The Miami HEAT are 39-32, #7 in the Eastern Conference with a +0.8 net rating, #18 in the league. With 11 games left in the season, here’s what we noted and noticed.
It’s a movie we’ve seen a million times already. A team takes a ton of threes. Most are missing. There is an outcry over all these attempts. Why do you take so many threes if you miss them, the question is always asked, as if shooters know when shots are going to fall or have to let others’ misses affect their own confidence.
Time and time again, the answer has more to do with defense than anything else, just like we’ve discussed over the last couple of weeks about how teams load the paint against Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo.
New Orleans has also loaded the paint, in a different, much more Miami way, than Denver and Dallas have in recent weeks. They did it with zone, running 29 possessions, matching a season high for HEAT opponents (tied with Philadelphia on Christmas Day) as Miami produced 0.93 points per minute while attempting threes on 19 of those 29 possessions – or five. The HEAT made a season-high 47 triples, making just 27.7 percent of them.
Of course, not all goods are the same. In some ways, the zone tricks teams into thinking they have to take threes, but you also have to take threes with the way the floor is set up. You just want the three to come from some sort of inside-out approach, where the defense is drawn to the ball, not swinging the ball around the horn.
“We have stagnated, I will say that. We just passed the ball around the perimeter,” Jimmy Butler said after the game. “We have to be better offensively. Anyone can run this bad baby in the paint and hit him from the weak side or find the guy open. We just need to do a better job of this.
There’s a difference between winning a three like this, where the ball barely scratches the paint…
Notebook 74: Pels zone without reader
And like that, one possession later but on a Butler drive, with the weak side defender engaged and choosing between two shooters…
Notebook 74: Pels Zone Jimmy Drive
It’s this last plan that you’re supposed to do, even if you screw it up, because it’s a good process. The first shot, contested and against the clock, has by nature a reduced value.
They were packing the paint, staying in the zone, and I would have done it too,” Erik Spoelstra said.
“At one point, they doubled, tripled, quadrupled to protect the paint, daring us to shoot. You should take them when they are available. At the same time, there were opportunities where we could have moved our bodies a little more, cut more, run more, attack the paint more, get away from those practices a little more. This would have been an improvement in margins.
The sample sizes are relatively tiny, but Miami has scored just 1.05 points per half-court possession against zone this season, No. 27 in the league among all teams against zone. Even with a hit or miss, the number of threes they take against it shouldn’t be as much emphasis as the type of threes they win. And for what it’s worth, Miami is in the top 10 in frequency of three-pointers against zone this season. The offense has come and gone this season, no doubt, but the specific way they struggled against New Orleans was a bit of an aberration.
That interception of an Evan Mobley pass by Bam Adebayo on Sunday night was truly crazy.
Notebook 74: Bam Interception
Which immediately reminded this even crazier interception of Demarcus Ware pick-six from Michael Vick back when social media didn’t exist yet.
Miami had a 67.9 defensive rating with Adebayo and his five rushing steals against Cleveland, enough to push Adebayo’s defensive plus/minus rating up to +2.8, No. 10 in the league. Here’s how things stack up in this stat among the five favorites for Defensive Player of the Year.
Note that this number incorporates some scoring stats like steals and blocks, and Wembanyama leads the league with 3.4 blocks per game.
Miami is the #2 defense in the league since February 1 with 107.9 points allowed per 100 possessions, and #8 for the season (112.1), they have an outside chance of finishing with a Top defensive unit 5. Their defensive rating with Adebayo on the floor is 109.5.
WHEN TO STAND AND WHERE TO DO IT
Last week, we discussed Adebayo’s burgeoning three-point shooting — he’s made at least one three in five straight games through Sunday — focusing on a quote from Spoelstra about how the function d ‘Adebayo as the hub of the offense will largely give him opportunities at the top of the court rather than in the corners, although corner threes are the easiest shot. Adebayo was able to make a corner three after that, but it was a semi-transition attempt that didn’t have much impact on the offense’s spacing in the half-court.
All of this remains generally true, but it’s worth drawing attention to the first possession against Cleveland, where Adebayo stood in a spot he rarely finds himself.
Notebook 74: Bam in the corner
This is deliberate corner spacing – Adebayo typically roams the baseline to the dunker spot when not in possession, looking for an opportunity to flash up the middle – with Adebayo ready to catch and shoot. Two things about that, though. First, Jarrett Allen doesn’t exactly respect spacing, managing his three-second timing in the paint and standing ready to help on drives more than he pays attention to Adebayo. It’s part of having to prove yourself as a shooter, both in volume and efficiency, before defenses actually change the way they play you. On this possession, Adebayo’s spacing in the corner only took him out of the play while allowing Allen to play free safety.
Second, the fact that the spacing was set up this way on the very first possessions suggests that it may have been premeditated from the sideline, perhaps – this is just a speculation – a temporary foray just to see how the defense would react. This is supported by the fact that Adebayo never spaced himself so deliberately from the corner for the rest of the match.
Just one possession out of thousands this season, you don’t see Adebayo standing in the corner like that very often. What we learned was that Allen wasn’t willing to respect the shot, but the HEAT was willing to try it and see what happened.
At the 8:08 mark of the second quarter against New Orleans on Friday, Cole Swider had his name called during the first half for only the second time since the calendar flipped to 2024. It didn’t take a genius to understand why. With the Pelicans sitting in a zone and the HEAT shooting 2 of 19 from three before this timeout – with Tyler Herro and Duncan Robinson both out due to injury – Erik Spoelstra was looking to shoot, so he turned to a player who shoots 48.2 percent. on 9.3 deep attempts in 12 G-League games this season.
On his first possession, Jimmy Butler drove down the left side of the lane and, as Swider’s defender CJ McCollum helped into the paint, Butler kicked out and Swider took a look. At least enough looks for a 6-foot-9 shooter with only the 6-foot-3 McCollum closing in on him. Still, Swider hesitated, faking a pump and taking two dribbles inside the arc before turning and handing the ball to Butler for a contested look as the shot clock ended.
“It’s not an easy role to go in there and see, okay, there were a bunch of missed shots, I have to go in there and make the longest shot of this game,” Spoelstra said. “It’s not an easy matter.”
“They always tell me to shoot,” Swider said. “I think I missed my first one and then I think I need to make sure I’m ready to go. It’s definitely a tough situation, but that’s why they have me here.
The play is reminiscent of Duncan Robinson’s first season, when he made 15 appearances and shot 10 of 35 from three. Robinson also had moments of hesitation, but another summer of work and having an entire team in his ear telling him to shoot as soon as it was light set him up for a stellar sophomore season where he shot 44.6% on 8.3 attempts per night. It was hard not to think about those early Robinson days, when Swider was passing up his first opportunity.
One possession later, he looked like a more experienced version of Robinson.
Notebook 74: Swider Three
But the most interesting Swider-related play of the night came a few minutes later when Bam Adebayo threw the ball. As Adebayo slid, Swider immediately read that his cross was about to get behind New Orleans’ Larry Nance Jr. and sent in the lob.
Notebook 74: Swider Lob To Bam
It’s not a perfect lob, a little low and outside the sweet spot, but it’s the intent and processing speed you’re looking for right now and these plays are as encouraging as any which of the three Swider.
It’s early in Swider’s development curve in Miami’s system and he’s unlikely to factor into many meaningful minutes assuming Herro and Robinson return to the court sooner rather than later, but it’s all worth considering. ‘be noted in your brain for the future. From day one of training camp, it was clear that Swider and the HEAT intended to model Swider’s game after Robinson – much like Max Strus before him – and no one would argue the immense value of Robinson. to Miami’s offense. The possibility of another facsimile of this impact over the next year could be a major boon.
-Miami has two wins of 30 points or more – Boston leads the league with eight, the Pelicans have six and the Thunder and Bucks each have five – both against Cleveland.
-One theory we’ve discussed this season is that there is some shock value associated with Miami’s aggressive style of defense, which then leads to early turnovers in bunches. Sure enough, the HEAT are No. 2 in fourth-quarter opponent turnover percentage (14.5 percent, behind Orlando at 14.9 percent). This figure holds up during the second quarters, where the ranking drops to 12th, but drops to 16th and 13.7 percent in the second halves.
