A look behind Heat offense’s struggles in Game 3 loss and what needs to improve vs. 76ers
The Miami Heat’s elite defense has been the driving force behind many of its wins his season, but the offense has often been the reason behind its losses.
That trend continued in the Heat’s 99-79 loss in Game 3 of its second-round playoff series against the Philadelphia 76ers on Friday night at Well Fargo Center. Miami limited Philadelphia to 111.2 points scored per 100 possessions for a mediocre offensive rating that would have ranked just 15th among teams during the regular season, but still lost by 20 because it totaled just 79 points on 35.1 percent shooting from the field and 7-of-30 (23.3 percent) shooting on threes.
“A rough night for us offensively,” guard Kyle Lowry said, with the Heat taking its 2-1 series lead into Game 4 on Sunday at Wells Fargo center (8 p.m., TNT).
The Heat ended Game 3 with a rough offensive rating of 89.8 points scored per 100 possessions. It marks Miami’s third-worst single-game offensive rating of the season and its worst single-game offensive rating since a 95-78 loss to the Boston Celtics on Nov. 4.
The Heat is a dominant 42-6 this season when finishing a game with an offensive rating better than 113 points scored per 100 possessions, just slightly better than this season’s league average offensive rating of 112. In other words, simply a better than average offensive game usually results in a win for Miami.
But when the Heat’s offense is below average, the results are much worse. Miami is 10-19 this season when finishing a game with an offensive rating worse than 110 points scored per 100 possessions.
Why was the Heat’s offense, which finished the regular season as the NBA’s 12th-most efficient unit, so bad in Game 3?
“We did not really work possessions,” coach Erik Spoelstra said, with the Heat watching film and working through some its offensive issues in practice Saturday in Philadelphia. “We had a lot of one-pass, zero-pass, quick shots that kind of fed into their momentum and weren’t totally intentional where we were getting the ball and we paid the price for that. Then it was just a series of quick shots, maybe some tough shots, contested shots and then guys getting out of rhythm and it was tough to get back into the flow.”
Poor ball movement was also the most common explanation among Heat players for the offense’s struggles on Friday.
“Our offense was bad. The ball stuck,” Heat forward P.J. Tucker said. “We got to make it move, we got to make it change sides of the floor. We got to put people in actions that we want so we can get more shots.”
Even Jimmy Butler, who was the only player who had it going offensively for the Heat in Game 3 with 33 points on 12-of-22 shooting, took some of the blame for the offense’s struggles.
“I probably need to pass the ball a little bit more. I took a lot of shots,” Butler said, as the Heat fell to 2-4 in games this season that he has taken 22 or more shots in. “I don’t care that they went in. I got to find a way to get everybody else involved. That makes my job a lot easier. That’s what that is. So I’ll be better at getting my guys involved next game.”
Aside from Butler’s big scoring night, the rest of the Heat’s roster combined for just 46 points on 27.3 percent shooting from the field in Game 3.
▪ Heat center Bam Adebayo finished with just nine points on 2-of-9 shooting.
▪ Lowry was scoreless and missed each of his four shots from the field in his return from a hamstring injury.
▪ Heat sixth man Tyler Herro ended the night with 14 points on 5-of-15 shooing from the field.
“We just missed shots,” Tucker said. “We’re going to look at it. But we missed shots, period. There’s no two ways around it. We missed shots.”
But the biggest difference from the Heat’s offensive performance in Games 1 and 2 when it posted an excellent offensive rating of 119.7 points scored per 100 possessions and Friday’s very underwhelming display could have been the presence of 76ers All-Star center Joel Embiid.
Embiid, who missed the first two games of the series because of a right orbital fracture and mild concussion, returned and immediately provided elite rim protection for the 76ers. After totaling 51 shots at the rim in Games 1 and 2, the Heat took just 14 shots from inside the restricted area in Game 3.
“You see what he does on the defensive end,” Butler said of Embiid. “We scored 79 points. A lot of that is because he takes away the rim. We got to find a way to be better on that end of the floor. He’s key to these guys.”
As a result of fewer opportunities around the rim, the Heat’s shot diet looked a lot different in Game 3. After attempting 18 long midrange shots — generally considered an inefficient look — in the first two games of the series, Miami took 24 long midrange shots on Friday, according to Cleaning The Glass.
“Our guys who take those shots, Tyler and JB and Bam, those guys have the green light to do it,” Lowry said of the Heat’s high volume of long two-point shots in Game 3. “They’ve been doing it all year. We count on those shots to go in. They didn’t go in tonight. We’re not mad at it.”
As expected on a night when the Heat scored fewer than 80 points, its half-court offense was bad. Miami scored just 75 points per 100 half-court plays in Game 3, according to Cleaning the Glass, which is its fourth-worst half-court offensive rating of the season.
The Heat dropped to 9-17 this season when finishing with a half-court offensive rating of worse than 90 points per 100 plays. Meanwhile, Miami is 27-1 when finishing with a half-court offensive rating of better than 105 points per 100 plays.
Through all of its success, shaky half-court offense has been an issue that has consistently bothered the Heat this season.
The Heat finished the regular season with the NBA’s 11th-best half-court offense. Over the last 10 seasons, only one team has made the NBA Finals with a half-court offense that ranked outside of the top 10 in the regular season: The Los Angeles Lakers in 2020.
“They flattened us out,” Spoelstra said of the 76ers’ defense. “I don’t think we helped ourselves either. But they got us out of easy stuff, bumping us off screens, bumping cutters. We didn’t do things with force to get open. They were denying when they needed to deny. Just overall we did not execute with intention or force or detail and we paid the price for that.”
The fix for the Heat in Game 4 and beyond could be as simple as making more shots.
According to NBA tracking data, the Heat shot just 3 of 17 (17.6 percent) from the field on wide open looks on Friday, which is defined as a shot with the closest defender more than six feet away. Miami made 44.1 percent of those shots in the regular season.
“That’s as poor as we’ve played offensively in a while,” Spoelstra said. “I don’t remember the last time we played like that.”
