Orlando Magic

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Couper Moorhead

1. It’s been a long, long while since anyone has witnessed a Miami versus Orlando matchup that could be described as anything in the vicinity of the beautiful game, and we sure weren’t going to start seeing it tonight.

Great defensive energy from Miami to open as they jumped out to an early 16-4 lead in the first six minutes, a new starting lineup with Caleb Martin in place of Haywood Highsmith generating turnovers and scoring off them as is intended. To say Orlando’s half-court offense, with very little going downhill outside of slow, methodical, back-down attacks from Paolo Banchero, Markelle Fultz and Franz Wagner, was struggling would have been an understatement. By the time Miami had stretched their lead out to 20 after a series of Orlando drives into a packed paint followed by HEAT threes on the runout, it was clear the issue was one of geometry – a spacing-induced hindrance – and not just of the make-or-miss variety.

And yet as soon as the lead reached its peak, Orlando settled in. With Miami sticking in zone for a bit, the Magic worked the middle of that zone with a number of short push shots and inside-out playmaking. Very little shooting from either side, but the Magic found a way to put the right players in the right players to give their best players room to drive and get to the line. By halftime, the lead was down to just seven, both teams essentially tied in half-court efficiency with Miami holding the edge on the break.

Right as Orlando appeared ready to eat into the deficit even more in the third, Miami got a few shots to fall and the Magic offense unraveled from there. It wasn’t quite a snap of the fingers, but in just a few minutes what appeared to be headed toward a tense, nail-biting affair became something of a feel-good evening, Miami’s energy levels as high as they’ve been all season with Orlando rotating to empty spaces as the ball went right past them. The HEAT by 21 after three.

A bit of drama in the fourth as Orlando got back within 10 again, only for Jimmy Butler to hit back-to-back threes, one of them a fadeaway in the corner against the shot clock, to extend the stiff arm. Crisis avoided, having Jimmy Butler (23 points on 6-of-9 shooting) on your team much better than not having Jimmy Butler on your team. Miami takes the first leg of the back-to-back, 121-95, behind a 65-46 second half.

2. There wasn’t any single dominant performance tonight – Butler’s ridiculous efficiency aside – with all nine of the nine players in the main rotation tonight scoring at least seven points, but the move of the game was the insertion of Caleb Martin (11 points on 5-of-9 shooting) into the starting group to effectively replicate the starters that played together for much of last season, only with Terry Rozier in place of Kyle Lowry. Tough for anyone to argue with the results, with Miami jumping out to that 16-4 lead in the first and holding off Orlando’s best shot to open the third.

Like Josh Richardson, when the HEAT were mired in their seven-game losing streak early last week Martin had the accountability to take a look at his own game film, noting that he simply hadn’t been playing to his own standards especially on the defensive end. Since then, Martin has anchored a press-zone that outright won games against Sacramento and Washington and tonight he helped set the tone with a pace and speed that Orlando never caught up to. Spoelstra eventually went away from that starting group last season even as Martin played well, and there’s certainly been little lineup stability this season, so only time will tell how long this move lasts – Highsmith had been playing well in his role, too, especially defensively – but for tonight it was the right move at the right time.

3. With Orlando being a step behind Miami for much of the game more precise execution may not have mattered, but for those of you who go back and watch for a second time this was one of the better examples of the season for how much having the right offensive players standing in the correct spaces can make a world of difference.

No, Orlando (18 turnovers) didn’t shoot well enough to beat Miami on an average night, making just 10-of-35 from deep, but where other teams can miss shots but still find a modicum of efficiency because their attempts are at least opening up the floor, Orlando’s situation was quite the opposite, their stable of mechanically slower, spot-up shooters giving Miami every reason to cheat further and further into driving lanes. In other words, Miami was able to play their scheme to the maximum, both Banchero (7-of-16 shooting) and Wagner (5-of-15, seven turnovers) forced to weave their way through three defenders just to get a tough floater off in the paint, their skip passes finding shooters that couldn’t get the proper shots off in time with Miami’s closeouts on point. Orlando finished with an Offensive Rating of 97.9 not just because they missed shots or because Miami defended well – that can be a chicken or the egg relationship at times, even on your best defensive nights – but because they simply weren’t operating in an ecosystem that contained the proper counters for how Miami puts their pieces on the board. If you subscribe to the theory of styles make fights, the HEAT weren’t hard up for style point in this one.

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Coup's Takeaways: Miami Takes Early Lead, Holds Off Every Orlando Threat As Caleb Martin Joins Starting Lineup

1. Miami’s cold shooting continued in the early going as they started 4-of-18 from outside with overall percentages hovering around 30 percent, and outside of the Toronto game the cost associated with those slow starts continued to be relatively low.

Helps that Orlando, like Brooklyn earlier this week, was struggling just as much from the outside. The Magic held control relatively firmly for most of the first half regardless, doubling up Miami in the paint with all of their size and length, but did just enough in the margins – on the offensive glass and at the free-throw line – to stay within striking distance. By the time a few shots started to fall, Tyler Herro hitting three threes in his first 15 minutes, it was enough to close the gap to two points at the break despite a 100.0 Offensive Rating. When the shots are missing it’s easy to focus on those and those alone, but Orlando was struggling as much if not more in the halfcourt (4-of-16 from three), especially as Erik Spoelstra toggled in and out of zone.

Jimmy Butler, who has not been aggressive from the outside since returning from injury, opened the second half with a pair of threes, including a contested one up against the shot clock, to even things up. But Orlando would regain control almost immediately with an 11-2 run, stretching their lead to double digits as the shot-clock violations mounted, relatively speaking, for Miami. Within striking distance down 12 going into the fourth on the HEAT’s side, the task ahead being two steps ahead of an Orlando team rotating exceptionally well ahead of the pass and keeping the ball out of the paint, and off the line, on the other end.

Magic by 18 a few minutes into the fourth on a couple transition scores, Miami still working against time with the ball in their hands. A major swing play soon after that to keep the HEAT alive, a near-pick-six turnover for Orlando bouncing Miami’s way and ending up in Herro’s hands for a wide-open three. That was the last surge of any sort, however, as Orlando’s grip held firm the rest of the way, Spoelstra pulling most of the rotation with just under three minutes to play. A rough night in what’s been a rough offensive week, a 105-87 loss in the end, but still just one week of many more still to play.

2. Miami’s offensive struggles began six days ago against Brooklyn, a game they were able to edge out in overtime, but in much of the losses to Toronto and Atlanta the issues, such as they were, had as much to do with make-or-miss regression – Miami was shooting incredibly well through the first two months or so, this felt like a natural cold spell – as with anything else other than some uncharacteristic turnovers. Tonight, however, did not feel like a make-or-miss game. Instead, Miami’s 85.5 Offensive Rating is a credit to their opponent.

Orlando is one of the biggest teams in the league, no doubt, a roster full of upsized guards, long wings and mobile big men, but this game was about more than just size. The Magic were consistently ahead of Miami’s passes with their rotations, pre-rotating the low man against Miami’s pick-and-rolls to shrink operating room and earn a handful of deflections. And one-on-one they were disciplined enough to limit their fouls, especially in the back half of the night, to allow their size to do the work for them while still disrupting the ball in hand. It was particularly noticeable that Miami attempted just 12 shots in the upper paint, typically their comfort zone, largely because of how crowded the lane was on the catch. You don’t force a team to work up against the shot clock as often as the HEAT did tonight just by being big, so give Orlando their due for one of the best and most complete defensive efforts, particularly as they were able to blend coverages and schemes to keep the ballhandlers on their toes, Miami has seen this season.

3. Not much more to say about this one other than that Orlando won the points in the paint battle 54-36, with most of their 28 free-throw attempts also coming on paint touches. This is where you expect the Magic to succeed off their size – they only shot 9-of-28 from three, almost exactly the same as Miami percentage-wise – because that’s their strength. The HEAT can typically afford a paint margin such as that against Orlando because Orlando has to spend so much energy – and risk potentially damaging turnovers – working the right passing angles to capitalize on their size, but it does give the Magic a theoretically higher offensive floor because of the specific matchups. In the end it wasn’t the over-the-top, triangulating passes that beat Miami, it was a handful of drives and offensive rebounds (36.6 second-chance rate for Orlando) in the late third and early fourth quarter that kept the HEAT at bay. The HEAT lost this game on offense for the most part, but Orlando was still able to hit their strengths on the other end.

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Coup's Takeaways: Orlando Pulls Away In Second Half As Miami’s Offense Stalls

The Miami HEAT are 24-16, No. 5 in the Eastern Conference with a Net Rating of +1.5, No. 13 in the NBA. Here’s what we’ve been noting and noticing.

According to player tracking data – which tends to be very strict on this sort of thing – Bam Adebayo was doubled in the post five times by the Brooklyn Nets Monday night, the second-most post doubles he’s seen in a game in his career. Throw in a couple doubles on face-up isolations, plus a couple more on Jimmy Butler touches, and it was pretty clear Brooklyn had a clear plan to disrupt Miami’s switch-killers against their switching scheme.

Not a bad plan, it turns out. Granted with the HEAT started out 0-of-12 from three and finishing 37.9 percent from the field just about any scheme would have looked good in the end, but given the HEAT’s on-again, off-again struggles against switching – when those threes were falling against Boston in the Eastern Conference Finals nobody was talking about the switching – strategizing against Miami’s best one-on-one players is a sound idea.

That’s not what stuck out most about the doubles, however, beyond their sheer existence. It’s how the doubles came. Some teams have tried to get a little cheeky with their doubles this season, bringing them from the baseline in an attempt to pick Adebayo’s pocket – the issue being the primary defender doesn’t seal off the middle so Adebayo would just get into the paint the same as he always would. Some other teams have brought vanilla doubles off the strongside shooter, which gives Adebayo a quick outlet and the HEAT an easy advantage situation, either a quick catch-and-shoot or closeouts to drive.

The Nets, however, brought their doubles from two-passes away and always covered the nearest shooter. These two plays illustrate it best.

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Notebook 66: Brooklyn Doubles

The HEAT caught on and made sure to send the entry passer into cuts to try and keep the defense thinking, but the end result was about as complicated a look as Adebayo can see – two defenders defending three on the weakside with multiple hands in your face. And when Adebayo was getting touches near the end of the shot clock to create, those doubles stalled out the offense just long enough to jam up important half-court possessions.

This is much easier to do when you have the personnel of the Nets, who generally switch one-through-five. If you don’t have such a dedicated switching scheme its more difficult to make all those weakside rotations, as the right cuts can leave the wrong players exposed with a bad matchup. Still, it’s good for Adebayo to see this sort of second-level scheme. The more he becomes a reliable isolation and post-up scorer, the more coaches are going to find creative ways to take him out of his comfort zone. And not all doubles are made the same.

Only seven players under 6-foot-8 this season have a Steal Percentage over 2.3 and a Block Percentage over 2.3. One of them, Alex Caruso, is generally regarded as one of the best guard defenders in the league. Jalen Suggs is having a breakout season for the Orlando Magic. Robert Covington is a known commodity around the league, as are Matisse Thybulle and Josh Okogie. Kris Dunn was nearly out of the league entirely before this resurgence in Utah, but he’s always been known as a high-level specialist.

And then there’s Haywood Highsmith who, at 103 regular season games, has had the shortest career of any of them as far as on court minutes. Highsmith still feels like a relative unknown on the national level, despite a handful of look-at-this-guy moments during the Finals run, but the more he plays in Miami the more his name seems an appropriate fit among the league’s best wing defenders.

There are two things that stick out about Highsmith’s defense when you watch him for long enough. The first is that he has great hands and long arms, which is part of why he ends up with so many blocks and steals. Even if he gets beat on a play, he can make a play as he did here against Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.

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Notebook 66: Highsmith Hands

And then Highsmith has this Shane Battier-esque skill of being able to stay between the ball and the basket, finishing with a focused contest, no matter how many moves the attacker is chaining together. Later in that same game, Gilgeous-Alexander tried to reverse course mid-drive and watch how Highsmith opens up his hips to stay with him only to stop on a dime and get a hand up to contest.

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Notebook 66: Highsmith Feet

Highsmith is not the sort of player who courts a ton of attention. He doesn’t get a stop on a big-name player and go out and talk about it afterwards – in fact his postgame comments often feel like a verbal handshake of respect with whoever he was guarding. That’s just who he is, but being soft spoken shouldn’t prevent someone from joining the echelon in which they belong. Even if he’s only scoring 6.2 points per game this season – P.J. Tucker averaged 7.6 his lone season in Miami – there’s a good chance Highsmith is going to factor into some serious, season-on-the-line moments come April and May.

As the team has dealt with various injuries, Nikola Jovic has started the last seven games in a row and as would be expected for a 20 year old getting the most significant taste of playing time in his career, it’s been a bit of a mixed bag. He’s shooting 40.7 percent from three, including a pair of 3-of-5 games, but only 38.8 percent overall. He’s made strides as a system defender who picks the right moments to break scheme and bring help, but strides alone don’t vault you into average defender territory. It’s all part of the process.

What continues to shine is the passing, same as it ever was. You watch any Jovic shift and you’re bound to catch a pass or two that stand out from the other couple hundred which occur in an NBA game. If you aren’t religiously following the ball on each possession, you might even forget Jovic is getting touches because he gets the ball out of his hands so quickly, on to the next open man before anyone else realizes that man is open.

Take this assist, for instance, from this week against the Magic.

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Notebook 66: Jovic Touch Pass

Orlando’s zone is a little wonky on that possession, certainly, given that the entire purpose of zone is to limit interior attacks and the Magic – Paolo Banchero should have pulled middle far earlier – give Bam Adebayo, holding his initial screen just long enough to time his cut right, a free run right down the lane. That doesn’t matter for Jovic, though, whose on time, on target touch pass makes the play. Not only do you need extraordinary touch to pull that off, you also have to see the floor developing before it develops.

Maybe this was a set designed on the sideline so Jovic knew it was coming, sets are only designed for players who can pull them off.

There’s still a lot of growth ahead for Jovic, but you’ve never had to look too closely to see the vision when he gets an opportunity.

These numbers are ever fluid, but as of Monday there are 133 players who have defended at least 70 isolation possessions and Bam Adebayo leads them all allowing just 0.67 points-per-isolation. And if you take out assist opportunities – those are included in tracking data because if a defender gets beat and draws help, that defender is responsible for the defense tilting and thus giving up an open shot – Adebayo is allowing just 0.59 points-per.

Last year we did a deep dive into why Adebayo was defending fewer isolations than usual, and there were two reasons for it. First, teams had most certainly learned The Lesson at that point and there were fewer players jumping headfirst into that particular wall. Generally, the players who still went at Adebayo were either young players who didn’t yet know any better or elite-level offensive players who didn’t always have a choice as they shouldered the shot creation burden. Second, without a full complement of switchable players on the roster Erik Spoelstra had started using more and more drop coverage, along with record-setting levels of zone, which meant less of Adebayo on the perimeter against ballhandlers.

Adebayo is facing even fewer isolations this season, 3.4 per 100 – lowest since his rookie year – down from 3.8 last season and a career-high of 6.1 in 2021-22. Sure enough, Adebayo is switching fewer screens than in any season since his rookie year, too, down to 4.9 per 100 possessions from 12.0 last year and 17.1 in 2021-22, with all the losses in the switch category essentially transferred over to the drop coverage column.

“Yeah it’s a wrinkle,” Adebayo said recently when asked about the reduced switching. “But, bigger picture. Spo has that bigger picture in mind. I feel like best thing for us is go with what he wants. He’s one of the Hall of Fame coaches and I’m going to ride with my coach.”

It hasn’t really been worth investigating this further until the team finally gets most of its rotation together. Put Adebayo in lineups with Jimmy Butler, Highsmith, Caleb Martin and Kyle Lowry and we probably see a bit more switching. Adebayo has had to pull triple duty in some lineups, but we’ll see how this all shakes out now that there appears to be a little more health on the road ahead.

-During Dwyane Wade’s Hall of Fame night on Sunday, Pat Riley announced that Wade would be getting a statue out front of Kaseya Center later this year. Teams tend to be incredibly picky about statues, and the fact is there just aren’t very many of them around the league. The most famous is Michael Jordan’s in Chicago, then the Lakers have a handful for Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, Shaquille O’Neal and Jerry West with a Kobe Bryant statue also coming this year. There are Wilt Chamberlain and Julius Irving statues in Philadelphia, one for Dominique Wilkins in Atlanta, and both John Stockton and Karl Malone have statues in Salt Lake City. In other words, you have to be royalty in your city to qualify, and Wade most certainly qualifies.

-It’s hardly worth pointing out anymore since it happens each season, but Miami is No. 29 in pace at 97.9 possessions per game, with both their offensive and defense possessions taking just about the same amount of time (~14.8 seconds on average).

-Miami might be one of the best teams in the league at forcing turnovers, which should improve now that Jimmy Butler is back in the rotation, but they’re No. 30 in scoring on possessions that begin with a live-ball turnover, scoring 1.19 points-per-possession. Last season they were No. 26 on those same possessions.

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Coup’s Notebook Vol. 66: Brooklyn Doubles, Highsmith’s Two Technique, Jovic Has The Touch And Bam Is Still The Best

1. It’s been a while since the HEAT have had all of their guys healthy, but tonight they faced off against an Orlando team missing a bunch of their own guys and the result was a choppy evening.

Very little rhythm for either side early on, Miami hitting three of their first four threes as they almost seem to do when missing multiple rotation players, with both teams struggling to stay above the 40 percent line from the field. Still, the HEAT looked like the team better equipped to handle a shortage of rotation players, running their usual offense as best they could – albeit with a few more turnovers thanks to a handsy Orlando group – while the Magic were asking Paolo Banchero to carry an even heavier load than usual, their approach looking much more heliocentric around a single star than intended.

Miami jumped out to a double-digit lead in the second quarter, but Orlando slowly pushed back to take a brief lead just before the break as Caleb Houstan managed a trio of triples for a team otherwise struggling from the field. As good as Banchero was, scoring 13 on a necessary 13 shots while often seeing a second or third extra defender, Jaime Jaquez Jr. was the standout, shooting 7-of-8 in the paint for 15 points on his usual blend of timely cuts and spinning, pivoting, contact-seeking drives. Miami by one at the break, a true January In The NBA finish – unmemorable, unattractive, well earned – promised.

Again a little separation for the HEAT early in the third, never up by quite as much as it appeared they should be, again Orlando scrounged enough offense together to close the gap and take a brief lead. An uneventful quarter, neither side topping 20 points, outside of a Joe Ingles flagrant foul on Caleb Martin (back in the line), Miami by two going into the home stretch.

Orlando just kept hanging around even as Duncan Robinson (23 points on 19 shots) worked his downhills stylings, Mo Wagner finishing well inside on some tough catches. Bam Adebayo (21 points on 17 shots, +17) worked the closing moments, up just two with two to play, as he put Wagner through the hoop on a dunk out of a post-up. And yet, Banchero rose to the moment himself, putting Orlando up one with 38 seconds to play with a tough fadeaway over Jaquez Jr. with Adebayo’s help looming. But there was Adebayo again, with a simple jumper in the upper paint, taking what was right in front of him, to retake the lead, 18.5 seconds left. Then, just a little bit of luck as Banchero had a wide-open look rebounding his own miss and simply lost the ball going up, leading to a 99-96 Miami win. Each season, Adebayo finds ways to get 10 percent better and he’s made himself into a bonafide go-to option down the stretch, with another game winner on his personal ledger.

2. Two men can never be a defense all on their own, but if you caught the right possessions of tonight’s game you would have thought Bam Adebayo and Haywood Highsmith were covering all five positions. With Orlando lacking tertiary attackers around Banchero, Miami was able to always have one of Adebayo and Highsmith on him almost at all times (with Jaquez Jr. doing well feeding Banchero’s drives into Adebayo’s help when Highsmith was off the floor), switching both on and off the ball in such a way it almost looked as though Miami’s lead defenders were the top of a zone that was determined to keep Banchero from gathering any comfortable momentum going downhill. If Banchero managed to find a pick-and-roll combination involving any other player, the screener defender simply held a long show in Banchero’s face as the original defender fought through, with an overloaded defender helping over on any paint-directed passes. The open man for Banchero was often in the far corner – he’s a good passer but he’s not LeBron James or Luka Doncic with the skip passes – and Orlando wasn’t shooting well enough to capitalize when that play was made.

And when Banchero went to the post to invert the offense and give himself some interior breathing room, Miami again had multiple defenders at the ready, not with a hard double but with the constant threat of help, either from a digging defender from the top or another coming over for a strong-side zone. In short, a big night for Banchero would have had to be truly magnificent, and even the fact that he scored 25 points on 26 shots (with six assists and four turnovers), Highsmith forcing a tough look on the last and most important one, was somewhat remarkable given the type of shots he was getting.

Once again, you give Erik Spoelstra an opponent with one obvious lead creator and few other live attacking and/or shooting options, he’ll find a way to slow down all but a select few.

3. One might call this is a relentless night for Jaquez Jr. even if it wasn’t his most efficient only by his own lofty standards (19 points on 16 shots is of course efficient for most anyone). It’s still a bit unclear just how scouted Jaquez Jr. is, with how often he’s able to get to his spots, both in transition and in the halfcourt, without anyone truly challenging much less stopping his dribble, but it also may be that this is his talent and skill level regardless of how prepared his opponents are, no longer caught off guard by a surprising rookie. We’ll leave the jury out a little longer to deliberate on that point, especially with the postseason being an entirely different animal altogether, but make or miss Jaquez Jr. has continued to play his way and get off the ball whenever he draws extra attention. His Bully Ball moment of the night was drawing point guard Cole Anthony in the post and absolutely putting him in a blender, hard charging his way into one of Miami’s easiest scores of the night. He didn’t get to play the hero on what was otherwise Adebayo’s night, but at 37 minutes he was as much a factor as anyone.

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Coup's Takeaways: Bam Adebayo Saves The Day With Late Jumper To Top Magic

1. This isn’t the same Orlando Magic group you may have grown used to over the past decade. Instead of a veteran team pushing for a low postseason seed, this is a young, talented group that has earned every bit of a Top Four spot with a blend of size, defense and interior aggression.

In the second quarter, they also ran into a buzzsaw.

It was a fairly non-descript start on both sides, Tyler Herro opening with 10 of the HEAT’s first 20 while Orlando punctured their defense for a few more basket cuts than anyone is comfortable with. The lead went back and forth a bit, both sides grinding out points with Orlando getting into the paint, Miami hitting jumpers – once again hitting a chunk of their early threes in a game Jimmy Butler misses, which is a real, statistically founded thing – and scoring off Magic turnovers. With 6:40 to play in the second quarter and Bam Adebayo in foul trouble, it was all knotted up at 36-36.

Miami wouldn’t miss a shot the rest of the half. We can talk all we want about smooth, crisp offensive execution, which was all present to be sure, but making 12 straight shots without your two best players on the floor against a Top 5 defense is as special as it gets. Making five triples during that stretch – 11-of-18 in the first half – Miami scored 32 points in six minutes and change as part of a 17-0 run that put them 18 going into the break. It doesn’t get much better than that stretch, one that will come up in conversation years from now.

As well as the HEAT were shooting, Orlando was just as poor. With Miami up 19 towards the end of the third, the HEAT had hit 20 of their 35 attempts outside of the paint while Orlando was just 9-of-30 in those same zones, including 4-of-22 from deep. Basketball is a simple game sometimes, make or miss, with most all else being equal.

Nothing much doing for the Magic from there as Miami rode that dominant second quarter run and cruised to the finish. You should almost always win when you shoot this much better than your opponent – 15-of-29 from three versus 9-of-36, with most makes coming late – but a logical result doesn’t make the process of getting there any less impressive. Miami takes this one, 115-106, with the Magic making a very, very late but very furious push to keep the score respectable. One of the better wins of the season goes on the ledger.

2. Herro (28 points on 17 shots, 4-of-5 from deep, eight rebounds, seven assists) was as good as it gets, punishing Orlando’s drop coverage over and over again with either quick pulls from three or by methodically eating up space in the middle and finding comfortable jumpers. It’s one thing for the HEAT to shoot this well as a team, another thing entirely for it to happen on the same night that Herro didn’t know how to miss a jumper. That’s a recipe for an Offensive Rating of 120+, and sure enough the HEAT finished at 121.6.

But where Herro will get the deserved accolades, the unsung hero of the night is Haywood Highsmith. While Orlando wasn’t exactly letting him shoot in the first half, he was clearly one of the designated players they were comfortable helping off of. To Highsmith’s credit, he shot early and often and didn’t stop any time he was open, making back-to-back triples during that magical second-quarter run, as he finished with 15 points on 4-of-9 from three (a career-high in attempts), the most impressive number there being the sheer number of attempts. There’s nothing more harmful to an offense than a shooter who won’t shoot when he’s open and Highsmith has been game this season no matter how his percentages have fluctuated. Add in some high-energy, timely offensive boards and his typically excellent one-on-one defense – you can make a pretty good argument that he’s Miami’s second-best isolation defender behind Adebyayo – and Highsmith continues to carve out a firm spot in the rotation whenever health has allowed.

3. The No. 1 pick in 2022, Paolo Banchero has lived up to his billing, putting up All-Star caliber numbers as he sets Orlando on the path towards something meaningful. He’s also just 21 years old, with plenty of learning to do.

Orlando has not been a very good shooting team this season so it’s likely Miami came in planning to take away the paint as much as possible – also likely considering that’s their base defensive philosophy in the first place. But with Orlando unable to convert much of anything from outside there was nothing at all preventing interior help against one of Orlando’s most potent downhill forces. Whenever Banchero put the ball on the floor, there was another body sliding over into his driving lanes and a third body waiting in the wings. The most elite offensive players in the league can read that secondary help, which is tougher than it sounds to do consistently, and find the shooters it leaves open, but Banchero was often stuck in between, shooting over multiple defenders on his way to a 2-of-12 night, plus three turnovers, with just one make in the paint by the time Orlando was down 20 in the final five minutes. It helps, too, when you have a defender of Highsmith’s caliber limiting those initial blow-bys so the help is coming to a place of strength rather than playing catch up on an attacker who has already beat his man. Banchero will get his reps in and improve against these coverages, but every young player has to endure scouting reports tailored to their strengths and their team’s weaknesses.

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Coup's Takeaways: HEAT's Perfect, Magical Second Quarter Run Carries Them To Victory In Orlando

In the middle of one of Miami’s frenetic runs against the Orlando Magic Tuesday night, Kyle Lowry forced a turnover along the sideline. Lowry quickly tried to get the ball back from the ref and push it up court, since it’s now go-go-turbo time whenever Lowry is around, but Orlando made a quick substitution and the ref pushed pause on resuming play for a couple of beats.

The player Lowry was going to pass to was Tyler Herro, and Herro had more energy in him at that moment than his body knew what to do with. He bounced up and down, his hands shaking in anticipation of the ball, a huge smile plastered on his face. Let’s go. Let me go. We have to keep going, read the body language. We can’t claim to know every instance that Herro has smiled on the court in the past because we aren’t watching a 24/7 Herro Cam, but it sure seemed like that moment captured everything that’s different for Herro in the present day.

“We’re definitely having more fun than last year,” Bam Adebayo said.

Contrary to most reports, Herro had a perfectly fine season his sophomore year. A line of 15 points, five rebounds and three assists, with 54.3% True Shooting on 23.5% Usage is nothing to sneeze at for a 21-year-old. It just wasn’t what people expected – or what they wanted which is a different thing altogether – after a run to the NBA Finals that included a 37-point breakout in a pivotal Game 4 against the Boston Celtics. Why Herro was expected to take a major leap forward when the team had essentially a six-week offseason during a pandemic is a bit confounding, but the point that got lost in all the sauce is that Herro’s sophomore leap came between the 2019-20 regular season and the onset of play in the Orlando Bubble. He worked diligently with assistant coach Chris Quinn during that pause in action and came into Orlando an improved on-ball player, finishing creatively in the paint and making passes he hadn’t even attempted months prior.

Never mind that Herro didn’t make a significant leap forward between his first two seasons, he made a leap during his first one.

This isn’t all to say Herro was the same player in his second go-round. The skillset was more dynamic, the efficiency dipped slightly and an early experiment as a starting point guard (amidst a ton of lineup absences) didn’t go particularly well, but more than anything else, the joy seemed to be gone – as it was for many around the league. At the time, Herro couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

“I wouldn’t say my confidence wavered,” Herro said last May, before the postseason. “There was just a change in something, I don’t know what it was. I just felt like shots weren’t falling. Whatever the case may be.”

New year, and now everyone appears to have a little more pep in their step. Herro kicked things off averaging 22.4 points in five preseason games, and through three in the regular season he’s at 23.3. Flashy stuff, the sort of number that catches the eye, silences the critics and fuels the boosters for a while, but the points are also somewhat beside the point. For a player who was a net-negative on pure impact when he was on the court his first two seasons, he’s closer to neutral at the moment. On a rather inconspicuous scoring night against Orlando (13 points on 12 shots) he led the team as a plus-19.

“It’s all about impacting winning,” Spoelstra said. “That’s the bottom line. It’s a little bit of a shame that everybody just looks at the final column in the box score just to see how many points somebody scores to gauge their impact on the game, but Tyler is developing all the different facets of trying to impact winning.”

Of course it’s great that the shots are falling. Herro is 8-of-12 from mid-range, 8-of-21 on above-break threes and has an effective field-goal percentage of 53.3 on pull-up jumpers. Anyone who has seen his footwork and the easy, quick release wasn’t going to be too worried about that, the main question was what heights of efficiency Herro would be able to reach. More on that a bit later. What’s impressive is that Herro’s early season hasn’t been all about whether the shots fall. He’s been able to be what the team needs him to be on a given night.

“He’s learning day in and day out, on the fly at that,” Jimmy Butler said. “It’s kind of tough being the scorer that he is and then having to flip that switch like ‘You know what, I got to make that play’. I think he’s handled it incredibly well, like a pro’s pro.”

With Lowry out of the lineup against Indiana, Miami didn’t just need shot making, shot creation was required. Gone are Goran Dragic and Kendrick Nunn. There’s no cavalry coming when one of Miami’s lead playmakers is out. The burden will fall on Herro, more often than not. Against the Pacers, that meant creating 28 field-goal attempts.

“The game called for that,” Butler said. “I’m not going to lie to you. We want him to be aggressive. He took all shots that he thinks he can make. I’m not mad at that at all. We want him to stay aggressive, stay confident, because we’re going to need him to be that way throughout the year.”

It was mostly pull-ups against the Pacers, yes, on the way to 30 points (following 27 on opening night against the Bucks) but there were also regular forays into the paint. Even a some of those led to denials by longer defenders, there was a willingness to find and accept contact throughout.

“I think the added strength has helped him be able to handle that contact,” Spoelstra said.

Knowing what Miami needed from Herro, the Pacers chose to pressure and trap him to get the ball out of his hands. That created a few turnovers, and Herro didn’t record an assist in the game, but he willingly moved off the ball when the possession called for it – Butler consistently sprung free playing the roll man – and had eight potential assists.

“Big picture, it’s just trying to take out Tyler,” Bam Adebayo said. “It’s still the wrong move, especially if you have Jimmy setting it or me setting it and he gets that pocket pass off and we have shooters in the corner, we get to be aggressive. [He’s] definitely getting a lot of respect in this league.”

Unless there’s a new trend in the league this season, most teams aren’t going to trap or blitz all that often. What Herro is going to see regularly, what the book on his seems to be at the moment, is what he saw against Orlando and that’s pressure. Regular, constant pressure. Defenders trying to get up in his belly and make him uncomfortable.

“This is also part of the evolution of really good players in this league,” Spoelstra said. “Scouting reports will change, they’ll start to try to do things to take him out of his rhythm.
Pressure would be No. 1, trapping would be No. 2. He’s already seen both of those things early on in the season.”

Pressure worked for Orlando, somewhat. Bouncy as Herro is and as tight as his handle is getting, he’s not going to blow by most defenders so much as work an angle against them using the threat of his quick jumper. Bodies will get in his way, but with pressure comes space. With space comes opportunity, and Herro delivered nine assists, two off his career high, on 12 potential hookups.

“He’s better than what I’ve seen before and what I thought, personally,” Lowry said, asked about Herro’s passing. “He’s playing extremely well. He has an ability to score. He’s not necessarily playmaking but he had some great dimes tonight. When he’s not looking to score, it makes it easier because all the attention is on him. He’s making it easier for his teammates to be open, because he’s looking to score, he’s aggressive. He’s looking for the shots and the passes are coming open.

“He made a pass to Markieff tonight (first clip in the video below) and he knew what he was doing the whole time because he had the attention on him. He was just waiting for the defense to come to him and then drop it off to Kieff for a layup.”

That’s growth. As Lowry put it, Herro may not be manipulating the defense like a true lead, all-the-time playmaker, but what you’re seeing is a player learning how to take advantage of his own gifts. He’s learning how to be the player he’s going to be. Nobody else. Just him. Maybe he’s not Paul Atreides, the . Maybe he’s the Duncan Idaho of this group, and that’s great. Paul Atreides doesn’t  without Duncan Idaho.

The whiplash that happens with each Herro performance doesn’t benefit anybody but those who get the clicks from it. Like most players, he’s probably not the perennial All-Star some think he is nor is he part of a pu-pu platter trade package that others have in mind. He’s in between. If you want to deeply analyze his game, you’ll see a player who has only taken eight percent (5-of-58) of his shots at the rim. He’s had to develop his touch and creativity in the paint because he’s going to have to hit creative touch shots in the paint to score there. He might be more of a two-and-a-half level scorer than the full three. And for as much as Herro has worked on his body, the defense is still going to be picked on. Indiana just showed that. It’s all fine. You can still be an All-Star with that profile, even without many free-throw attempts, it just means some nights are going to run hot, some will run cold. In between, he’s learning how to be a winning player when it’s lukewarm.

Let’s just let it happen. Drop the comparisons for a bit and allow Herro to dictate the terms of his successes and failures without measuring him up against anyone else. There’s a good player here, if you want to see it, one who could turn the tide of a playoff series or win Sixth Man of the Year. There’s also one who needs work and polish and refinement, who is settling into a role that may be less than what those delivering hype by megaphone deemed his destiny when he burst on to the scene.

For now, Herro is putting in the work, and the work is pure. Let’s let him be himself for a little bit, because he’s clearly finding out and digging into exactly who that player is. That way we leave room for surprise rather than I-told-you-so, and there’s nothing better than being surprised by a young talent.

“You can tell that switch has switched for him. It’s his third year, he’s making that growth, he’s making that next step,” Adebayo said. “I’m proud of the young fella. I feel like he’s going to be great.”