One of most important areas where Lowry will help Heat. And Okpala nears crossroads
A six-pack of Miami Heat notes, closing in on Monday’s preseason opener against Atlanta at FTX Arena:
▪ Kyle Lowry will help the team in a lot of ways — scoring, ball-handling, three-point shooting, drawing charges. The list is a long one.
But here’s another benefit to his addition: The hope is that Lowry can get the Heat to play faster and score more easy baskets. His career body of works suggests he should be able to achieve that.
The Heat was 29th in the NBA in pace last season, averaging 98.7 possessions per game — more than only the Knicks.
With Lowry, Toronto ranked 13th at 101.6 last season.
“I love that aspect of his game,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “Getting easy baskets and generating a pace where guys will run and know that they’ll get the ball. If you can get some key easy ones during key moments of the game, that can be the difference of winning and losing and that can take your offense from one level to an entirely different tier.
“His pace is one of the things that I dreaded the most competing against him because it was unpredictable and unscripted moments that you can’t really scheme against. And his level of IQ and skill level in those moments is as good as anybody in the league.”
The Heat ranked 10th in points off opponents’ turnovers last season, while the Lowry-led Raptors were first in that category.
Lowry led the league in charges drawn over the past five seasons. If the Heat can push the ball quickly after those ensuing in-bounds plays (following Lowry charges), that also could lead to more easy baskets.
▪ From an intangible perspective — even beyond his All-Star skills — Lowry is the ideal point guard in how he draws happiness from the success of others. He put it this way:
“If you ever watched Jason Kidd, he’s throwing alley-oops to other people and he would jump like he was dunking the ball. He would be excited for them. I used to just love that. For me, I’ve been in this league for a long time. I’ve helped a lot of players get paid. I helped a lot of people take care of their family and create generational wealth. That’s what the world should be about is other people helping other people.”
▪ Duncan Robinson admits the new contract (five years, $90 million) increases the burden of responsibility. Offensively, he said he wants to be more aggressive in other ways beyond shooting threes.
After shooting 44.6 percent on threes in 2019-20 and 40.8 percent last season, what percentage would make Robinson happy?
“I definitely pride myself on being over 40 as a baseline, for sure,” he said. “But in terms of where that number could be, I don’t want to get to caught up in like projecting that. Instead just try to go out to my best abilities and just let it fly and try to play freely as much as possible....
“All of those percentages require context. Someone is just sitting and taking wide open threes, shooting 40 percent is different than somebody that’s flying around.”
He said it’s “incredibly important” to him to be on the court to close games.
▪ Robinson made an interesting point about last season, and (my words, not his) it might be an intangible dynamic that was a factor in the Heat going from Eastern champions to being swept in the first round.
“Having come off of the bubble, we had experienced being connected to the the best of capabilities,” Robinson said. “What we had in the bubble just from a synergy standpoint was special. To then shift to the regular season, I think that a lot of people struggled wrestling with that.
“All of us were like, ‘Why can’t we just cultivate what we had?’ It doesn’t always work like that and we learned that. But the reality is I think we grew a lot individually, and I think we also have a very clear perspective of what is required this year to all get on the same page. Last year, I’m not making any excuses because everybody was going through it in some capacity, but there was definitely challenges that came with it.”
▪ It’s difficult to come up with a player whose role to open the season hinges more on camp performance than KZ Okpala. He needs to start hitting threes more consistently to warrant a rotation spot, despite his defensive acumen.
He shot 23.5 percent (12 for 51) on threes in his two-year career.
He also struggled with his three-pointer most of Summer League.
He said he shot 500 threes a day this summer and is pleased with the results. “I know how I need to shoot it,” he said, adding “I feel the best physically I’ve felt.”
Last season, players defended by Okpala shot just 41 percent — best defensively on the team — compared with the 46.1 percent those players shot overall.
▪ Imagine a five-man unit — at times — of Victor Oladipo, Jimmy Butler, Adebayo, Lowry and P.J. Tucker in the playoffs; that could be one of the best defensive units fielded by any team in recent years.
“It could be something very special definitely,” Oladipo said of that quintet.
This story was originally published September 30, 2021 at 4:53 PM.
