For years now, many of those who fall within the circumference of the Miami HEAT have been striving to find the right frontcourt partner for Bam Adebayo. For reasons that have sometimes been unclear, the conversation has occasionally centered on players of similar size and skillsets, not of complimentary fit.
The answers to the predicament have always been fairly straightforward. Can the player in question shoot? Can the player in question defend, particularly in a switching scheme? Can the player in question possibly do both? All the players Miami has had success with at the power forward slot have fit that particular mold in some form or fashion. Meyers Leonard shot a very high percentage from three on relatively low volume while playing around 20 minutes a game. Jae Crowder shot a high percentage – over a small sample during the regular season, which dropped to a reasonable percentage in the playoffs – on high volume and could defend every position. P.J. Tucker was one of the best corner-three shooters in the league while doubling as one of the best switch defenders of a generation. Caleb Martin has been an above-average shooter on average volume while providing solid defense, he just excels at guarding down a bit more than at guarding up.
Where does Kevin Love align within that lineage? He can shoot, both efficiently and at volume. It’s the level of shooting that plays for anyone, but especially for a team that is currently No. 28 in percentage – No. 26 in overall offense – with no real upward trend in recent weeks. He can also shoot shots the HEAT want. Miami has always been among the league leaders in corner threes attempted, and this year only Dallas and Boston take more of them relative to their overall shot profiles. Over the past 10 seasons Love is shooting 39.4 percent from the corners on about 2.5 attempts per 100 possessions. Those attempts dipped a bit in Cleveland since LeBron James – one of the greatest creators of corner three opportunities in league history – left for Los Angeles, but Love’s percentage is still right at 40 percent. Tucker may have been the most prolific corner shooter around, but Love is hardly a slouch from those two spots.
He’s not a stationary shooter, either. Since James’ departure Love was a part of 250 pick-and-pop actions where he received the ball and put up a shot. Cleveland generated 1.23 points-per-action in those situations, similar to players such as Christian Wood, Mike Muscala, Karl-Anthony Towns, Maxi Kleber and Danilo Gallinari.
We don’t need to get into the nitty gritty of exactly which sets they can use him in because we’ll see it all soon enough, but Erik Spoelstra has always enjoyed putting multiple players into actions in the middle of the floor. Even if Love isn’t much of a threat to roll to the rim you put him in a double-screen situation with Adebayo and he’s either getting an open three or Adebayo’s avenue becomes that much less congested.
That last point is an important one. As the offense this season has shifted more towards getting Adebayo touches in the middle of the floor in an effort to become better positioned, from a scoring perspective, for postseason style basketball it has also highlighted some of the spacing awkwardness between Miami’s best players. Because neither Adebayo nor Jimmy Butler is a consistent shooting threat, defenses always have two defenders who can stay in help position inside the arc. With Adebayo now possibly the most prolific taker of short jumpers in the league – it’s him or Shai Gilgeous-Alexander – teams have been sending a third defender at Adebayo as he rolls, both to stop him short at the free-throw line and to speed up his process.
New Vets: Bam Third Defender
“I always see the third guy now in the pick-and-roll,” Adebayo said recently. “On the catch it’s either take the shot or kick it to the open man. There is no, I get to take my time and get in the paint. I got one of two options, either shoot it or pass it.”
If that third defender has to cover a quick-trigger shooter like Love, he has more ground to cover and Adebayo has more time and space to do his thing. If that defender is going to sag off his own assignment, what has become Miami’s bread and butter action quickly becomes burnt toast. If Adebayo gets jammed up, there aren’t many places for Tyler Herro to go, either, other than to kick it to whoever is left open.
Shooting, if the other team respects it, equals spacing. Spacing greases the wheels. No matter how many different ways you parse the HEAT’s lineup data this season, Miami’s offense has needed all the grease it can find. Love’s shot was thrown off kilter this season by a fractured thumb suffered in late November so all of this, like anything, is health dependent. Assuming health allows for his usual mechanics, the offensive fit is as clean as it gets as far as complimenting Miami’s high-usage players. There’s still shot creation out of the post, too, against the switching defenses which can sometimes flatten the HEAT out.
Even though he’s been an underrated defender at times in ways that go beyond one possession against Steph Curry in the NBA Finals, defense is going to be a question. Over the past four seasons, Love has defended 25.7 pick-and-rolls per 100 possessions, per Second Spectrum tracking data. Only about 1.5 per 100 of those have been switches. He moves his feet and is smart positionally, and it’s easy to see Spoelstra using blitzes and shows with the usual helping of zone. He just won’t be enabling the Form Voltron version of an Adebayo-centered defense that someone like Tucker made possible a season ago. That being said, the isolation and post-up numbers are reasonable, so maybe there is some selective switching to be used.
Love is an excellent defensive rebounder, too, but here’s where we need to drive a specific point home despite the fact that this particular nail always gets pulled back out when you aren’t looking – the HEAT are already a good, possibly even great, rebounding team. They’re No. 5 in Defensive Rebounding Percentage and since December 1, around which time they had mostly cleaned up their early-season transition defense issues, they’re No. 11 in Offensive Rebounding Percentage. The rate at which they force turnovers often depresses their rebounding totals, but they get “out-rebounded” far less than they get credit for. Love is adding to a strength there, not fixing a problem. Part of that addition is his outlet passing off those boards, which like Kyle Lowry’s hit-ahead passing a year ago – before teams really scouted it – can help get Miami out of the muck for an easy look or two.
Does he actually start? We’ll find out soon enough, but that’s up to Erik Spoelstra. Martin has done everything asked of him this season beyond being 6-foot-9. Alongside Butler, Adebayo and Herro, Martin’s lineups have been above-average offensively and elite defensively regardless of whether Lowry or Gabe Vincent was in at point guard. At the very least, Martin has earned his minutes whichever lineups they come in, and that’s another point to consider with Love. As he’s approached his mid-30’s his minutes have gone from 25 a night to 20 when he was in the rotation this season. Unless Spoelstra is going to push his minutes up, you don’t have to start Love to get him in the lineups you want. Adebayo has been playing shorter shifts this season, subbing out earlier in the quarter only to return before the end of it, so it would be pretty easy to line up Love’s minutes with him according to that pattern if you were so inclined. Love can also act as a Kelly Olynyk of sorts, playing the part of a spread center in Butler-focused five-out lineups that have always worked so well for Butler in the past.
While Cody Zeller, as a pure non-spacing center, is not someone who fits the typical mold of an Adebayo frontcourt mate, one would not suspect he was signed to be one. At his best, and healthiest – this is a good time to note that he’s only 30 – in Charlotte, Zeller was something of an Adebayo-lite. At least as far as the handoff-heavy version of Adebayo from three or four years ago. Like Love, Zeller is a low turnover player who has often made a positive, winning impact whenever he’s been on the court. Where Love’s game shifted more towards being a perimeter play finisher, Zeller has previously been used, sometimes out of necessity, as an offensive fulcrum, setting and re-setting handoffs to spring guards like Kemba Walker or Terry Rozier free or making reliable decisions in the middle of the floor in two-on-the-ball situations.
Injuries have sapped Zeller of quite a few games over the years and he probably isn’t as bouncy as he used to be, but it’s easy to see where he could be fairly plug-and-play in pick-and-roll for Herro or in handoffs for either Max Strus or Duncan Robinson.
As for defense, there’s a bit more switching on Zeller’s ledger than with Love, and we’ll see how he’s moving after recovering from his most recent leg injury which cost him much of last season, but he’s also smart positionally and should be able to toggle between all of Spoelstra’s different looks even if, as with Love, the rim protection numbers aren’t a major strength and he likely won’t be adding significantly to theft-related portion of the HEAT’s turnover-focused scheme.
What are we left with after all that? Two players who fit. Is Love going to catapult Miami into the Top 10 offensively short of a team-wide surge in three-point shooting? Probably not. Will he make life easier for everyone around him no matter who he shares his minutes with? Almost assuredly. And Zeller is a reliable initial-action big who can fill in just about anywhere for a team that has struggled a bit with frontcourt depth this season.
Fit might not change a team entirely but putting enough right fits next to one another is how a team becomes more than the sum of its parts. When the HEAT have been at their best over the past four years, that’s what they’ve been. Groups that, with enough breaks up and down the roster, achieve through fit even when their two best players don’t line up perfectly next to one another on the offensive side of things.
Shooting matters. Spacing matters. Fit matters. While most everyone in the league was enjoying some well-earned time off, Miami added all three.