Heat confident offense will get back on track: ‘It’s going to get better. We know it will’
Inefficient shooting was a problem for the Miami Heat in Friday’s road loss to the Dallas Mavericks, but it’s just one of the factors behind the Heat’s early-season offensive struggles.
The Heat’s offense also simply hasn’t gotten enough shots up to begin the season in part because of two costly issues.
Miami entered Sunday averaging an NBA-low 79.4 shot attempts per game because of turnover issues resulting in empty possessions and a lack of offensive rebounding that hasn’t allowed it to get many second-chance opportunities.
The result: The Heat, which featured a top-10 offense last season, owns the league’s fourth-worst offensive rating (scoring 101.8 points per 100 possessions) through its first five games of the season.
“I’m not going to grade it. It is so early,” coach Erik Spoelstra said following Sunday’s practice, with the Heat (2-3) set to play its sixth game of the season on Monday against the Oklahoma City Thunder (7:30 p.m., Fox Sports Sun) at AmericanAirlines Arena. “You know what we did today? We worked on it. It’s going to get better. We know it will. But there’s no point in me talking about all the little details. We worked on it today.”
When Miami has been able to end possessions with a shot at the basket, it actually hasn’t been that inefficient to begin the season. The Heat holds the eighth-best team shooting percentage (46.9 percent), but it is off to a cold start from three-point range (ranked 21st at 33.7 percent).
The turnovers and lack of second-chance opportunities have especially hurt Miami’s offense.
The Heat has averaged a league-high 19.8 turnovers and a league-low 5.8 offensive rebounds per game to begin the season.
The turnovers have also impacted Miami’s defense, with opponents averaging a league-high 22 point off its mistakes. And the offensive rebounding issue has the Heat averaging an NBA-low seven second-chance points per game.
The Heat has been outscored by an average margin of 22-17.2 when it comes to points off turnovers and 13-7 in second-chance points this season. Add those two deficits up, and the Heat has lost those areas by an average of 10.8 points per game — a hole that is hard to repeatedly overcome.
“We just need to figure out how to get on the same page,” veteran guard Goran Dragic said. “I feel like we’ve been a little sloppy and we just need to clean up a couple of things. But I feel like we’re going in the right direction. It’s not there yet, but we know what to do. When you have the formula for success, then you just need to clean it up a little bit.
“Just everybody to get on the same page. Run actions with a little bit more pace and sacrifice for each other, hard cuts and try to play as a unit. We need to get back to that.”
The Heat also averaged the fewest shot attempts in the NBA (84.4 per game) last season, when it finished the regular season with the league’s seventh-best offensive rating. Some of that was because Miami played at the fourth-slowest pace, but it also wasn’t among the NBA’s best when it came to avoiding turnovers (ranked 22nd in turnover rate) and grabbing offensive rebounds (ranked 23rd in offensive rebounding percentage).
But the Heat made up for that by finishing last season with the league’s highest free-throw attempt rate (the number of free-throw attempts a team shoots in comparison to the number of field goal attempts it shoots). Enough of those possessions that didn’t end with a shot from the field ended with a shot from the foul line to keep Miami’s offense running efficiently, as it took the fourth-most free-throw attempts per game in the NBA last season at 25.2.
Another factor that helped the Heat overcome its low number of shot attempts last season? When Miami did get a shot up, it went in at an impressive rate as it finished the regular season with the 10th-best team shooting percentage and second-best team three-point shooting percentage.
The Heat’s free-throw attempt rate is eighth-best in the league to start this season, and it’s early three-point percentage is far less efficient than where it ended last season at.
Getting Jimmy Butler back on track after he missed two of the first five games because of a sprained ankle and finding some consistency in the rotation after starting five different lineups in the first five games should help the Heat’s offense.
“We’re not going to make any excuses for it,” Spoelstra said. “We’re better than what we’ve shown and our guys know that we’re better than this. But this league is tough. There are really good teams, great defenses out there. We have to play better together to generate the kind of looks that fit our team the best, and that takes some real intention.”
With 13 players returning from last season’s roster, the expectation is Miami’s offense will begin trending in the coming weeks toward the top-10 unit it was last season.
“More intention,” Spoelstra said of what needs to improve on that end of the court. “The familiarity is already there. It’s about doing what fits our strengths the best more often.
“We’re capable of being much better with it offensively and we will improve it. Our guys understand what’s necessary for us to be successful on that end. Just have to do it more often.”
BRADLEY MISSES PRACTICE
Heat veteran guard Avery Bradley missed Sunday’s practice because of the NBA’s health and safety protocols related to COVID-19. On the NBA’s injury report, Bradley is listed as questionable for Monday’s game against the Thunder because of a stomach illness.
The only other Heat player on the injury report for Monday’s contest is two-way contract guard Gabe Vincent (right knee soreness), who is probable.
This story was originally published January 3, 2021 at 2:46 PM.
