The Miami HEAT are 35-29, No. 8 in the Eastern Conference with a Net Rating of +0.6, No. 16 in the league. With a rematch against Denver coming Wednesday before a pair of road games in Detroit, here’s what we’ve been noting and noticing.
VARIATIONS ON A THEME
Dallas coach Jason Kidd made an interesting comment during his pregame press conference on Thursday night, as tweeted by the Sun Sentinel’s Ira Winderman, noting that a priority that night was to take away corner threes from Miami, a team that had been outside the Top 10 in corner three attempt rate headed into that game. Still, that logic tends to track given the value of an open corner three. Taking it away is generally not a bad plan.
Then the Mavericks did just about the exact opposite.
During this three-game losing streak the HEAT have scored 110.1 points per 100 possessions, just below their season average of 113.4, while shooting 38 percent from three – an odd combination but one that tracks when you consider Miami is shooting 68 percent from the free-throw line and just 41 percent in the upper paint as compared to their season average of 46 percent.
The free throws will come around but those upper paint numbers, where Miami leads the league in frequency at 27.5 percent of their total attempts, are key given their role in the offensive system. As much as there is always going to be variance baked into small sample sizes, the past three games have provided good reasons for the temporary efficiency dip in that zone, and here’s where we get back to Dallas. While the Mavericks may have wanted to take away corner threes – you also have to consider the possibility that Kidd was employing a bit of gamesmanship – they wound up allowing 18 attempts in total, a season high for Miami. Washington gave up 15 corner threes – tying Miami’s previous season high – and the Thunder allowed 11, still in the Top 20 for HEAT games this season. Altogether, Miami has averaged 15.3 corner three attempts per 100 possessions in these past three games (making 40.9 percent of them), up from their average of 10.4. The season leader, Dallas, attempts 11.9 per 100 possessions.
How are those corner threes related to the dip in upper paint percentages? In their own ways, all three opponents played a style of defense that involves providing extra help – early, late or both – in the paint. And when there are extra bodies in the paint, that means there are fewer defenders on the perimeter than there are shooters stationed at the arc. Once teams get into rotation, the ball will often naturally find the corners if it is moving as intended, or the player with the ball in the paint can make the play to the weakside corner left uncovered by the collapsing defensive shell.
While the Mavericks disrupted Miami’s offense last season with hard doubles in the post, on Thursday they were a bit more advanced, stacking help behind Bam Adebayo and Jimmy Butler’s post-ups and isolations with peeled defenders or strong-side zones before sending help in late clock situations. Shooters were open, but the paint was clogged.
Notebook 72: Dallas Triplet Coverage
The Thunder did much of the same, fewer soft doubles but plenty of timed – based on the clock, the dribble or the move – help with defenders zoning up in the paint to deter anything going downhill. If the ball entered the paint, the defense did everything it could to get it out.
Notebook 72: OKC Triplet Coverage
Washington, meanwhile, playing small without centers, sent hard doubles at Adebayo post-ups while again strong-side zoning his and Butler’s other-angled attacks, with defenders peeling off their perimeter assignments to cut off the lower paint. There was very little in the way of true one-on-one play.
Notebook 72: Washington Triplet Defense
“It’s just something we got to adjust to,” Adebayo said of the similar coverages Miami has been seeing. “Get in the film room, watch and see how we can correct it. Get in more of a flow. When you start to see more of the same type of defense you get in more of a flow, you start seeing the skip passes, you start seeing the guys who cut backdoor. Because when you collect all that attention sometimes guys are ball watching. Sometimes as the offensive player, you got to make plays.”
Miami’s shot quality has been right at their season average the past three games, as has their effective field-goal percentage. It’s their free-throw attempts, many of which come from that upper paint area and on restricted area attacks, and percentages that have been down. The shots have still been there, especially against the Wizards where some good looks from three would have turned the game, there just haven’t been any truly sustained explosive offensive performances, the past three defenses succeeding in taking away one strength while putting themselves in rotation to cover others.
The HEAT have adjusted to these sort of coverages before – notably the New York Knicks favor this sort of style – after they started seeing more of them last season, but they also represent the next step in their evolution in some ways. Drop coverage gave the HEAT issues for years, then they adjusted and regularly have great scoring nights against it. Switching defenses have been a problem in the past, and they still flatten Miami out some with the right personnel, but behind Butler and Adebayo the offense has shifted to better exploit mismatches with post-ups and isolations. Now some teams respect what Adebayo and Butler can do in their one-on-one matchups so much that they’re doing everything they can to get the ball out of their comfort zones. This isn’t so much a concern as it is a very specific three-game trend against teams with practiced habits.
Sure enough Miami also still had plenty of restricted area attempts in all three games –matching their season average of 19.8 per 100 possessions, surpassing their percentages with 73.7 percent shooting – they just had to get to them in different ways, hitting cutters and using second-side drives against a bent defense. The puzzle was solved, in a sense. It was execution that eluded the HEAT, particularly in the second halves of the losses where their defense (130.9 Defensive Rating) after halftime has been a greater issue than the offensive side of the ball.
One final note on this is that these amorphous strong-side zones, with help coming every which way but never the same way twice in a row, is partially what had Miami’s offense out of whack in the 2011 Finals as Dallas loaded up bodies in front of LeBron James. There’s no greater level of respect for forwards and centers than double teams and quarterback-spy style zones. Butler and Adebayo have earned that.
GETTING ADJUSTED
One of the more positive stories of the past two weeks for Miami has been the play of Terry Rozier, averaging 18 points a game on 48-38.9-93.3 scoring splits in his seven games since returning from a knee injury on February 27. Of note, though all four of Miami’s losses during that stretch have been clutch games, Rozier is second on the team in fourth-quarter scoring at 5.1 per quarter on 55.6 shooting and 40 percent from three.
While Tyler Herro being out has prevented us from seeing all of the HEAT’s primary scorers and playmakers together at the same time – the sorting out of that blend of usage rates remains one of the most interesting unanswered questions of the season – Rozier has been Miami’s lead ballhandler in terms of pick-and-roll actions, leading the team with 180 pick-and-rolls during this seven-game stretch, ahead of Butler in second place with 105 and Duncan Robinson in third with 50. Rozier and Adebayo has been the lead combination, as would be expected, with 104 pick-and-rolls, 65 more than any other pair on the team. With Adebayo in a shooting slump the efficiency, 0.95 points-per, hasn’t jumped off the screen, but Rozier has put together 1.04 points-per across all of his pick-and-rolls, even higher than the 0.99 he was posting during his career-best stretch in Charlotte.
As they’ve dropped recent clutch games, Miami’s is still +9.6 per 100 possessions in fourth quarters during this seven-game stretch. Even in the losses, they’ve generally had a chance to win down the stretch because of Rozier’s shotmaking. Still plenty to sort out when the team in healthy, but after that initial feeling-out process Rozier has been doing exactly what he was acquired to do.
CHANGE OF CHANGE OF PACE
Last week we discussed how Erik Spoelstra has been utilizing zone in fourth quarters, patiently waiting to spring it on some teams like a trap when they won’t have time to adjust. Against Detroit last Tuesday it appeared as though it was going to happen again as Spoelstra only sprinkled in a handful of zone possessions across three quarters versus a team that would, on paper, be susceptible to it due to their deficiencies in shooting and playmaking, and then ran off a couple zone possessions in two minutes – followed by another in a dead ball situation – in what was otherwise a clutch game.
Detroit didn’t score on any of those possessions – two ended with Jaden Ivey, career 34 percent three-point shooter amid a slump, taking open but end-of-clock threes – and it looked like the HEAT could confidently ride that coverage to victory. But just as quickly as Miami settled into zone, they got out of it. Adebayo did switch onto Cade Cunningham once, blocking him on a drive, but then Miami went back to drop coverage for a couple possessions, alternating between Adebayo being up at the level of the screen and playing back in the paint, before Adebayo started blitzing Cunningham to get the ball out of his hands and close out the game. In the span of five minutes, that’s four or five different coverages all executed by Adebayo.
But with the zone initially working just as well as it had in other recent victories, and Cunningham barely touching the ball on those possessions, why the initial change up from Spoelstra’s change up? Sometimes it’s not about what just happened but about what you see coming, and the need to be more than one thing at a time.
“They were getting to that pick-and-roll a few too many times and it was paint by numbers a little bit,” Spoelstra said. “They were getting this, they were getting that, then they were setting up that and getting this. All the little reads they were getting off of that. Cunningham is a great decision maker with the ball, he can read the scheme and is big so he can make all the different type of passes, then if you play the passing angles he can score. Some of this is just to try to get them out of that, for right or wrong.”
Adebayo echoed the sentiment.
“It felt like [Cunningham] was getting to too many open spots, too many open looks, so let’s switch it up and see what happens. That’s my game, I feel like, when I get to switch and play that dynamic defense for us. But [other coverages have] been working for us all season, so if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.”
Adebayo wound up blitzing six pick-and-rolls against Detroit, one off his season high of seven that came against Charlotte earlier this season. He also hasn’t switched more than 10 screens in a game since mid-January. Also worth noting that Adebayo only defended six total fourth-quarter pick-and-rolls against both Dallas and Oklahoma City, as both Luka Doncic and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander attacked other spots in Miami’s defense down the stretch rather than involve Adebayo in the play at all. Adebayo only defended 11 pick-and-rolls total against the Thunder, three off his season low and his lowest total of 2024 after defending 12 against Oklahoma City in 2024. Where Detroit kept bringing Adebayo up, allowing him to toggle between variations of coverages, the Thunder avoided him altogether.
Then, against Washington and their smallball, Miami only used two zone possessions all game, both in the third quarter, and wound up switching a season-high 39 pick-and-rolls. Adebayo was his usual stout self when switched out, but the Wizards were also smart about going away from him to hunt more advantageous matchups. In the 28 pick-and-rolls that didn’t involve Adebayo switching, Miami allowed 1.21 points-per.
THE OTHER FIVE
It had been well over a month since we’ve seen much of Nikola Jovic playing the five spot, the last semi-elongated instance being back on January 17 against the Toronto Raptors with Jovic being in and out of the rotation in that time, but we got perhaps the biggest dose of it all season Friday against the Thunder. With Kevin Love injured and neither Thomas Bryant or Orlando Robinson getting minutes, Jovic played backup center for 32 possessions stretched across 17 minutes as Miami went plus-11 in that time.
Love’s absence was clearly a major factor here as he’s been entrenched at the backup spot whenever he’s been available, but the other matchup-specific factor was that the Thunder were rotating in backup center Jaylin Williams to play a decent amount of minutes against Adebayo leaving Chet Holmgren across from whoever Spoelstra played as Miami’s backup five. So this wasn’t Spoelstra throwing Jovic out against a bigger, traditional center, but the look does allow Miami to mimic the five-out – five-out doesn’t always mean all five players are outside the arc, as the HEAT always have their cutters and players rotating into the dunker spots, just that all five players are a threat to shoot – spacing they get with Love, and sure enough they scored 140 points per 100 possessions in those 17 minutes while allowing just 106.25 per 100 from Oklahoma City. Those small-sample numbers are affected by Miami shooting 45 percent from three while allowing 21 percent, but you win the minutes you can win however you can win them.
On that note about five-out spacing not always meaning all five players are out, Spoelstra utilized Jovic a decent amount in the post when he was at the five, leveraging his playmaking skills inside the teeth of the defense against the geography of the floor.
Notebook 72: Jovic Post Assist
You’re not always going to have Patty Mills sitting under the rim wide open on a split action, but Jovic has been showing for weeks now that he can make most any pass on the floor, at least from a stationary position. His entry passes continue to be among the best on the team, and perhaps the best at emulating Kyle Lowry’s past chemistry with Butler.
Notebook 72: Jovic Entry Pass
With Washington effectively not having any centers available on Sunday night, playing small the entire game, Spoelstra went back to Jovic at the five for another stretch. Miami won those 10 minutes by four points, but this time the value was primarily on the defensive end as they scored just 104.7 points per 100 while allowing just 94.7 to a Washington bench lacking in playmaking.
TIDBITS
-While we wrote last week about Spoelstra using zone in fourth quarters to shut teams down – which, again, they tried against Detroit as well before changing coverages – they didn’t use any fourth quarter zone against Dallas or Oklahoma City after trying it earlier in those games. The Thunder scored 1.33 in 18 zone possessions, with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander joining Luka Doncic and Nikola Jokic in the rare tier of player who has adjusted to just about any coverage Miami throws at them, and Dallas scored 1.71 against seven zone possessions.
-Miami had four restricted area scores in the first four minutes against Dallas, the second time they’ve done that this season after scoring six times in that zone early against Atlanta in mid-January.
-Kyle Kuzma's pull-up transition three that gave Washington the lead for good with 8:17 left was just his third such make of the season. He had previously only even attempted six pull-up transition threes.