What trends have stood out from Heat’s first 10 games? A shift on offense, rebounding and more
The Miami Heat’s first 10 games have provided us with some insight into the identity that this team is working to establish.
With the Heat (7-3) continuing its schedule on Wednesday against the Los Angeles Lakers (10 p.m., ESPN and Bally Sports Sun) at Staples Center, what trends have stood out from Miami’s fast start?
Here are a few, with all stats current as of Tuesday afternoon:
The Heat has been one of the NBA’s best teams so far this season.
The 7-3 record is indicative of that, but so are the analytics. The Heat owns the league’s third-best offensive rating (scoring 112.1 points per 100 possessions), sixth-best defensive rating (allowing 103.2 points per 100 possessions) and third-best net rating (outscoring opponents by nine points per 100 possessions).
Only the Golden State Warriors (9-1) and Utah Jazz (7-3) own a better net rating than the Heat this season.
The Warriors and the Heat are the only two teams in the NBA with both a top-six offensive rating and defensive rating.
This is an encouraging early sign, as the Jazz, Los Angeles Clippers, Phoenix Suns and Milwaukee Bucks were the only teams to finish last regular season with both a top-10 offensive rating and defensive rating. All four teams had strong seasons, with the Western Conference champions and Eastern Conference champions in the Suns and Bucks on that list.
The Heat’s offense has been efficient this season, but its shot profile is worth monitoring.
In a league full of teams working to get as many shots around the rim and from three-point range as possible, 37.3 percent of Miami’s shots have come from midrange. That’s the fourth-highest percentage in the NBA, according to Cleaning the Glass, with the league average sitting at 30.9 percent.
The Heat has been relatively sharp from midrange, shooting 42.6 percent on those looks (11th-best in the NBA). But in Miami’s three losses, it has made just 37.6 percent of its midrange shots.
With so much of the Heat’s offense coming from midrange, only 29.2 percent of its shots have come at the rim (seventh-lowest in the NBA) and 33.5 percent have come from three-point range (ninth-lowest in the NBA). This translates to the seventh-least efficient shot profile in the league.
“We have a team that has an aggressive bent, by nature. So we’re going to play to that,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “And then as teams, defenses start adjusting, we have the three-point spacing and shooting that when it’s needed there might be some games where we shoot 45, 50 attempts to keep the defense honest. We just have to take what’s given.”
This is a shift for the Heat, which took 32.8 percent of its shots at the rim, 40 percent from deep and just 27.3 percent from midrange last season.
Is Miami’s shot profile this season sustainable and can it consistently beat teams by hitting a bunch of midrange looks?
The good news for the Heat is that it has a few players who are comfortable from that area of the court like Bam Adebayo, Jimmy Butler and Tyler Herro. Also, teams that are efficient from midrange usually fare well in the playoffs because those are the looks that are consistently available against the NBA’s top defenses.
The Heat’s improved defense is still giving up a lot of three-point attempts.
Miami has limited opponents to an NBA-low 41.6 percent shooting from the field this season. Pretty much every statistic shows that the Heat’s defense has been elite.
But there’s one thing that the Heat has not cleaned up from previous seasons. Miami is still giving up a lot of three-point looks.
How many? The Heat is allowing a league-high 42.4 three-point attempts per game this season. Miami gave up the second-most threes last season at 39.1 per game.
It helps that opponents are shooting just 31.6 percent on threes against the Heat this season, but that’s probably not very sustainable considering only one team has finished the regular season with an opponent three-point percentage worse than 31 percent since 2010 (the Boston Celtics in 2011-12).
This is how the Heat’s defensive scheme is built, though.
Miami’s switch-heavy system is set up to close driving lanes and limit opportunities around the rim by sending multiple defenders to the ball even if it means allowing an opponent to shoot a bunch of threes. As a result, the Heat has limited opponents to the second-fewest shot attempts from within the restricted area at 21.5 per game this season.
A defense can’t take away everything, and it’s clear that the Heat continues to prioritize the rim over limiting three-point looks.
“We’re trying to build it systematically to our strengths,” Spoelstra said of the Heat’s defense. “There are certain things that we’re trying to take away that we’re doing a very good job of. And we’re continuing to wrap our minds and hands around this three-point ball that the rest of the league is trying to figure out, as well. We want to do that at a higher rate. We’re doing the percentage defense very well. We give up a lot of numbers. I don’t even know where I am on that yet. That’s just where we are in this league right now.”
The Heat went from a below average rebounding team to the NBA’s top rebounding team early this season.
The Heat owns the NBA’s top rebounding percentage (the percentage of available rebounds a team grabs) at 54.4 percent, fourth-best offensive rebounding percentage at 30.3 percent and the fifth-best defensive rebounding percentage at 76.6 percent this season.
That’s a drastic improvement from last season, when the Heat finished with the NBA’s ninth-worst rebounding percentage at 49.1 percent, second-worst offensive rebounding percentage at 24 percent and 12th-worst defensive rebounding percentage at 73.3 percent.
How did the Heat pull this off?
For one, Adebayo has bumped up his rebounding numbers from nine per game last season to 11.8 per game this season to rank sixth in the NBA in this category. It also helps to have perimeter players like Butler (six rebounds per game), Herro (5.4 per game) and Kyle Lowry (5.2 per game) getting involved.
The addition of physical veteran forward P.J. Tucker has also helped, as he’s averaging 1.5 offensive rebounds and 3.5 defensive rebounds per game.
This dominance on the glass has the Heat averaging 16.4 second-chance points per game. That’s up from 10.1 second-chance points per game last season.
That’s an extra 6.3 points per game.
It seems like the Heat is playing faster this season, but the pace number doesn’t really show it.
Miami is playing at a pace of 97.3 possessions per 48 minutes, which is the third-slowest in the NBA. The Heat operated at the second-slowest pace in the league last season with 97.1 possessions per 48 minutes.
In other words, the Heat is basically playing at the same speed.
The difference has come when Lowry has been on the court, as Miami has played at a pace of 101.1 possessions per 48 minutes when he’s running the offense compared to 95.4 possessions per 48 minutes when he’s not playing.
Lowry’s pitch ahead passes have helped to add an extra 4.4 points per 100 possessions through transition play, which is the fourth-most in the NBA. The Heat only added 2.8 points per 100 possessions in transition last season.
