There’s no other way around it.
The Miami HEAT’s offense this season has not been good. You can’t dodge, duck, dip, dive or dodge you’re way out of facing an Offensive Rating that sits No. 26 in the NBA. You can’t hide it away in the shadows like Harry Lime, only allowing it into the light when it’s convenient for your interests. Offense exists to be interrogated under the spotlights, and if it’s among the worst in the league – as close to No. 30 as it is to No. 19 – you’ll be lucky to own a .500 record much less be considered a contender.
It’s also a bit of a mystery. Tyler Herro, Bam Adebayo and Jimmy Butler, easily the leaders on the team in usage, are all having good, high-volume, high-efficiency seasons. Herro and Butler are even posting career-highs in true-shooting percentage.
“It’s weird, because me, Bam and Jimmy are all scoring 20 a game,” Herro says. “The offense is there, but the offense isn’t where it used to be.”
The elephant in the room is the three-point shooting. After finishing No. 1 last season at 37.9 percent, the HEAT are down to No. 23 as they convert at just a 34.3 percent clip. If you want to find your abacus and extrapolate out where 37.9 percent shooting would have them this season, it’d raise their Offensive Rating from 109.5 to about 113.0 – almost exactly where they finished last season when they were No. 12 in scoring. Nobody can guarantee the same shooting results season over season, but for the sake of conversation it’s pretty clear that beyond the arc the team has struggled mightily to replicate past performance. Shooting is the tonic that makes all your other offensive aches and pains go away.
But focusing the conversation on shooting misses some painful truths about Miami’s offense in the Butler era. And if you follow the threads of those truths long enough, you’ll find that at least some of the offensive damage of this season has been, in the interest of the grand design which guides a team toward championship equity, at least somewhat self-inflicted. Purposefully so.
Over the past four seasons, since Butler arrived from Philadelphia, the HEAT have been the No. 4 ranked offense (1.16 points per possession). In the first quarter, that is. When you got to the second or third stoppage in the first quarter, more often than not the team – led by the warp-speed shooting of Duncan Robinson and Max Strus – would be well over 40 percent from downtown. Yet the later in the game you got, the less water there was to draw from the well. In the second quarter the offense has been No. 12 (1.14 ppp). Then No. 16 (1.12) in the third. By the time you get to the fourth, the points per possession drops to 1.09 and the ranking to No. 27. In the clutch, with the score within five points in the final five minutes, it looked even worse. Just 1.05 points per possession, No. 29.
No surprise, then, that Miami would then struggle to score in the postseason. Particularly in the half-court. It all came to a head last year against the Boston Celtics in the Eastern Conference Finals. Miami finished that year scoring 97.6 points-per-play in the half-court, per cleaningtheglass.com. In seven games against the Celtics that fell to 85.6, lower than any team had posted for a full season since 2015-16. They pushed Boston to the edge on the strength of their defense and the offense that defense could create with turnovers, but with shooting escaping them in that series (30 percent) the HEAT’s attempts to put points on the board could best, and most kindly, be described as a slog.
Even the good version of Miami’s offense, the version with good shooting and above-average efficiency during the regular season, wasn’t enough in the postseason. Had the HEAT remained the same on that end this year, a year in which despite mostly positive numbers the defense hasn’t been nearly as consistent as a year ago – particularly in man-to-man – without the historically stout switchability of P.J. Tucker alongside Adebayo, it would have merely been a band-aid for wounds that had been festering.
Erik Spoelstra and his staff recognized the shortcomings laid bare by Boston across all those go-nowhere possessions. They sought change, even if it would cause disruption.
“It probably would not appear to be so, but we came into this season very intentional about trying to create an offense that brings out the strengths in our personnel and that has the diversity and synergy between our paint pressure, rim pressure and our three-point shooting. That’s No. 1,” Erik Spoelstra said. “No. 2, we also wanted to develop more clarity and confidence in half-court offense that would be relevant in a playoff series. Not just early regular season. When you focus on that it quite naturally bleeds into fourth quarter and clutch offense, which we’ve spent a good deal of time on.
“It’ll always happen when you get to those final two rounds,” he added about the Celtics series. “It’s so tough to generate good clean quality looks. We spent a great deal of time in the offseason just studying that to try and prepare for that. We’re not getting ahead of ourselves, but we’re spending time in the areas that are relevant against all of the best teams. Hopefully that translates to the playoffs.”
This isn’t to say Spoelstra expected to be No. 26 on the offensive end come Christmas. Nobody would, not with multiple All-Star caliber players on hand. But as he was considering shaking up the starting lineup by inserting Tyler Herro, he thought growing pains would be part of the process.
“I was stressed out about that all July and August and September,” he says.
Turns out the starters have been the one area neither Spoelstra nor anyone else has had to worry about. A few practices into the year, Spoelstra says the starters were rolling their eyes at him as if to indicate, ‘We got this.’ Sure enough, though they’ve only been available for 11 games together, the starting group of Butler, Adebayo, Herro, Kyle Lowry and Caleb Martin has scored 115.3 points per 100 possessions – a mark that would be No. 2 in the NBA behind Dallas, with four, three and two-man combinations, the sample size growing the fewer players you have in the equation, that would rank better offensively than most of Miami’s granular starter combinations of a season ago.
“That has been a total surprise to me,” Spoelstra said.
Not a bad foundation for an offense in the present, on one hand. Not a bad indicator for future success, on the other, given that those are the players who are going to shoulder the burden in the postseason (all five are averaging 32 minutes a game, all four except Martin averaging over 35).
It helps to have a steady hand in Lowry leading the way. It helps that Martin has mostly sustained his 40 percent shooting from last season’s breakout, with on-ball attacks mixed in. It also helps that Butler is having by far his best season as a shooter – 51 percent effective field-goal percentage on jumpers after 39.4 percent the past three years – in a HEAT uniform. It’s Herro and Adebayo who are the primary engines for growth, for now and later.
While Adebayo has delivered on his preseason statements about upping his field-goal attempts to 15 a night, you might be surprised to hear that with his free-throw rate down his usage rate has only increased 1.3 percentage points to 26.3, the exact same difference you’d find between his 2020-21 and 2021-22 campaigns. And with Butler on the court his usage is actually slightly down, likely a result of Herro joining the starting lineup. Aggressive Bam may be a popular term for social media, but this isn’t just the story of a huge jump in volume like it was for Herro a season ago. Just steady, consistent growth as we’ve seen from Adebayo every year he’s been in the league. It’s not only more. It’s an evolution.
In Adebayo’s first two seasons in the league, he used a combined total of 60 isolations, or 1.1 per 100 possessions. Attacking one-on-one wasn’t in his DNA any more than its in James Cameron’s to film on land. By last year Adebayo pumped those isolation numbers up to 198, or 5.4 per 100 possessions.
Through 29 games this season, he’s already used 181 isolations, or 8.9 per 100. Better yet, he’s legitimately been very good with them. Maybe not at Butler’s level, but among the 52 players with 100 isolations this season, Adebayo is No. 20 at 1.05 points per.
“We get three or four bad possessions in a row, you want to get one possession where you want the ball to move, get to both sides, work the offense,” Adebayo says, in reference to his one-on-one game. “Other than that, it’s pretty much green light. You see an opportunity, you take it.”
At Spoelstra’s behest he’s done his part to ‘x-out’ the true mid-range shots from his diet, cutting his shot rate in half from two years ago. Now he’s taking the second-most shots from 5-12 feet – “playoffs shots,” Spoelstra calls them, which “he needs to make that one in the playoffs, he has to.” – while establishing his go-to spot at the dotted line, always a jab-jab dribble-dribble away, in the paint where he hits at around a 45 percent clip.
A Better Tomorrow: Bam Dotted Line
“It was hard for me to really look at him and say I’ll play your style of basketball when you have guys that really want to explore and be ambitious,” Adebayo said, noting that he shoots nearly 60 percent in the paint. “It’s all skill work, elbow-to-elbow, box-to-box. All in that rectangle. For me, it’s easy. I still get to do what I want, in a sense. I still get my touches, so there’s no confusion.”
If you need a shot, and with so many players missing time this season the HEAT have often found themselves needing a shot, Adebayo can get to manufacturing. Cool. Confident. Comfortable. In the playoffs, where most defenders are very good and schemes are able to flatten out all your tasting menu, Michelin Star actions, it’s the players who can simply get a shot and make a shot, who can make a simple hamburger on time and on taste, who often win the day.
“Those final two rounds, if [Adebayo’s] not a scoring threat, our clutch offense or half-court offense will never reach its potential the way it needs to,” Spoelstra says.
Miami has thrived for years with Adebayo’s handoffs creating consistent rhythm opportunities for shooters. Now the team’s handoffs are at a four-year low as is Adebayo’s assist percentage. Pushed to become something more than he was, Adebayo has obliged.
“The one thing we all really understood is he was going to have to be more aggressive and get comfortable with that,” Spoelstra said, “where it might not be as important in some of these regular season games, but when we get to the playoffs he has to feel comfortable as a scorer.
“Now figuring out when to (score or facilitate), that’s what we’re using the regular season games for. It’s always harder to try and turn on the scoring when you’re in the playoffs. It’s always better to have 82 games of feel for that. And then OK, in this series or this half or this quarter, you’ve got to really get some guys open. Now you can just flip the switch and get to that mode very easily.”
The true next level, maybe not the leap as that word is colloquially used but the gains which will truly freak out defenses, is when Adebayo can become both things, scorer and facilitator, at once. When he can eliminate that switch and be all things at all times, just as he is on defense. Clint Eastwood getting behind the camera while staying in front of it, if you will.
Easier said than done, even for a player who keeps finding ways to improve – he shot 25 percent on non-rim paint shots his rookie year, those same shots that could now described as his signature motif. Some teams, like Boston, have been happy to defend him mostly one-on-one as they cut off passing lanes. More often, teams are taking the opposite approach as Adebayo punishes them in the paint, and “of course teams now are going to bring a second defender,” Spoelstra says. Few outright double teams, but the help is coming sometimes when he makes his move, sometimes when he gets two feet in the paint, sometimes when he gathers for a shot or utilizes a pump fake. Help comes from all different angles at different speeds, and Adebayo is not immune to discombobulation. He already has nine games with at least five turnovers this year, already more than in any entire season since 2019-20 (12 games).
“He has to go through all the game reps to really get the flow and the feel and the synergy of when to pick either one of those aspects of the game,” Spoelstra says, emphasizing that he’s been focused on decision making with Adebayo. “That requires reading the defense, reading different schemes, reading what’s required for that possession.
“He’s like Wargames right now, as a computer.”
A Better Tomorrow: Adebayo Processing Speed
After a recent victory over the Clippers in which Adebayo scored 31 with just two turnovers while seeing second defenders all night, Spoelstra compared the current stage of Adebayo’s offensive journey to the one started last season by the other side of Miami’s youth equation.
“I made that point to Tyler that you can’t pre-determine. You have to go into it understanding that each team may have a different team, but it’s going to be consistent that they are going to try and take you out of your comfort zones.”
One of the best things going for Miami’s offense, and one of the best indicators going forward, is that the Shake and Bake combination of Herro and Adebayo in pick-and-roll is shaking and baking as intended. Not only are those two running the most actions on the team, they’re the fourth-best pick-and-roll combination in the league at 1.16 points-per – a statistic Lowry made reference to recently – according to Second Spectrum. Herro has improved his multi-dribble shooting – No. 13 this year at 53.7 effective field-goal percentage after finishing last season outside the Top 100 at 45 percent – in part because he’s done the same as Adebayo and cut down on the fat in his shot profile.
“He’s an unbelievable pull-up three-point shooter,” Spoelstra says. “He’s one of the top ones in the league. He has to take more of those rather than the mid-range.”
Herro has responded by taking more pull-up threes than twos for the first time in his career. With Adebayo more than capable of making pocket plays on the move or going up for a lob, there aren’t too many teams that can boast such an effective starting point for a possession.
Good defenses know how to make it hard. Nice as it is that Herro is seeing more defenders coming off an Adebayo screen – or any screen, really, given that any Herro ball screen is a Top 5 most efficient action in the league right now – you can’t expect to succeed purely on the strength of pick-and-roll. Against Chicago this week, Herro and Adebayo made music on a handful of possessions where Nikola Vucevic played up to the level and Herro was able to drop off a pocket pass. But there were also possessions where Herro got stuck and could go nowhere but backwards.
A Better Tomorrow: Herro Jammed Up
“We can’t afford that,” Spoelstra says.
“When we get into the playoffs, teams are going to make sure I’m not as effective in a pick-and-roll situation. Blitz. Switch. Double. They’re going to do something in the playoffs to get the ball out of my hands,” Herro says.
Herro is seeing more switches – 10.5 per 100, up from 7.5 and 4.4 in the past two seasons – than ever. He’s getting pretty good at shooting in the pocket of the switch, similar to what you see Trae Young do, and his isolation offense is trending slightly upward as he ties his career best with 1.00 points-per-isolation in non-pass situations.
“The numbers probably don’t add up to what I’m saying,” Herro says, “but I feel like I can be better in managing matchups, directing the floor, making sure the spacing is better while I attack, while I isolate. I feel like I can isolate, it’s just understanding the court and where everybody is at.”
A Better Tomorrow: Herro Isolations
But he’s not one to bully matchups like Butler or Adebayo. He has to be more selective. Trying to attack a Jaylen Brown or Andrew Wiggins or OG Anunoby won’t often be the best option available. Which is part of why moving Herro into the starting lineup was important for his continued growth. Spoelstra could have kept Herro in a backup role where he had a green light to run the show and kept a Robinson or Strus in the opening group where Adebayo could get them handoffs on the move. That might have been best for Miami’s rhythm and flow, at least in the short term. Inserting Herro alongside the rest of the HEAT’s best players has in some ways forced him to reconcile his own game. The adaptation forced by playing that new role is the same adaptation required to stay relevant in the postseason after posting true-shooting percentages below .500 in the past two.
Catch-and-shoot basketball doesn’t necessarily come naturally for Herro, even though he was one of the best in the league at it last year. “The adjustment I’ve made is not catching and putting it on the floor right away,” he says. Catch-and-shoot basketball also doesn’t mean stand around and shoot basketball. Spoelstra wants his young guard seeking out those opportunities, running off handoffs and shedding defenders on screens. On one possession against Chicago, you could’ve mistaken Herro for Robinson with the way he reversed direction around Adebayo before nailing a triple.
A Better Tomorrow: Herro Handoff Reverse
As Miami gets healthy and has to again find balance in having four ballhandlers on the court in the opening group, the HEAT will need him to find the same equilibrium, albeit at lower volume, he found recently taking exactly 16 threes off the dribble and 16 off the catch during his 19-three explosion against Oklahoma City and Houston.
“There’s a lot of high usage pick-and-roll dominant players that can’t do what Tyler can do off the ball,” Spoelstra says. “That’s not their game, they’re not comfortable with it. He can play off the ball, off the catch as well as anybody. It’s clicking with him now, understanding why. So you can’t take him out of playoff series. He’s too important. He can access different parts of his menu. You blitz me on pick-and-rolls, well then I can run off screens.”
It’s not fair to compare anyone to Steph Curry. Spoelstra only says the idea is the same. Curry is one of the best pick-and-roll players in the league, but the Warriors never lean on that action too hard because it’s important to develop a diverse game. Winning a title means beating four different defensive schemes. The HEAT need Herro to find a way to have the same impact no matter the opponent.
There are reasons to be encouraged, however mild at the moment. Miami’s fourth quarter offense has been about league average over the past two weeks. Their clutch offense this season is at 106.9 per 100, easily the best mark of the Butler era. Small samples, even with Miami playing the second-most clutch games in the league and Butler having to hit some very tough jumpers to get there along the way, but positive signs. In the past, Miami’s clutch offense has been all Butler, threes and free-throws. Well, right now they’re No. 26 in clutch free-throw rate and shooting 28 percent from three and still seeing more success than before.
“I would say the synergy between our paint pressure and our three-point game is improving,” Spoelstra says. “It’s not where we want it to be. But I think our reps in fourth quarter and clutch offense has been really vital for us. It’s definitely improved. It looks, optically, like an improvement if you’re forecasting from there what it would look like in the playoffs. I think we’re developing the right habits. We’re not seeing the benefits and the results, but I feel way better about the process part of it right now as far as really attacking those two things.”
Even as Adebayo and Herro grow, it’s entirely possible Miami finishes with their worst offense in four years. Shooting may often hide your other problems, but you still need shooting to succeed. Even then, the defense hasn’t guaranteed wins on great shooting nights like it did last year. They’ve had to eschew offensive boards, and the resulting extra possessions, somewhat to focus on getting back in transition.
Miami remains a team that does not get to the rim very often. Adebayo is expanding his game, but part of that has meant taking more jumpers which produce well below a point-per-shot. He still needs to up his processing speed against help and deliver more on-target quick passes when the defense bends towards him. Herro runs into schemes and individual defenders that give him problems with size and/or pressure. The free-throw rate for each of them is at a career-low, and a team that has been Top 5 in assist percentage for three straight years is now outside of the Top 10. None of the bench lineups have been particularly good with Herro and Martin elevated to starters. Tinkering with an offense, altering style and reallocating usage and lineups to better fit the playoffs is a risk, and in the meantime, it could cost them an important seed or first-round matchup. Nobody hands out trophies for intentions, even the best ones.
The counter to all that is, what else should the HEAT have done? Stuck with an offense that had a ceiling in the 16-game season? Keep their two best young players in roles that may have stunted their growth? That would have been antithetical to how Spoelstra has managed his teams, constantly preaching growth and improvement. Competing for titles means taking swings. Smart, calculated swings, but swings nonetheless.
Chances are, the three-point shooting will improve. They’ll start beating some teams just because they hit a bunch of threes and they force enough turnovers to juice the point totals. Ideally, they can get some consistent health and lineups. The reps will build into results, into an identity, as they often seem to for Spoelstra teams. That will all go a long way in the standings, and in avoiding the play-in tournament. What Spoelstra is trying to do, what he’s trying to guide Adebayo and Herro into, goes beyond Offensive Rating and regular season wins.
That’s a lot of ink spilled to barely scratch the surface of a complex situation. No. 26 in offense is still No. 26 in offense. The dam may have more holes than the current group can plug, no matter how strong the numbers are with the core players on the court. But even if it doesn’t look like it now, Miami is trying to build something beyond good enough. Something that can win in April, May and June.
That may mean a little bit of pain now, but from that perspective the offense isn’t a mystery at all. What’s happening fits exactly what the team has always been about, regardless of how often the swing makes direct contact.