The dust has settled, and the opponent has been set.
For the fifth time in franchise history, the HEAT will face the Pacers in the playoffs. And while a lot has changed since Miami and Indy last met in the postseason in 2014, Erik Spoelstra knows that one thing will remain the same.
“You have two competitive franchises that [have] playoff history,” Spoelstra said. “We wouldn’t expect anything less than great, great competition from the Indiana Pacers organization.”
In the regular season, the HEAT went 3-1 against the Pacers, with the lone loss coming on Friday in a game where both teams rested a bunch of regular rotation players.
Despite Miami’s success, however, that doesn’t guarantee anything since playoff basketball is an entirely different animal.
Outside of Andre Iguodala, perhaps no other player on the roster understands that better than Jimmy Butler and Udonis Haslem.
“It’s a different style of basketball now. It’s a different time. The sense of urgency is going to be at an all-time high,” Butler said.
“Guys understand things are getting a little more serious,” UD added. “And it’s go time now.”
Indeed, it is.
The Playoff Rotation
Ever since the HEAT got into the bubble, Coach Spo has often mentioned the need to adjust, adapt and expect the unexpected.
In two of Miami’s last three seeding games (again, we can’t read too much into that last one), Spoelstra rolled with a starting lineup of Goran Dragić, Duncan Robinson, Butler, Jae Crowder and Bam Adebayo, with Tyler Herro being the first guy off the bench. Of course, Kendrick Nunn being out played a role in that as well.
With those first five guys on the court during the regular season, the HEAT outscored the opposition by a whopping 27.5 points per 100 possessions in 51 minutes.
Yeah…that’s pretty good.
And with Herro continuing to diversify his skillset and attack off the dribble, Miami has plenty of weapons it could always throw Indiana’s way. That’s essentially what happened when the team had seven guys score in double-figures in their blowout victory over the Pacers on Aug. 10.
All that said, it remains to be seen what Spoelstra will do with the starting lineup and rotation. After Nunn played 33 minutes in his return on Friday, the rookie mentioned that his conditioning went to another level. It’s also important to note that Nunn has started all 67 games of his career, while Dragić has thrived as the team’s sixth man all year. So, you can really go either way.
Regardless of who starts, though, Dragić only cares about one thing.
“I don’t care if I start [or] if I’m coming from the bench,” the Slovenian said. “The only thing [that] I care [about] is winning. I feel like this group that we have right now, everybody thinks the same. And definitely, our main strength is that we have a lot of players who can play.”
We’ll see what happens.
Scouting the Pacers
Although Indiana will likely be without one of its best players in Domantas Sabonis, that doesn’t mean things will be easy for Miami.
Sure, the Pacers struggled offensively in the bubble without Sabonis, but their defense was still quite strong. In fact, they tallied the third-best defensive rating of the restart (105.7) and gave up the second-lowest percentage from deep (31.3 percent) despite surrendering 37.1 attempts per game. Now, Indiana did have trouble protecting the rim and rebounding with all its small-ball lineups, and we saw that up close and personal when the HEAT scored 56 points in the paint on Aug. 10.
Additionally, in that contest, Butler and the HEAT limited the Pacers’ biggest offensive threat in T.J. Warren. Though true, Miami still has to be wary of what Warren and Victor Oladipo can do on that end.
Thanks to averaging 31.0 points, 6.3 rebounds and 2.0 assists per game on 57.8 percent shooting, Warren was named to the All-Seeding Games First Team. Oladipo, meanwhile, has been working his way back from injury. As such, his numbers from the seeding games didn’t jump off the page, but he has the ability to score from all three levels when he’s right.
Looking at Potential X-Factors
Every series has X-factors or guys who swing momentum one way or another.
For this exercise, let’s take a look at one starter and one bench player on each team who could do just that.
On Indiana’s side, you have Myles Turner and Edmond Sumner. Turner struggles with consistency at times but is a versatile big who can protect the rim and space the floor. And that held true earlier this month when he put together a solid three-game stretch versus Washington, Orlando and Phoenix.
However, Turner had some difficulty handling Adebayo during the regular season.
The HEAT’s do-it-all big credits his strong play to being “a one of one.”
“I consider myself a one of one, and that’s no disrespect to him or anything,” Adebayo said. “I just feel like I’m one of those guys where you can ask to do almost everything on the court: defend one through five, put me primarily on a starting guard for the first five minutes of the game, just crazy stuff like that. And being able to put me in the game in late situations and giving me the ball and telling me to make decisions, I feel like I do a lot for my team. For me, I feel like I’m a one of one.”
The Pacers’ other potential X-factor, Sumner, is more under the radar than Turner. Still, Spoelstra is aware of what the 24-year-old guard is capable of.
“He’s gotten better…as you would expect with their development program,” Spoelstra said. “He’s one of those guys, I’m sure, that we’ll see on Duncan with his…speed and quickness and ability to chase him off screens. And he’s improved his offensive game, for sure.”
As for Miami’s potential game changers, look no further than Crowder and Herro.
Starting off with Crowder, it’s hard to remember the last time he missed from downtown. In all seriousness, he led the squad at 56.4 percent (22-of-39) from beyond the arc during the restart. And even though the Pacers have held opponents to a low percentage out there, they tend to give up a ton of those looks, so perhaps more shots will be there for the taking.
Those treys should be there for Herro, too.
As mentioned before, the rookie has expanded his game and added more to his offensive menu.
And that hasn’t surprised Butler one bit.
“[He’s improved] his finishing, knowing when to make late decisions, knowing when to shoot the pull-up, floater, knowing when to hit the baseline, the pocket pass,” Butler said. “It’s not surprising to me, though, because he’s always studying the film, he’s always watching it before the game, after the game, and the kid just wants to be great. He wants to help bring a championship to Miami, and I think we’re going to do that.”
Odds & Ends:
-As part of the HEAT’s fight against systemic racism and social injustice, the organization unveiled its “United in Black” playoff campaign.
In addition to wearing their Icon Edition Miami Black uniforms as much as possible throughout the postseason, the team will also don United in Black shooting shirts during warmups and other parts of the game. Those shooting shirts are on sale now, and like with the BLM Court Culture collection, proceeds from the sale of the shirt will benefit Black Girls Code, Health in the Hood and the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition.
Spoelstra thinks that will have a great impact.
“This is something that our marketing department worked on quite a bit with basketball operations. Michael McCullough and his team spearheaded it, but we’ve been meeting quite a bit, really, for the last two months on trying to figure out a way where we can make the most impact for sustainable change,” Spoelstra said. “And this is just another layer of it, but we love it. We think it’ll give us another opportunity to continue this conversation. We have the three local organizations that we’ve partnered with that we think will have a great impact. Our voting initiative, we think also is so important. And this is just a way for us to direct people to those places and to ultimately, just keep this conversation going. We don’t want it to go away.”
We definitely don’t.
Until next time.