The Miami HEAT are 34-31 with a Net Rating of -0.8, No. 23 in the league. They are No. 26 on offense and No. 5 on defense, sitting No. 7 in the Eastern Conference, two games back of the Brooklyn Nets. Here’s what we’ve been noting and noticing.
BRIGHT SPOTS
Perhaps one of the most telling aspects to this HEAT season is how little anyone on the team wants to talk about the offense. Time and again Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo have been asked about that side of the floor, where Miami currently sits No. 26 at 110.8 points per 100, and they’ve parried the query towards talking about the defense like they just finished a playthrough of Sekiro and installed Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty.
The offense is what it is, that’s the feeling that comes out of that even if it is never directly stated. Shots are going to fall or they aren’t. The thing they can most directly control each night is getting stops. Which, in many ways, is 100 percent correct even if some discourse about the other side of the floor would be appreciated. They know their winning conditions. Dominate the possession game. Take more shots than your opponent. Force turnovers. A ton of turnovers. Do those things and you give yourself a chance. Considering they’re on their way to setting records for close games – they’re six games away from tying the 1978 Denver Nuggets with 41 games decided by five points or less, which is starting to feel like destiny at this point – that much has borne out to be true.
What this general line of thinking misses – perhaps purposefully – is that Butler and Adebayo have been very good at the exact thing they need to be good at. After the offense cratered against the switching and length of Boston in the Eastern Conference Finals last year, Erik Spoelstra set out to modify the offense in a way that would be more sustainable against the very best defenses. The many layers of that we’ve addressed elsewhere, but what feels important to note now, again, is that Butler and Adebayo have more than held up their end of the bargain.
Nothing new for Butler. Of the 48 players who has used 200 isolations this season, Butler is No. 4 at 1.18 points-per-direct isolation. The only players above him are Kyrie Irving, Damian Lillard and Tyrese Haliburton. He’s in the same range over the previous three years, and the numbers have always translated to the postseason. Any series against a team that is going to switch – switching in the playoffs generally means isolations or post-ups, given the sometimes-glacial pace of play – is a Butler series.
Difference now is Adebayo has joined the fray, both in efficiency and volume. Here are his last four years, by isolations (including assist opportunities).
2019-20: 0.73 points per, 2.9 isolations per 100
2020-21: 0.97 points per, 5.7 isolation per 100
2021-22: 1.03 points per, 5.4 isolations per 100
2022-23: 1.07 points per, 8.1 isolation per 100
That’s a classic Adebayo statistical rundown. Steady improvement, year to year. He started as a player who almost never isolated and rarely scored when he did. Four seasons later, He’s No 12 of the 27 players who have used at least 300 isolations. With he and Butler leading the way, Miami is No. 7 in isolation offense, a true bright spot for a team that doesn’t have many high-ranking offensive categories to its name.
“We’ve worked on it a lot this year,” Spoelstra said about attacking switches. “Just because you face it so often. Both of those guys are switch killers. With their ability to screen and create pockets, either over the top or versus a smaller player.”
Has it all translated against switching defenses? Not quite. Last year the HEAT were No. 11 against switches, this year they’re No. 27. The offense is more than just two players.
“We still have a long ways to go, as you can see, when it comes to teams that switch,” Adebayo said after the loss to Philadelphia. “We just have to buy into that and really figure it out.”
It’s important to remember, though, that against Boston last year, Miami’s switch efficiency dropped from 1.00 points per to 0.78 points per. Even if the regular season hasn’t played out in ideal fashion, more of a two-pronged approach against that style of defense may prove more sustainable should Miami meet up against a Boston, Brooklyn or Toronto a month from now.
TO STAGGER OR NOT TO STAGGER
While it’s never possible to have a perfect read of a fanbase and the multiverse of narratives running within it, there certainly seems to be some consternation about Spoelstra’s rotation when it comes to the use of Adebayo and Butler. It’s understandable, of course, when the team appears to be playing well only for them to give up big runs – they’re -37 in 59 minutes without either Adebayo or Butler since the All-Star break – when it’s time to give the primaries some rest.
Problem is, many people tend to forget about the “appears to be playing well” part of that. For starters, the HEAT are also -11 – which was -28 before the Hawks game – albeit over a larger sample of 121 minutes since All-Star, with Adebayo and Butler together, so it’s not as though it’s all sunshine and gravy in the other parts of the game. But a significant part of the reason the team might be playing well at that time is because the two best players are on the court *together*.
Take a look at the Adebayo/Butler splits for the season, by Net Rating…
Adebayo+Butler ON: +6.9 per 100 over 2,218 possessions
Butler ON, Adebayo OFF: -6.2 per 100 over 1,084 possessions
Adebayo ON, Butler OFF: -2.5 per 100 over 1,980 possessions
Adebayo+Butler OFF: -6.8 per 100 over 924 possessions
There’s a lot of nuance to lineups, and you need to apply appropriate context where needed. The data has felt especially messy the past few seasons with all the night-to-night absences, to the point where you probably need to adjust your idea of what a decent sample is. Let’s just take those barebones numbers above for a moment. If you’re a coach, what conclusion would you draw? It’s probably not that your one All-Star lineups are good enough to win you games. If there’s one clear strength, it’s generally a good idea to try and maximize it.
Put another way, Miami has generally been good on both ends of the floor with both of their stars playing. Not great when you put their numbers up against other teams with their own best players together, but good at the very least. The story over the rest of the season has been that the offense can’t survive without Butler and the defense can’t survive without Adebayo.
Even if Miami has still struggled to score when Butler and Adebayo hit the bench, at the very least the defense – statistically, at least – has held up. Well enough to give you some confidence that, over a larger period of time and not just the small post All-Star sample where the team as a whole hasn’t played particularly well, a good defensive group can mitigate the damage and survive. The minutes you have to survive are going to come down in the playoffs, in theory, as you on ramp into a postseason rotation. Even last year the offense wasn’t particularly good – 110.1 Offensive Rating, which would have ranked Bottom 10 that season – when Adebayo and Butler sat, the defense was just good enough to raise the floor on those minutes and allow for some shooting variance to carry the occasional day.
And yet however solid the foundation is behind a set of decisions, sometimes you just have to change it up. Against the Knicks Spoelstra played Adebayo for a long first-quarter stint and the HEAT wound up -10 in the six minutes both stars were off the floor. He made some slight tweaks against the Hawks, going back his oft-used rotation of subbing Adebayo out earlier to bring him back earlier, and the HEAT only played two minutes without one of him or Butler all night (they came out to a neutral zero in that stretch). In the second half, one of them was always on the floor.
You can’t always make the tweaks you want to make. Sometimes you have to matchup with an opposing star, like keeping Adebayo on the floor when Julius Randle is still out there. However Spoelstra has to play it on a specific night, it’s about all the minutes, every player up and down the rotation. If you can’t survive with certain lineups you may have to use, you’ve got bigger problems than the 48 minutes in front of you.
“We’ve cycled through a lot of different things,” Spoelstra said. “At this point it’s by any means necessary. We need consistent play throughout our rotation. That’s the bottom line. When you go into the game, look at the scoreboard. When you come out of the game, it better be a positive. And that’s throughout the roster.”
Whether a coach should stagger a pair of All-Stars or not is an age-old question. HEAT fans will likely remember how much conversation there was surrounding Scott Brooks and how he chose to use Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook. There’s never an easy answer, and coaches don’t always get it right. Just remember to look just as closely at the minutes when things are going well – why they’re going well – as with the minutes when they aren’t.
THE DUO
Aside from Butler and Adebayo getting more isolations and post-ups over the past two years, another offensive shift has been re-centering the approach around the combination of Adebayo and Tyler Herro – a change which began as last season wore on and accelerated as Herro joined the starting lineup this year.
Through the first two and a half months, everything was going swimmingly. The overall offensive numbers weren’t great, but the core of the tree, the most-used action, was healthy. Of the 27 two-man combinations with at least 300 screens through December 31, Herro and Adebayo were producing 1.15 points-per-pick, No. 4. When you take out assist opportunities and narrow the scope down to possessions where Herro or Adebayo “used” the action (one of the shot, drew a foul or committed a turnover), their number remained a positive at 1.04 per-pick.
You can probably see where this is going. Since January 1, everything has fallen off. Without assists, Herro and Adebayo have produced 0.88 per-pick, No. 34 of 35 combos with at least 100 possessions. Add in assists and they’re still second to last. From each viewpoint, they’ve only been above combinations from Houston and Charlotte.
As promising as the individual progress of each player has been this season, particularly in Adebayo’s increased usage – really more of a style change, given that Adebayo’s usage rate is up less than a percentage point – the Herro-Adebayo screen action is the 15th most-used action in the entire league. If the offense is built on what you can do, the offense is also going to rise and fall largely on whether or not you can sustain what you’re doing. Great power, great responsibility.
“I don’t think we need to fall in love with the result of whether it’s me scoring or Bam scoring, or me hitting the pocket,” Herro said. “Just the action of me and him, pick-and-roll or handoff, whatever it is, the two-man action just creates an overreaction from the defense. Whether it’s the spray to the corner, the slide guy on the baseline making his reads, I just think that two-man action starts our offense. I’m starting to get better at realizing it’s not shooting the ball every time or passing to Bam every time, just being able to make the right play.”
Of course teams have adjusted. Herro has to deal with multiple different looks with the ball in his hands and Adebayo, especially against the top defensive teams, has consistently been seeing a third defender come over to limit the depth of his catch and throw off his rhythm.
“Nobody is going to just let us keep running the same thing,” Adebayo said. “Obviously you have to go through a little period where you have to figure it out, and guys go through up and downs during the season. It’s one of those things where you just have to stay consistent with it.”
They have plenty of time to build some traction again. This is all about finding offense that can manipulate and bend the best defenses in the playoffs. Even if there’s no guarantee they’ll get back to a truly elite level, the team had to find out whether their two young playmakers could shoulder the burden. What we find out now through whatever happens in April and May is whether the last few months have been more of a bump in the road to roll right over, or a barrier that requires a bit more problem solving.
THE HURRY UP POST UP
This was a clever way to get into earlier offense last night. Rather than waiting to help with rebounding on a pair of John Collins free-throws, Butler walked himself all the way to the other end of the court and planted himself on the right block. So when Collins misses the second free-throw, the HEAT were able to advance the ball quickly and get the ball into Butler in the post with 19 seconds on the shot clock.
Notebook 46: Hurry Up Post Up
Nothing much came of it as Butler eventually brought it back out for a handoff with Herro, but given how valuable Butler’s post-ups tend to be starting the possession that early is generally advantageous.
This was the third time Butler posted up off an opponent free-throw in the first six seconds of the shot clock this season, per Second Spectrum, third-most in the league behind Giannis Antetokounmpo (4), Anthony Davis (4) and Joel Embiid (17).
TIDBITS
- Julius Randle scored 21 points out of 12 isolations last night, the most the Heat have allowed to any player since James Harden scored 22 out of isolations with Houston back in 2019. Over the past 10 years, the highest isolation point totals against Miami goes Harden, Harden, Harden then Randle.
-Miami’s 122-120 loss to New York was just their third loss in 11 games when they posted an Offensive Rating of 120 or better this season, with the other losses coming against Denver and Boston. Had they won, it would have been their third win in 16 games with a Defensive Rating of 120 or worse.
-While still sitting No. 5 in Defensive Rating, Miami is down to No. 15 in half-court man-to-man, allowing 1.12 points per possession. It’s been marginally better since the calendar turned to 2023, but still dependent on forcing turnovers.
-There have been 37 shots to take the lead made in the last five seconds of the fourth quarter or overtime in the league this season. Four of those have come against Miami, and four of those have come from Miami. In other words, about 22 percent of all game-winning shots this season have come from HEAT games.
-Of the 15 games in Trae Young’s career where he finished with two or fewer made field goals, four of them have now come against Miami.
-Cody Zeller’s 13-point performance against Atlanta was the first time he had scored more than 10 points since May of 2021. He only played 27 games for Portland last season before missing all of this season before joining Miami.