The Miami HEAT are 34-26, No. 7 in the Eastern Conference with a Net Rating of +0.7, No. 15 in the league. With 10 wins in their last 13 games, here’s what we’ve been noting and noticing.
DEEP SEALS
They do it on the quiet side as they don’t feature what most people think of a dominant interior presence, at least not physically speaking in the more traditional sense, but the Miami HEAT have been one of the better post-up teams in the league for years now. They weren’t always a high-volume group but they were efficient, and when Kyle Lowry joined up two seasons ago they had the setup man to get Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo the ball on time and on target, so the volume increased. Add in Kevin Love and his oak legs midway through the next season and this year a rookie in Jaime Jaquez Jr. who profiles eerily like Butler, and rather suddenly Miami is fourth in the league in post-ups per 100 possessions (8.5 per 100) while sustaining above-average efficiency.
The concern then, when trading Lowry to Charlotte for Terry Rozier, was that in losing one of their best passers – Lowry was second on the team in post entry passes, per Second Spectrum, before he was traded, with Duncan Robinson ahead because of how his two-man games works with Adebayo against switches – would the HEAT be shedding a little bit of value off their offensive menu. You can call as many post-ups as you want from the sideline, but the most valuable ones come when multiple players recognize a mismatch and get the ball where it needs to go inside of ten feet.
After beating the Utah Jazz on Saturday with a variety of post-ups and post-seals, Erik Spoelstra confirmed that it has been a point of emphasis not only to hit the post, but to get past the need for it to be a deliberate, clock-eating action.
“We’ve been doing this now for several months,” Spoelstra said. “It was interrupted a little bit when [Butler] was out. The connection with K-Love and Jimmy, those were a lot of the habits we were building, Jaime started to get a feel for that. Then when Jimmy was out we were doing similar things with Jaime. Some of that was intentional, early on, playcall stuff. Then by this point it’s happening more instinctually, organically, and that’s the better way.
“But that takes weeks and months to develop that kind of cohesiveness and to be able to get it there efficiently when you’re not just burning clock. We have some good post entry passers, that’s an underrated skill. Niko is great at it. Jaime is good at it. Bam obviously we know what he can do. K-Love is elite at it. Other guys are starting to recognize those situations earlier, and obviously Bam’s postups as well.”
Even without Love against Utah, check out who is delivering Butler the ball in a spot where he can just turn and score rather than having to back anyone down.
Notebook 71: Butler Deep Seals
There were times in those initial weeks following the Lowry trade where Butler would have a seal and he wouldn’t get a pass. Then he’d come out to the mid-post area and still, nothing. Butler would sometimes have to take his man, a smaller defender on a switch, all the way out to the three-point line just to secure a safe catch, at which point he’d be 20 feet from the rim with a shorter shot clock. Those possessions are fewer and farther between now, with Terry Rozier and Nikola Jovic, both in the current starting lineup, appearing to trust that Butler will hold his seal as the ball travels in air.
“I feel like we need to do that for everybody,” Butler said. “Not just for myself. If anybody got that mismatch, get them the ball. We expect them to score or make the right play out of it, whether it’s myself, K-Love, Bam, [Jaquez Jr.]. Whoever it is, I feel as though everybody plays basketball the right way and they do whatever is needed for us to win. It’s not only win with these deep catches, anybody who has a mismatch we have to get them the ball.”
This might all sound like we’re in the weeds a bit, but the difference between a team that has been working on these habits – every easier score matters – and one that doesn’t, or doesn’t have the personnel for it, could add up to two, four, six points in a nip-and-tuck postseason game. The HEAT can’t afford to not take advantage of mismatches against good defensive teams, particularly against those that switch.
Perhaps the best news is that after going through various adjustment periods against double teams, they’re producing 1.18 points-per-double out of the post. Granted there’s a difference between weaker defenses that double haphazardly versus teams that have time-and-space doubles built into their own habits, but if becoming a good post entry team – Miami also leads the league in entry passes per 100 possessions now – means drawing more two-on-the-ball situations, then the HEAT have put in the right work during the regular season. When Butler scores on consecutive deep seals to keep Miami’s offensive train on the tracks in a late April game, remember that those are habits you spend an entire season building.
ELIGIBLE INELIGIBILITY
Because he’s already missed 19 games, Jimmy Butler is no longer eligible for most postseason awards. That means he can’t make an All-NBA team, and he won’t be eligible for All-Defense, either.
Not that Butler tends to be one to publicly care much about those things, but big picture these new rules mean it’s going to be more difficult to go back and find elite seasons because the players having those seasons might not be on any awards lists even if they played, for example, 60 games. But just because a player won’t be on those lists doesn’t mean their seasons shouldn’t be recognized and remembered.
In Butler’s case, here’s why. He’s currently averaging 21.8 points, 5.5 rebounds, 4.8 assists and 1.4 steals while turning the ball over fewer than two times per game. You know how many players have ever put those numbers together since steals were tracked in the 1973-74 season, per basketball-reference.com? There’s Butler last season, Kawhi Leonard in 2020-21 and that’s it. Add in the somewhat ridiculous fact that Butler is shooting 45.7 percent from three and you officially have a never-been-done-before season that could go on the books in mid-April. Before this season it probably would have been enough for an All-NBA nod, but these days enough will have to be enough.
HIDDEN PROLIFIC
Bam Adebayo has increased his free-throw rate from last season to 6.2 attempts per game, good for No. 21 in the league, but that’s actually below his free-throw rate per 100 possessions from two seasons ago. Last season was just a slight dip after an adjustment period to Adebayo’s offensive profile expanding, and now he’s right back to where he was before, pump-faking one defender after another into free-throws.
There’s a second layer to Adebayo’s foul game, though. Butler is No. 5 in the league according to Second Spectrum on drawing 2.7 shooting fouls per 100 possessions, with Adebayo close behind at No. 12 with 2.1 per 100. But what about non-shooting fouls, those fouls that add up to putting a team into the bonus early which allows for even more easy points?
If you take out all shooting fouls, Adebayo is still No. 16 in the league at 1.8 drawn per 100 possessions (Trae Young leads all players at 2.5), and Butler is further down the leaderboard at No. 43 with 1.35 per 100. That’s not to say Adebayo is a better or more important foul drawer than Butler since nothing trumps getting to the line with elite consistency, only that Adebayo is equally as prolific drawing fouls with the ball as he is without it. Again, all the little things that add up to points for a team that needs points every which way it can find them against elite defenses (Miami is scoring 111.2 points per 100 in 17 games against teams with a Top 10 Defensive Rating, with the nine teams below them all outside the Top 10 in their respective conferences).
FINISHING MOVES
It’s no secret that Spoelstra has increased his zone usage over the past 13 games, of which Miami has won 10. Before January 31 Miami was using 8.7 zone possessions per game, allowing an uncharacteristic 1.21 points-per in that coverage. Since then they’re using 16.2 possessions a game – nearly triple that of the No. 2 New Orleans Pelicans during the same stretch – allowing 0.97 points-per. Game-changing, game-winning stuff.
What’s been truly interesting is how Spoelstra has deployed the coverage throughout games. While there’s been a couple games – notably the loss to the LA Clippers – where we’ve seen the zone early, 10.1 of the team’s zone possessions, 62 percent on average, are coming in the second half. And 36 percent of their zone possessions, 5.9 a night have been in fourth quarters, with the team allowing just 0.86 points-per during those periods. No other team has used more than two possessions of zone on average in fourth quarters this season, with the HEAT doubling up the No. 2 Utah Jazz.
Spoelstra has had the patience in many of these games – including against Philadelphia, Sacramento, Washington, New Orleans and Portland – to hold off on using his change-of-pace coverage, which almost always includes a full-court press designed to kill shot clock, until the closing stretches of the game when teams don’t have ample time and opportunity to adjust. For younger teams, or teams missing shot creators and volume scorers, Spoelstra waiting until the perfect moment has spelled doom for their offenses, not to mention their hopes of winning a close game.
Overall, the HEAT have a Defensive Rating of 101.6 in fourth quarters since January 31, the best mark in the league, while their fourth-quarter offense has sat at No. 23 during the same stretch.
TIDBITS
-Butler and Adebayo’s 60 combined points against Utah on Saturday is tied for the pair’s sixth-highest scoring game since Butler joined the team in 2019. They’ve only topped 70 one time, combining for 71 in Game 4 against the Bucks last season when Butler scored 56 and Adebayo had 15.
-Since Jan 31, Caleb Martin has been on the floor for 71 percent of Miami’s zone possessions. Before that date, Martin had been on the floor for 41 percent of Miami’s zone possessions, though that includes him missing 10 games after the season opener.
-Adebayo currently sits at +2.3 in Defensive Estimated Plus/Minus according to dunksandthrees.com. The current DPOY favorite according to the odds, Rudy Gobert, sits at +2.2.