in an entirely different manner than a HEAT system that shares the same goal.

In the first half alone tonight, Miami had 10 makes at the rim. Some of it was pure force and finesse, a Jaquez Jr. (14 points on nine shots) pushing forward with a controlled dribble or Richardson worming his way around an Adebayo screen to get to the cup – Milwaukee’s smaller backcourt struggling to keep the ball in front – and some of it was that good ol’ ball and body movement that makes Erik Spoelstra so happy. Whether HEAT players were cutting at the right time, pushing the pace or curling off a screen at high speed, the Bucks were routinely caught out of position, either late or too early with their help, leaving either the paint or the corners open. &nbsp;

It looked for a brief stretch like all that would dry up a bit in the second half, but the deeper Milwaukee went into their bench the more ways Miami found to get inside, whether it was Adebayo muscling Lopez out of the way or Caleb Martin – continuing to look like his old self – toasting his defender from the corner to get a couple easy ones. Miami finished with 20 makes at the rim, by far the best game they’ve ever had at the rim against the Bucks, and even though it didn’t lead to a win tonight it’s a note, in bold and underlined, to hold on to for down the line. This is something that doesn’t happen against the Bucks, and there was nothing flukey about the way it just did.

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Coup's Takeaways: Bam Adebayo And Plenty Of Threes Keep It Tight Against Milwaukee As Miami Eliminated From Tournament Play

1. No Jimmy Butler. No Bam Adebayo. No Tyler Herro. No Duncan Robinson. You knew going into this one that this was going to be just one of those nights – but just one of those nights means something a little different with Miami.

After all these years, it shouldn’t be surprising that the HEAT were keeping pace with a hot-shooting Nets team throughout most of the first half, never allowing the deficit to get stretched out too far. The more you take away from them, the stronger they seem to get. Or, at the very least, the more threes they seem to hit. So even as Brooklyn hit 10-of-20 from deep in the first half, good for an Offensive Rating of 126, Miami stuck around because they stuck to a very specific game plan. They launched threes, all drive-and-kick and drive-and-kick until they found a little daylight, hitting four threes before their second two. They dialed up the press zone, stacking the top of that zone against the ballhandler – with a short clock after the press drained precious seconds away – and pushed as often as they could. It wasn’t always perfect, but shooting 45 percent from deep covers up for a lot of mistakes. Down 63-53 at the break, with how well the Nets were shooting, was more than manageable.

There was a small window early in the third as Brooklyn missed a handful of open threes, but the Nets managed to extend the lead from there thanks to six straight from Nic Claxton at the rim. That proved to be the greatest issue in the third – whether or not Brooklyn was capitalizing on their perimeter looks, they were able to supplement the outside with efficient drives. Still, the score oscillated between upper and lower teens largely because Miami was absurdly efficient in their second-chance opportunities – 200 points per 100 putback plays for the game, up against a 72.9 Offensive Rating in the half-court. Just 90-76 going in the fourth.

Erik Spoelstra went into the fourth going small with Haywood Highsmith at center, but Highsmith took a hard fall a minute into the period and left the game. Then it was Nikola Jovic at center, Miami sticking with a five-out look. They got the misses they need from the Nets, just couldn’t sustain enough of a push with consistent half-court offense if the threes didn’t fall. Eventually the lead was 20 with time running short, Miami’s percentages from deep falling below league average even as Brooklyn dipped below 40 percent themselves.

Not always going to have that shorthanded magic and the buckets of threes – this one a 112-97 loss – to put you over the top, but this was the same kind of game Miami always tries to play when they don’t have all their guys. Brooklyn was just more than game to play that same way and Miami couldn’t keep the drives away from the rim.

2. For as clear as Miami’s shorthanded formula is, it doesn’t work – work as in keeping the game competitive, not guaranteeing a victory – without a couple key personnel elements. First, you still need a veteran playmaker to keep the entire strategy together while offering at least a little self-made shot creation in a pinch. Tonight that was Kyle Lowry, whose organizational exploits need no further explanation.

The other thing you need – beyond the threes, the zone, the press and the offensive rebounding – is for a young player, someone the other team generally expects to have a lower usage rate, to pop on offense. Tonight, that was Jaime Jaquez Jr. (18 points on 15 shots), who has been popping at relatively low usage for weeks now. Another couple of threes is always nice to see as Jaquez Jr.’s percentages continue to hover around 40 percent, but it’s the patient, footwork-forward drives out of the corner that impress the most. In a lot of ways it looks like the kind of game you see from many a high-usage college star, only Jaquez Jr. has been so good with those old-school, slow-it-down moves that he’s translating nearly his entire repertoire. Helps to be able to finish over the top with a tough jumper when necessary, but it’s the way he burrows his way within eight feet and creates space for a hook or a floater – even over NBA length like Claxton – that makes you think he’ll find this type of success for another 10 seasons.

It shouldn’t be lost that the majority of Jaquez Jr.’s effective attacks have come out of corner, though. Teams generally aren’t bringing help there and it’s where he can most easily replicate one-on-one situations. From any other angle, you have to navigate complex NBA coverages and that’s where Jaquez Jr. can get into trouble, sped up in a way he never seems to get from those corners or from the mid-post. That’s normal stuff for a rookie, even a rookie that doesn’t play like a rookie, but it’s important to note the context surrounding success. Jaquez Jr. has been a revelation so far, he’s also been put into the right spots for it to happen – and it happens fairly often as the HEAT will look for him as a first option when there’s a mismatch in the post.

3. The brightest spot this evening was Caleb Martin having his best game of a short – for him, having missed time with a knee injury – season. Martin hasn’t quite looked like his usual high-energy slashing, high-efficiency shooting self as he works back into game shape, as he did not fully participate in training camp, and you don’t ever expect the night-to-night improvement from a layoff to be linear, but tonight was the first clear-cut step in the right direction – maybe two steps – in his seven games.

You know what the best of Martin looks like, as does everyone in the city of Boston, so we don’t have to explain too much. It took Martin 18 shots to get to 22 points, but he made half of those and did it in his way, cutting his way into the paint, attacking the glass. (four offensive boards) and creating in the mid-range (3-of-5 shooting) when necessary. In a game Miami lost by 15, Martin was a +8 in his 30 minutes – even with some of that coming in the last few non-competitive minutes, Martin did enough to win the time he had.

As unconventional as Martin’s game can be it’s not always easy to tell when he’s feeling great or not. You get the sense he would still try and dunk on someone even if he had thirty-pound weight tied to his ankles. Tonight, at least the results were what we’re used to with Martin, so that must mean the process, and the feeling, behind those results was on the upswing as well.

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Coup's Takeaways: Martin and Jaquez Jr. Lead Scoring As Shorthanded HEAT Fall Short In Brooklyn To Close Out Road Trip

1. If Miami’s grind-it-out Second Round series against the Knicks last year was your kind of basketball, then this was your kind of (In-Season Tournament) game.

Already short Tyler Herro and also missing Duncan Robinson and his gravity, while facing the best (statistically speaking) defense they’ve faced in a couple weeks, Miami looked a bit more labored, leaning on deliberate, manufactured offense rather than the rhythm, flow-focused game – with plenty of threes – of recent wins. While things stabilized after a 10-1 Knicks opening thanks to Bam Adebayo’s (21 points on 16 shots) aggression, drawing two early fouls on Mitchell Robinson, it was all blunt force from there on both sides.

Managing their turnovers and scoring off their opponent’s, Miami was headed for a decent lead at the break before a quick 8-0 burst from New York, with Quentin Grimes dropping one in from the corner at the buzzer, it was 51-50 Knicks before the second 24 minutes. Julius Randle, shouldering his way into the paint, and Jalen Brunson led scoring on one side, Adebayo and Jimmy Butler doing so on the other just as you would expect from a high-leverage, postseason game.

Miami opened the third on a 10-0 run, again turning the Knicks over as Butler hit his third three in three tries. That run eventually stretched all the way out to 19-0. New York didn’t score their first second-half point until the 7:13 mark of the quarter. Where the Knicks were getting good looks in the first half whenever they managed not to turn it over, Miami was done giving up those good looks in the third – a couple transition threes for New York aside. HEAT by 16 going into the final period, getting even more great play from Jaime Jaquez Jr. – the bench offense often goes right to him in the post if there’s a good matchup – along the way.

This wasn’t a runaway evening like the last two against Cleveland and Chicago, though. From down 21 New York rallied to within seven, Immanuel Quickley hitting four threes on his way to 20 points, with over eight minutes to play as Miami endured a bout with their own turnovers. The Knicks had multiple chances to get within two possessions, coming up short until a Brunson (24 points on 16 shots) and-one made it a five-point game with 2:56 to go. A minute later, an R.J. Barrett and-one gave New York the lead – with 1:24 to go Miami had scored just nine points in the period. Only a two point game in the closing seconds, Miami ball, but a Butler (23 points on 16 shots) stepback three rimmed out and that was that, 100-98 after losing the fourth 29-11.

Everything Tournament relevant is headed for a pivotal fourth Group Play game against Milwaukee (tickets here) next week for either a spot in the Quarterfinal or a Wild Card berth.

2. You can’t sugarcoat giving up a 21-point second-half lead, nor can you do so for a fourth quarter that was so thoroughly stuck in the mud, but you can try to explain it.

The best place to start is pace. Even when they weren’t forcing turnovers – more on that below – Miami was clearly trying to push the ball up the floor and get into early offense. Normally for them that comes from hit-ahead and long outlet passes, but tonight the push was there with the dribble, too, as Kyle Lowry sprinted the ball up the floor as the Knicks started one defensive possession after another cross-matched and recovering to the ball, leading to open shooters and open lanes. When New York setup their defense it was still a grind, those early moments providing the respite to keep them out in front.

That final period, in comparison, was a crawl. And while it’s true that almost all fourth quarters are played at a slower pace – there’s a reason transition-reliant teams often struggle on offense in the postseason – it’s also a natural reaction when you get sped up. The Knicks, in much the same way that Miami does to other teams, pressured the HEAT into some unnaturally quick possessions toward the end of the third and early in the fourth, and after New York’s initial burst to get the lead back around ten was fed by a few turnovers, the HEAT slowed things down. Of course, the other side of that is that New York stopped turning the ball over themselves and were making shots – not the environment you need if you are trying to push. All in all, Miami’s best offense is a feedback loop that feeds off their defense, and in the fourth quarter that loop went in the other direction.

3. To give you an idea of how important turnovers are to Miami’s defense, when their opponents either get a shot off or draw a foul the HEAT’s defense is allowing 1.31 points-per-possession, No. 19 within those set conditions. Good thing, then, that the HEAT are No. 2 in opponent turnover percentage, forcing giveaways on 17 percent of possessions headed into this one.

Such was the case tonight, excepting the opening minutes of the third when New York ran all of its offense off the backheel. New York finished with a slight-above average effective field-goal percentage (54.3) but an Offensive Rating of 103.1 because they turned the ball over 19.6 percent of the time. Meanwhile, a HEAT team scoring 80.5 points-per-play in the half-court put 25 points off turnovers to good use until that fourth quarter.

None of this is new for this group. In fact it tracks with how they profiled over the past three seasons, and it tracks with their aggressive, help-heavy style of defense. Just as they are an elite rim deterring team that tends to give up a solid percentage there, a great ball movement team can stay ahead of their help and find good looks – it’s just a high wire act. Miami is good at what they’ve been designed to be good at, and that’s what you want to see.

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Coup's Takeaways: Butler’s Last-Second Three Rims Out, Knicks Stage Dramatic Fourth-Quarter Comeback As HEAT Drop To 2-1 In Tournament Play

Miami HEAT

Your Miami HEAT has released the following injury information regarding guard Dru Smith.&nbsp;

Dru Smith suffered a Third Degree ACL Sprain in his right knee during Miami’s win at Cleveland on November 22. Smith will miss the remainder of the season.

Smith has appeared in nine games with the HEAT this season averaging 4.3 points, 1.6 rebounds, 1.6 assists, 1.00 steals and 14.5 minutes while shooting 45.5 percent from the field, 41.2 percent from three-point range and a perfect 2-of-2 from the foul line.

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HEAT INJURY UPDATE ON DRU SMITH

1. Early leads matter unless they don’t. Or they don’t matter unless they do.

For the third straight game, after the two-night set in Chicago, Miami couldn’t miss in the early going, jumping out to a 16-2 lead with Kyle Lowry eventually hitting his first five threes. No Donovan Mitchell for Cleveland but also no Bam Adebayo or Tyler Herro for Miami, so Cleveland was scoring just fine – when they weren’t turning the ball over. The Cavaliers still had plenty of shotmaking juice but they were sped up by a team dialing up the perimeter pressure, with 12 of Cleveland’s first-half turnovers (to Miami’s four) being of the live-ball variety. All half-court offense being equal, it was transition where the HEAT pushed themselves out front, 69-55 at the break.

For the second straight game, after hitting nearly half their threes in Chicago, the shooting just wouldn’t cool down no matter who was shooting it. Whatever went up, it went in, and the lead stretched out over 20. Cleveland just couldn’t keep pace, their percentages looking good but turnovers continuing to drag the efficiency down like quicksand.

This is not a difficult one to explain. A minute into the fourth quarter Miami was 18-of-30 from three (finishing 20-of-35), with Jaime Jaquez Jr. (career-high 22 points) going 4-of-4, and had 12 fewer turnovers than the home team – Kyle Lowry having touched his HEAT -high with 28 points on 7-of-9 from three – their 28-point lead prompting Cleveland coach J.B. Bickerstaff to hold his starters out for the final period. Been a while since Miami has had consecutive walk-it-home fourth quarters, winning 129-96 for their first 30-point victory since May of 2022, but the day before Thanksgiving is as good a time as any.

2. Early last season the Cavaliers gave Miami’s zone its roughest night of the year, scoring 1.34 points per across 41 possessions in a 26-point victory over the HEAT. Their combination of two centers capable of operating in the middle of the floor in Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley, the shooting of Darius Garland and second-side speed of Mitchell – Cleveland was running a screen on one side, quickly reversing it to Mitchell on the weak side as Mitchell launched into the paint – exploited all the holes in the zone as Cleveland looked more comfortable than most teams against the HEAT’s secondary look.

Allen and Mobley still had their moments tonight after Cleveland’s early turnovers trying to force the ball into them, but without that release valve in Mitchell after the zone tilted toward one side, the Cavaliers found themselves operating in tight spaces and found the ball going the other direction before they even got a shot up. And with Miami toggling between zone and man, throwing in some full-court pressure as they always do, with pressure high up on the floor – the help was faster and more furious tonight – Cleveland was alternating between earning good looks and coughing the ball up. On the second night of a traveling back-to-back, when fatigue slows the processing speed, it was a high wire act the Cavaliers couldn’t manage as they finished with 19 turnovers to Miami’s 10. Across 29 possessions, Cleveland scored just 0.82 points per possession.

3. Adebayo might be the most important player on the Heat as far as what he means to them on both ends of the court, but Erik Spoelstra has never tried to play the same way when Adebayo is not available. Instead of playing it safe, he tends to get even more aggressive, betting that asking his replacement big men to speed up the other team – push-up switches and blitzes being favored over soft drop coverage – is the best option. Aggression produces turnovers, and turnovers beget transition scores.

With Kevin Love and Tyler Herro also out, both Orlando Robinson and Thomas Bryant were game for what they were asked to do as they combined for +35 and 24 points on 17 shots.  The minutes might not always be there, but when one of your best players is out this is what you ask for in the middle. Nothing spectacular, just solid and efficient.

Meanwhile, Jaquez Jr. continuing to shoot this well is one of the sneakier important developments of the season. If the shooting is real, and it’s been great of late, he’s as complete a ready-to-go rookie as you’ll see.

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Coup's Takeaways: Kyle Lowry Ties HEAT-High As Miami Rolls In Cleveland Behind Shooting And Defense

1. You would be excused for getting some extreme Saturday night vibes off the start to this Monday night game, with Miami leading 12-2 – scoring on their first five possessions – after leading 22-1 in their loss over the weekend.

Sure enough, Chicago made up the gap soon enough, quickly going on an 8-0 run and knotting the game at 40-40 in the second quarter. But where the first of this two-game series was a defensive battle, this was a veritable offensive explosion, the threes falling – Duncan Robinson and Coby White both hit three early on – and the paint opening up far more than it had before, the HEAT making more shots at the rim in the first half than they did in all of Saturday’s contest. Miami found themselves up, 65-53, at the break after a second-quarter burst from Kevin Love, and running, with an Offensive Rating of 151.2 on 8-of-17 shooting from three.

It wasn’t all thrilling, one Jimmy Butler “skyhook” aside, up-and-down basketball, but that’s not typically how Miami’s grinds out an efficient night absent opponent turnovers. They get to the line, they take care of the ball and they find mismatches to post-up. The write their names in the margins with pen. Doesn’t guarantee you anything, though, and Chicago shot their way back within three minutes into the third only for Bam Adebayo (23 points on 14 shots) to push it back to eight. Back within three again a couple minutes later only for Miami to again push back. HEAT by 12 going into the fourth, their hot offense sustaining just a little better than Chicago’s.

No drama tonight. No clutch. As Chicago’s shooting cooled and they watched defensive rebounds bounce off their fingertips, Miami kept making. This was Miami’s first double-digit victory of the season, 118-100, and we doubt anyone is going to complain about being able to breathe calmly at the end of this one.

2. Some nights, it’s all pretty simple. Miami shot 17-of-35 from three as part of their 129.7 Offensive Rating, with Duncan Robinson going 6-of-9 -- Miami is 32-9 in the past five seasons when Robinson makes at least six threes -- and Kyle Lowry, Jaime Jaquez Jr., Josh Richardson and Kevin Love all hitting at least a pair.

The HEAT have only lost two games in the past five seasons – one loss by one point, the other by two – while shooting at least 48 percent from three, winning 34. The implication of a statistic like that is that the defense generally holds solid enough that any molten hot night like this one is almost always going to be enough to put you over the top. This is a good time for a reminder that Miami shot at least 50 percent from deep six times during last season’s run to the NBA Finals, including twice against Milwaukee, three times against Boston and also in their only win over Denver in the last round. You can never just decide to shoot that well no matter how much you want to, but nights like this – even on slightly lower volume than they have put up in the past – are a big part of greasing the wheels for an offense that can get bogged down when games slow down.

3. Coming into this game Jaime Jaquez Jr. (19 points on 13 shots, team-high +24) was shooting 25 percent on corner threes on 20 attempts, that number being the only real blemish on an otherwise excellent start to his rookie season. With little baseline to go off of and some lower percentages in college – albeit better on catch-and-shoot opportunities – you couldn’t have said it was just a matter of time like you would with an established NBA shooter, but there also wasn’t anything noticeably off about his mechanics.

Tonight, the shots fell. Jaquez Jr. shot 3-of-4 from the corners, and that’s all there is to it. If he can make those at an average or better clip, you’re going to have a hard time picking apart his game. Erik Spoelstra is already having a hard enough time keeping him off the floor as it has already been made perfectly clear how much the team trusts him. All you have to do is watch how often he heads right for the post whenever Jaquez Jr. senses a mismatch, and how often he gets the ball in those spots. It’ll be months until we have a real feel for Jaquez Jr.’s shot, but nights like tonight are all you can ask for.

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Coup's Takeaways: HEAT Rain Threes On Bulls In Monday Night Rematch

The Miami HEAT are 8-5, No. 5 in the Eastern Conference with a Net Rating of +0.1, good for No. 17 in the league. They have four games remaining on their current trip, including a Play-In Tournament match on Friday against the Knicks. Here’s what we’ve been noting and noticing.

Much of what you hear at Media Day and during Training Camp is quickly nullified once the season begins. There isn’t anything nefarious going on, that first week is just the equivalent of New Year’s Eve for the NBA. Everyone has their resolutions, but we all know what happens to resolutions in January. Still, there are always a handful of quotes that stick with you throughout the season. This year, one of those came from Duncan Robinson.

“My goal is to come out and be aggressive to the point where I’m noticed and needed,” he said. “That’s a goal of mine for sure. We’ll see where the chips fall after that.

“Having awareness over who I am and what I do. A big part of this past offseason, everyone makes a fuss when I dribble the ball twice or make a layup, that is what it is. For me part of the offseason has been about getting back to really what I feel I can be elite at, floor spacing, catching and shooting. In the past I’ve been so obsessed with trying to expand this that or whatever. But instead of really honing in on what makes me me and unique from other players. Trying to tap into that for sure has been an emphasis.”

Now, you might read that and think Robinson, after a season where his three-point rate and percentages dipped as he dealt with a finger injury that eventually required surgery only for him to emerge as one of Miami’s most important offensive players in the postseason, was trying to refocus his game on his shooting. You also might read that and think it doesn’t track at all with what we’ve seen from Robinson this year.

When we say Robinson’s three-point rate dipped last season, 81 percent of his field goals came from three, down from three straight years over 85 percent as he took over three two-pointers per 100 possessions for the first time since his 15-game rookie season. That was enough to be noticeable at the time, but this year only 66 percent of Robinson’s shots have come from three as he takes over six two-pointers per 100, nearly double what had previously been his career high. On top of that, only 71.4 percent of those two-pointers have been assisted – his career average is 84 percent – 19 percent of his shots are coming within three feet of the basket, triple the rate of last season, and he’s driving 9.3 times per 100 possessions, up from 6.6 last year which itself was double the rate of the season before.

Robinson is still taking 12 threes per 100 possessions and making 41.1 percent of them – he’s taking more shots per game overall, which is how all the other increases are possible with the threes still going up – and he’s still one of the league’s most prolific handoff operators. He just doesn’t look like a player who previously appeared to be thinking that he had focused too much on expanding his game, considering this is the most expansive his game has ever been.

Does this look like the Duncan Robinson you a couple seasons ago?

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Notebook 59: Duncan Up And Under Craft

We followed up with Robinson to get a sense of where he was at in the context of his preseason goals. After all, none of these changes are a bad thing. Just different. Aliens isn’t Alien and Army of Darkness isn’t Evil Dead II. They’re still great, all of them.

“The biggest thing is being a basketball player and trusting my instincts as a player,” he said. “I think my feel and my instincts are a strength of mine. Not getting so narrow minded over, ‘Oh, I’ve got to shoot this shot.’ Having the freedom between the ears to just play. In the past there was clarity because it was like, ‘Just shoot threes. Come off of stuff, fly off of stuff and shoot threes.’ Now I have clarity where I can just be who I am as a player. That just makes it a whole lot easier on that end.”

That said, does he see his overall three-point rate being down as a good thing, a bad thing, or just a thing?

“It's more important to look at how the offense is functioning,” he said. “For me, I want to really focus on taking good [threes]. Good ones might look different in different games, depending on how teams are playing, depending on how the offense is flowing and moving. So there are stretches where I have to be more aggressive. We have so many talented guys, we can play a very unselfish brand of basketball. There’s no reason I have to shoot challenging ones with two guys on me or whatever. There’s going to be times when I shoot them, but for the most part we can work to get a better one.”

There’s merit to this, statistically. Sure, Robinson is shooting 41.1 percent, his best percentage since his breakout second season, and making over half his threes off the dribble – only 33.9 catch-and-shoot, strangely, though that will normalize as the pull-up percentage drops – but perhaps the most important thing happening for him, beyond all the increases inside the arc, is that Robinson is enjoying the best Shot Quality of his career. Robinson’s expected effective field-goal percentage relative to league average is 54.5, according to Second Spectrum, a huge spike from a previous high of 51.6, and from three his expected eFG is 51.7, also his highest mark in a full season. Using the version of Shot Quality that uses Robinson’s historical performance puts it more in line with career norms, though still well above where he’s been the past two seasons when his spot in the rotation was often in flux. Granted, Miami hasn’t faced many top tier defenses to this point, but good process generally leads to good results against weaker opponents. Given how the league has scouted him, with plenty of top-locking guards chasing him off the line, and the counters he has had to develop, indications are that he’s taking the right shots at the right time in his career.

We can also throw all the numbers out and say this is clearly, from an observer’s perspective, the most comfortable Robinson has been with his game and where it fits in Miami’s offense in a couple years. Slotting into the starting lineup during Tyler Herro’s injury, where he can play a ton of minutes with Bam Adebayo and Jimmy Butler, might have something to do with it. Erik Spoelstra will certainly have to sort out his rotation puzzle sooner than later. For now, Robinson has his swagger back and that’s worth any amount of change, or refocusing, it takes to get there.

This might surprise some of you since we’re getting to the point where Bam Adebayo’s rookie season doesn’t feel like it was just yesterday anymore, but back in 2017-18 Adebayo’s was not a very good play finisher. Yes, he was an athletic dunker. Anything else was, as with all things for a rookie, a work in progress.

On all paint shots that were not jumpers that season, Adebayo shot 56.4 percent. In the restricted area, where he routinely hovers around and above 70 percent, he was at 62.7. In the upper paint, he was all the way down at 25.4 percent. It’s common for high-level athletes, guys who have essentially been able to rise and dunk over anyone for their entire lives, to struggle a bit when they encounter the mobile redwoods which cover the league. Still, some players never quite figure that part out. Adebayo’s finishing numbers were at least worth a raised eyebrow and regular check-ins.

Something else happened that season which helped push him along. At the trade deadline in early February, Miami re-acquired Dwyane Wade from the Cleveland Cavaliers. We’ll let Adebayo tell the rest.

“When I was on the team with D-Wade, I would always rush. And D-Wade pulled me to the side one day and was like, ‘Let the defense make the mistake. Slow down, be patient.’ Literally it was just like a wakeup call for me.”

By the next season, Adebayo’s only full year with Wade on the roster, his percentages rose across the board. Up to 68.8 percent in the restricted area and 40.9 in the upper paint. Still not where he would eventually reach in either zone, but more than enough to allay any mild concerns that existed before.

From that second season on, Adebayo’s free-throws per 100 possessions rose every season until the most recent one. Not a coincidence that the drop – .466 free-throws per field-goal down to .361 – coincided with Adebayo finding his groove as a scorer against all coverages, and with that a dramatic rise in upper paint and mid-range jumpers. A year later, Adebayo is still getting to the rim less than he used to, even less than last season, but he’s finishing more efficiently than ever and his free-throw rate is right back in line with career norms.

Adebayo looks as patient as he ever has in the paint, where he’s adopted not just the same pump fakes – before playing Brooklyn head coach Jacque Vaughn made a specific point about staying down on Adebayo’s fakes – of Wade and Jimmy Butler, but also their ability to simple wait and do nothing. If you pump fake five times in succession, the defense can call your bluff. If you do it once and then wait a beat or three, there’s no rhythm. It doesn’t take much for Adebayo or Butler to get antsy defenders back in the air.

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Notebook 59: Adebayo Patience

We’ll see where Adebayo’s free-throw numbers end up. While he’s at a career-high 7.3 per game, much of that is due to 12 he took in the fourth quarter against Memphis when Miami was already in the bonus. Considering his current career-high usage rate and field-goal attempts, the free-throw numbers look like what they used to look like.

Where this patience and control might really matter is in the playoffs against teams like the Knicks who regularly sent third defenders Adebayo’s way when he caught the ball in his comfort zones – not straight doubles, just extra attention to speed him up.

Naturally, slowing down while still processing at a high speed is a natural counter to that sort of coverage. And sometimes there’s no better way to slow down than to just do nothing.

It should surprise nobody that Kevin Love currently leads the league in outlet passes per 100 possessions (4.4) traveling at least 20 feet in the air. Love is, at the very worst, one of the 10 greatest outlet passers that have ever passed through the NBA, and he’s probably Top 3. When Miami isn’t turning the other team over, early, open court passes from Love and Kyle Lowry are often the only way for the team to get out in transition.

We’ve talked about all that before, including how Love’s outlets outright won Miami a postseason game in New York last year. What we want to highlight instead is a Love pass against Brooklyn recently which didn’t lead directly to a score but did get Jimmy Butler right into a post-up.

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Notebook 59: Love Outlet Entry

If you watch carefully, you’ll notice that Butler isn’t even posting up while the ball is in the air much less actually facing the pass. Love throws the ball away from the rim, trusting that Butler will turn in time to go and get it. It’s a remarkable little bit of veteran chemistry, like a quarterback throwing an out route to their favorite tight end before the receiver has even broken off toward the sideline.

Nightly viewers of the rest of the league will know that some teams struggle mightily with even simple entry passes, committing crushing turnovers against moderate pressure leading to a reticence to attempt post-ups in high leverage situations. It may seem rather simple that Butler, one of the best matchup hunters in the league, could just post up anyone he wants after drawing a switch, but he still needs someone to get him the ball. Having veterans like Love and Lowry who can deliver the pass early in the clock is a luxury most teams don’t have.

A few minutes into the third quarter against Chicago, Miami ran a set that looked very familiar – a simple backscreen lob for Butler, which you can see him signaling for as he brings the ball up, run just about perfectly.

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Notebook 59: Jimmy Lob vs. Bulls

Miami will break this out every so often – it worked a few times in the playoffs, and typically once every few weeks in the regular season – and Duncan Robinson is often the screener as his gravity freaks the other team out. Other teams use it, too, but in the context of Miami it’s the same action Philadelphia used to catch the HEAT with a couple times a season with Ben Simmons.

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Notebook 59: Simmons Lob vs. Miami

And sure enough the 76ers under Brett Brown ran the same thing for Butler during his short time there.

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Notebook 59: Jimmy Lob Sixers

(He missed that one but it was the cleanest example with J.J. Redick screening.)

This isn’t complicated stuff. Erik Spoelstra and his staff could have easily come up with on their own, especially with similar concepts growing in popularity around the league. You just need an athletic wing, a big that can handle the ball up top that defenses respect enough to bring a center out of the paint for, and a shooter who doubles as a good screener. But knowing how the league works and how much film every coach watches, especially during the offseason when they acquire someone new, it’s very possible that Brett Brown took what was working with Simmons at the time and translated it to Butler, only for Spoelstra and his staff to catch on and keep it in their back pocket after the trade. Or, maybe not and everything happened independently. But a little X’s and O’s forensics is always fun and for what it’s worth, we can’t find evidence – with only the 2013-14 season available via tracking data – that Miami used to run the same with LeBron James. That tracks as these are all elements of Spain Pick-and-Roll actions – shooters setting back screens for a dive man, though the most traditional version has the screener in a pick-and-roll receiving that pick – and those didn’t start to become popular in the league until the later 2010’s.

We have a rule around here. If a HEAT player asks a question about movies on social media – if we see it – then we are morally obligated to try and answer it. So when Adebayo posted recently, there was no course but to spring into action.

Subjectively, the answer is yes. You’re welcome to your own opinion, but you’re also welcome to be wrong. That’s also no way to prove a point, so let’s try to answer this with data. Fortunately, movies have scripts and scripts are relatively easy to find. The word ‘Christmas’ is spoken 38 times in the script for Home Alone, written by John Hughes. That puts it right in line with It’s A Wonderful Life, where Christmas comes up 36 times. But wait, there’s more. Not all scripts are made the same, so we need to adjust for word count. Because Home Alone’s script is significantly shorter than It’s A Wonderful Life’s, it has a significantly higher Christmas per 100 words rate, 0.38 compared to 0.17.

Let’s not stop there. Here’s how Home Alone stacks up in Total Christmas and Christmas per 100 with both generally accepted Christmas Movies and those that are a bit more on the bubble, at least when it comes to their divisiveness.

This is hardly a perfect process. We tried as best we could to use dialogue transcripts rather than full scripts with stage direction and scene descriptions, but even then most of these movies have diegetic Christmas songs playing throughout - including one being a main plot point in Love Actually - and the lyrics to those songs are often on the page of even a straight transcript. While your mileage may vary, but we would draw the line at It’s A Wonderful Life, which at least tracks with previous beliefs that Die Hard is a Christmas movie while Lethal Weapon is not. Justice for Gremlins, also, which crams a ton of Christmas into a very short transcript since Gremlins mostly speak in gibberish.

- Miami's Offensive Rating of 131.9 against Brooklyn on Friday would have been their 7th best last season, when they were 15-0 with an Offensive Rating of 127+.

-The HEAT’s five makes in the restricted area against Chicago on Saturday are tied for the third-fewest of the Butler era (since 2019-20) and were the fewest since 2021.

-While Estimated Plus/Minus, from dunksandthrees.com, just became available Sunday morning – it takes a little time for sample size to build up – and will still fluctuate in the near term, Adebayo debuted with a Defensive EPM of +1.5, good for 17th in the league. Considering teams are shooting 39 percent from three while he’s on the floor, probably the thing he has the least control over, he’s in good shape. Averaging a career-high 2.5 stocks a night certainly helps.

-During Miami’s ultra-clutch 2022-23 season, 32 (72.7 percent) of their 44 wins were within single digits. All eight of their wins so far have been single digits.

-The Heat had the second-best Shot Quality in the league during their seven-game winning streak at 54.4 expected eFG, per Second Spectrum. All seven of their wins were against defenses currently ranked No. 19 or lower, so salt away, but this is an area they're typically average-ish in.

-On a related note, Miami has the best Shot Quality in the league at the rim this season, at 67.9 expected eFG, while they drop down to league average on all other shots and No. 25 on shots logged as jumpers. For a team that doesn’t generate a ton of rim pressure – No. 28 in the percent of attempts coming at the rim – their cuts and otherwise offense-derived attempts at the rim which come off defensive breakdowns are incredibly important to keeping their scoring efficiency above water.

-Adebayo is allowing 0.45 points per isolation, still No. 1 in the league even as players have hit a few shots on him in the past week. One of those players was Torrey Craig on Saturday night. Craig had scored 0.74 points-per in 104 ‘used’ career isolations before that play, and was shooting 26 percent on pull-up mid-range jumpers.

-While Miami has seen an uptick in their Offensive Rating after their streak, enough to get them up to No. 19, they are No. 19 against Middle 10 ranked defenses (five games) and No. 20 against Bottom 10 defenses (six games). On the other side, they’re No. 10 defensively against Top 10 offenses, but we’re only talking three games. The sample sizes are too small for it all to mean anything yet.

-While the HEAT are 2-0 in Group Play, because they only beat Washington and Charlotte by single digits they have a worse point differential (+13) than the 1-1 New York Knicks (+16). It’s all a moot point if Miami beats New York and Milwaukee and wins their group to advance to the quarterfinals, but if they take one loss, especially if it’s to the Knicks, and end up in the Wild Card race – there’s only one extra spot – that point differential is going to matter.

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Coup's Notebook Vol. 59: Duncan Robinson Goes Ultra Instinct, The Art Of Doing Nothing, Kevin Love’s Outlet Entry, Spanish Jimmy Butler And Christmas Movies