Free-throws are the least interesting things about basketball. How one gets to the free-throw line is interesting, but the actual act of the shot, uncontested by all but the mind, lacks any semblance of subtext. A free-throw is just a free-throw, each one exactly the same as the one that came before.
That also makes talking about free-throws, and people rarely talk about free-throws when there isnt some sort of gripe, a dead-end conversation. We can try to pinpoint a particular hitch in a players shot, but for the most part, they go in or they dont, and things even up over the course of a season to a tidy percentage over 70 percent.
So when Miami shoots 65 percent from the line one night and even worse the next, all thats left to say is that the coin flips took a turn towards tails, but its still a coin weighted more than slightly to heads.
Offenses, too, are always trying to weight things in their favor, with the ultimate goal being to reduce every shot opportunity to a coin flip, to earn shots so open their chances for going in are unaffected by all outside sources. But there are still only two results. You score or you dont. The best an offense can hope for is to replicate the best possible coin-flipping conditions possible.
Those conditions are earned through execution, whether with half-court precision or high-speed decision making on the break, and with that execution a team affords itself a constant amid all the chaos, the unpredictability of every loose ball or fallen body, of the game.
Was Miamis execution perfect against the Clippers? Hardly. With Los Angeles pushing players off cuts and collapsing into the paint, proper spacing was often absent, the ball sticking too long as players waited for doubles that never came or passing lanes that never opened.
In the fourth quarter and overtime, however, when things looked so muddled and the pace of the game was like trying to listen to a Discman without shock protection while biking down a bumpy dirt road, Miamis execution produced the intended coin flips more often than not.
And that, most likely, is why both Erik Spoelstra and LeBron James appeared content with the chances the team earned, many of which come from the James-Dwyane Wade pick-and-roll that Spoelstra only utilizes late in games.
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Theres nothing complicated about this action. Spoelstra simply puts two elite scorers in motion with one another in order to create either space or a mismatch. Of the five times they ran this play in the fourth quarter and overtime, James wound up getting fouled twice and getting the mismatch with Chauncey Billups three times. Once, the play took too long to develop Chris Bosh had fallen down on the other end and the team waited for him to recover and James took the long jumper, but he was still in a position to succeed.
If not for the one fading, off-dribble jumper Wade took in the in the fourth, the Wade-James pick-and-roll produced the desired coin flip. Elsewhere, as well, with Miami getting Bosh in good post position in the fourth and James in the same in overtime, the HEAT got the ball to the right place, scoring on nine of their 19 half-court possessions in the fourth.
They went on a field-goal drought, too, for almost all of this time, but the HEAT got to the free-throw line eight times in the last seven minutes of the fourth quarter. And a guaranteed opportunity to score a point 70-80 percent of the time, twice in a row, is just as good as an attempt at a field-goal.
Its not perfect, but its a far cry from where the HEAT were during the losing streaks of early last season, when late-game situations would often devolve into ball-pounding on the perimeter and isolations at the top of the key. Miami ran some of those, in fact, against the Warriors Tuesday night, but in the final minutes against the Clippers, the team attempted sets with a little more elegance.
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With Mario Chalmers starting high and off screen, he and Wade run a crossing pattern at the top of the paint while James retreats to the far corner and Bosh simply ensures that Wade has enough space to make the inbounds catch.
As Battier runs through the paint, this is set up to look exactly like the wing-isolations run for Wade at the end of the Charlotte game, with one spacer in the ball-side corner and the rest of the offense overloading the far side. Every defensive eye is on Wade as a result.
But where it looks like Battier is just running through to make space for Wades drive, he runs right to James man to set a screen, with Bosh staggering another pick soon after. This is just enough to get Caron Butler a step behind James, and once the catch is made with James curling toward the rim, the HEAT have created a high-percentage opportunity.
James misses the second freebie and Wade saves the ball for Miami, yet even with the ball on the baseline for the next possession, the HEAT run the exact same set.
Theres Chalmers and Wade crossing, Wade catching the ball high, James in the far corner and the staggered screens setting up. This time, however, Butler stays step-for-step with James James may have clued him in with his hop-step before the cut and Bosh slips the screen, perhaps expecting the defense to shift up and help on the curl.
Had James stopped at the top of the key to think about his move, as he did with Billups later in overtime, the set would have done little but create the old high-isolation. James makes the quick-decision instead, driving right as Butler gets set and getting fouled at the rim. Two plays, two scoring possessions. That those possessions only produced two points has little to do with the execution itself.
Overtime was a different beast, with the HEAT earning points on just one of their nine half-court possessions, a couple of which result in long, contested jumpers. James set up once on the elbow and once in the post, Chalmers missed an open three and ball movement got a cutting Bosh the hook near the rim that would be blocked. They were reasonable results, but they were produced from an offense that knew what it was doing. It may seem a strange thing to say about last years Eastern Conference Champions, but when the HEAT struggled early that season, they often didnt look like they quite knew what it wanted or the best way to do it as players learned unfamiliar positions.
In overtime, Miami could have produced situations with higher odds, but apart from the pair of early jumpers, it had direction.
And once again, in the final minute, the team executed, this time down three with 17.7 seconds to play.
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The play begins with both James and Wade in the far corner, away from the ball, seemingly setting up Miami for a quick two. But in a similar action to the wheel-around fake-screen the HEAT used a couple of time last week, Wade quickly doubles back after appearing to run high for the catch and sets a double screen with Bosh for Chalmers to run off of.
Meanwhile, James has run along the baseline and drawn the attention of Blake Griffin, who was defending the inbounds pass. This gives Battier a clear passing lane to the top of the key, and he hits Chalmers perfectly in motion for the three.
Even as Chris Paul slips by the Bosh pick and closes out on Chalmers, this is a good look for the situation. If Chalmers makes the shot, the game is tied and should Miami go on to win, the team is commended for late-game execution and the free-throws are forgotten.
But the coin flip goes the other way, Miami loses and were left discussing January results rather than the progression of the half-court offense. In the playoffs, only one of those things is going to take the court.
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