Miami Heat playoff observations from series vs. Hawks, as break before second round begins
What did Tuesday’s Game 5 win against the Atlanta Hawks earn the Miami Heat? A trip to the second round of the playoffs for just the second time in six seasons and nearly a week off.
The Heat’s second-round series will begin on Monday at FTX Arena against the winner of the first-round matchup between the Philadelphia 76ers and the Toronto Raptors. The 76ers currently lead the series 3-2, with Game 6 set for Thursday in Toronto.
As the Heat waits to learn its second-round opponent, coach Erik Spoelstra asked his players to take Wednesday and Thursday completely off other than training room obligations. The team is expected to return to practice on Friday.
“The next couple days while we just watch what’s going on, I just want everybody living in the training room,” Spoelstra said following Tuesday’s series-clinching victory over the Hawks. “Go back to our cave, bandage up, hopefully get healthy and then see what happens in that series. But definitely the guys have earned a couple days of just quality rest and treatment.”
The break is needed with two of the Heat’s most important players, Jimmy Butler and Kyle Lowry, dealing with injuries.
“Any type of time that we can get to rest those guys and for us to finish out the job is good for all of us,” Heat forward Caleb Martin said.
Sidelined by their injuries in Game 5, Butler and Lowry spent the night coaching their teammates from the bench.
“They just infused just great life into our guys, particularly when it got a little bit uneven,” Spoelstra said. “Guys were just coming back to the bench and they see Jimmy and Kyle right in there in the mix. It’s hard not to gain confidence from that.”
Here are some observations from the Heat’s first-round series:
The Heat’s defense is the reason it’s a championship contender.
Miami’s defensive dominance against Atlanta shouldn’t be too surprising, considering the Heat finished the regular season with the NBA’s fourth-best defensive rating.
But what the Heat did to a quality Hawks offense in the first round was eye-opening.
The Hawks closed the regular season with the NBA’s second-best offensive rating with 115.4 points scored per 100 possessions. In the five-game playoff series, the Heat limited the Hawks to an offensive rating of 104.1 points scored per 100 possessions that would have ranked third-worst among teams in the regular season.
The most impressive aspect of Miami’s defensive performance was its effort against Atlanta star guard Trae Young.
The Heat defense’s plan against Young: pick him up full court, throw different defenders at him, send traps at various points to keep him off balance, switch nearly every screen and send help defenders whenever it looked like he had a driving lane to deter him from the paint.
The Heat executed that plan to perfection.
Young, who finished the regular season as the NBA’s fourth-leading scorer with 28.4 points per game, averaged 15.4 points on 31.9 percent shooting from the field and 7-of-38 (18.4 percent) shooting on threes in the series. He finished with a total of 30 assists and 30 turnovers and made only 22 shots in the five games.
“When you have a team like Atlanta who runs and the head of the snake is a point guard who can shoot the ball from 40 feet, our scheme was just to force him into tough shots,” Heat center Bam Adebayo said. “Be physical and live with the results.”
Three of Young’s four lowest-scoring games of the season came in the first round.
“We had a great game plan,” Heat forward Max Strus said. “Spo put together a great game plan, and we just executed it. Guys took it personal. We threw a lot of bodies at him, we were physical with him and just tried to take him out of his game.”
The Heat’s depth of defenders was on display in the series, with Gabe Vincent, P.J. Tucker, Lowry, Butler, Martin and Strus each spending more than 30 possessions as Young’s primary defender.
Victor Oladipo might end up with a consistent spot in the Heat’s playoff rotation.
After receiving three DNP-CDs to begin the playoffs, Oladipo started Game 5 in place of the injured Butler. Oladipo finished with a team-high 23 points on 8-of-16 shooting from the field and 3-of-6 shooting on threes, and provided his usual solid defense in 36 minutes of action.
It marked just his 10th game of the season after making his season debut on March 7 following an 11-month recovery from a second surgery to repair the quadriceps tendon in his right knee.
“A year ago today, I was expecting and waiting for my next surgery,” Oladipo said late Tuesday night, reflecting on April 26, 2021, when he was just days from the second surgery on his knee. “I remember a year ago today around this time last year, I was sitting in a dark room by myself and just broke down. Not because I quit, but because I was at the lowest point I could be at.”
What was most impressive about Oladipo’s Game 5 performance were his attacks off the dribble, flashing pre-injury burst with a team-high 17 drives to the basket in Tuesday’s win. He shot 4 of 6, recorded an assist and drew two fouls on those drives.
“That reminded me of the Indiana Victor a little bit,” Adebayo said.
While Oladipo starting the playoffs out of the Heat’s rotation, injuries forced him into the mix. Lowry’s absence opened a spot for Oladipo in Game 4, and Oladipo then stepped into an even bigger role in Game 5 with Butler and Lowry out.
When Butler and Lowry return, will Oladipo again be pushed out of the rotation?
The Heat has opted to emphasize offensive spacing around its best players by using its best outside shooters ahead of Oladipo.
But with Oladipo producing positive minutes in his two games during the series — the Heat outscored the Hawks by 29.7 points per 100 possessions with Oladipo on the court — one could argue that he should remain in the rotation even when Butler and Lowry come back.
“I understood this process wouldn’t be easy and it hasn’t been,” Oladipo said. “... When my number was called today and they needed me, I was able to perform at the level I performed at. Again, I’m still improving. I haven’t played enough basketball to be super comfortable yet, but I’m getting there.”
It should be noted that Oladipo may be able to help with spacing, too. He’s 14 of 31 (45.2 percent) from three-point range in his past four games.
Then again, the Heat’s playoff rotation may never be set in stone.
Spoelstra has made it clear there is no nine-man rotation because he feels comfortable going even deeper than that based on matchups to leverage the Heat’s unique depth.
“There is no nine-man rotation right now. This is a playoff rotation,” Spoelstra said during the series.
Before injuries to Butler and Lowry, the Heat went with a rotation of Lowry, Butler, Strus, P.J. Tucker and Adebayo as starters with Tyler Herro, Dewayne Dedmon, Duncan Robinson and Vincent off the bench. Martin also received some minutes, when needed.
But with Dedmon and Robinson’s roles shrinking after Game 1 and injury issues, Martin and Oladipo saw more minutes as the series went on. The Heat played Tucker as the backup center and went with smaller lineups.
Adebayo, Butler, Herro, Lowry, Strus and Tucker look to be locks to play each game when available. Then Spoelstra will choose between Dedmon, Martin, Morris, Oladipo, Robinson and Vincent for the final three or four spots in the rotation.
The Heat’s hope is that Butler and Lowry will be able to return in the second round.
Butler missed Game 5 because of right knee inflammation, and Lowry missed Games 4 and 5 because of a strained left hamstring. The time off before the start of the second round will be helpful for both players in their recoveries.
The hope and belief is that Butler’s knee issue is minor, with no MRI or other medical tests planned for the injury as of Tuesday night. If the Heat would have lost Tuesday, the expectation was that Butler would have played in Game 6 on Thursday.
In the regular season, Lowry’s strained hamstring would likely have forced him to miss more than a week. But he has been pushing to play through the pain in the playoffs, with a return depending on whether the Heat feels comfortable clearing him.
Both Butler and Lowry are considered day-to-day.
Despite all of the good things that happened for the Heat in the first round, its half-court offense is still worth monitoring.
Throw out an excellent offensive performance in Game 1, and the Heat’s half-court offense actually was a little bit worse than the Hawks’ half-court offense in the series.
The Heat scored 89.4 points per 100 half-court plays in the final four games of the series, compared to 89.6 points per 100 half-court plays for the Hawks, according to Cleaning The Glass.
The Heat is 8-17 this season when finishing with a half-court offensive rating of worse than 90 points per 100 plays. Meanwhile, Miami is 26-1 when finishing with a half-court offensive rating of better than 105 points per 100 plays.
The Heat finished the regular season with the NBA’s 11th-best halfcourt offense, according to Cleaning the Glass. During the past 10 seasons, only one team has made the NBA Finals with a halfcourt offense that ranked outside of the top 10 in the regular season: The Los Angeles Lakers in 2020.
