The Miami Heat’s style of play has been built around defense since Pat Riley arrived in 1995. But even the Heat knows that its offense must be better than it has been the last two seasons.
“Spo is always talking about being a top-five defense and a top-five offense,” Heat star Jimmy Butler said. ”That’s the formula for success.”
The Heat closed last regular season with the NBA’s fifth-best defensive rating, finishing with a top-10 defensive rating for the eighth time in the last nine seasons. The problem is the Heat also finished with a bottom-10 offensive rating for the second straight regular season — 21st-ranked last season and 25th-ranked for the 2022-23 season among the NBA’s 30 teams.
So, Heat coach Erik Spoelstra and his staff spent this past offseason working to find solutions for its recent offensive struggles.
“Everybody had to get to work,” Spoelstra said , with the Heat in the Bahamas through Saturday for training camp at Baha Mar. “The coaching staff had to get to work. Even though I was over [in Paris for the Olympics], we were really taking the time to be intentional about working on different aspects. Defense is one thing that we spent a lot of time on. Offense, we need to improve, we need to innovate. We need to do some things subtly better.”
Through the first few training camp practices, Heat players have already noticed some of the changes to the offensive plan.
“It’s more generated to make everybody feel involved and that’s without it being stagnant at times,” Heat captain Bam Adebayo said. “It’s a very flow offense through 24 seconds. It’s not just the first 12 seconds, it’s the full shot clock.”
“We’re definitely tweaking and changing a few things that are different from when I went through training camp last year,” Heat veteran Kevin Love added.
“We’ve just put in some things that we just think are going to help it flow a lot better,” Heat second-year forward Jaime Jaquez Jr. said. “Some subtle changes.”
Among those changes is an effort to play faster in order to get more easy baskets in transition. The Heat has finished as one of the five slowest-paced teams in the NBA in each of the past five regular seasons.
“I would say just playing faster,” Heat guard Tyler Herro said when asked what’s different about the Heat’s offense through the first few training camp practices. “We’ve emphasized it in the past, really trying to run in transition. But also while the offense is in the half court, still trying to figure out ways to play fast and being hard to guard as opposed to just slowing down, throwing it in the post and kind of just standing and watching. We want to get into more actions that are hard to guard, confusing for the defense.”
But whether the Heat is playing fast or not, an emphasis is being made to produce a more efficient shot chart this season. That means fewer midrange attempts and more shots at the rim and from three-point range.
One of the biggest issues for the Heat last season was its inability to generate enough shots from within the restricted area (one of the most efficient shots in the sport). Making matters worse, the Heat struggled to convert when it did have a look around the rim.
The Heat attempted 28.5 percent of its field-goal attempts from around the rim last season (third fewest in the NBA), according to Cleaning the Glass. And the Heat shot just 63.4 percent from within the restricted area last season (seventh worst in the NBA), according to NBA tracking stats.
Among the eight teams in the league who generated fewer than 25 shots from within the restricted area per game last season, the Heat ended the regular season with the worst shooting percentage from that area of the court.
“We’re not playing a game of analytics, it’s the game of basketball,” Spoelstra said. “But we do have to be mindful of what wins and what’s efficient. So I think generating more uncontested open shots is very important and knowing how we can do that within what we do. That’s something we’ve been working on and we’ll continue to develop that. I think it will get a lot better.”
While not getting to the rim enough, the Heat relied on a heavy volume of midrange shots (one of the least efficient shots in the sport). The Heat attempted 35.6 percent of its shots from midrange last season (most in the NBA), according to Cleaning the Glass.
The low amount of shots at the rim paired with the high amount of midrange looks left the Heat with the the NBA’s worst location effective field-goal percentage last season (a predictor of what a team’s effective field-goal percentage would be if it shot the league average at each location based on their shot selection).
Some might point to roster construction as part of the problem, with the Heat’s core four of Adebayo, Butler, Herro and Terry Rozier all players who are all known to take a high volume of midrange shots. But the hope is the changes being implemented to the Heat’s offense will help create more space for them to get into the paint more frequently.
“Spacing,” Love said when asked about the tweaks to the Heat’s offense that he’s noticed during training camp. “I think changing our offense, guys being open-minded to some of the changes that we’re going to make. Opening up the elbows, creating space for guys, looking to where we can screen and generate other teams going to help and being able to take advantage of that.
“So I think we want to use our pace more, get more shots at the rim. We’re not going to totally get rid of those contested or longer range twos, but we certainly want to run for more layups and get easy shots and get to the three-throw line. Just generate a lot of threes for this team, easy looks.”
One way that the Heat’s coaching staff has emphasized the need for more shots around the basket is by adjusting the scoring format in scrimmages during training camp this week: layups and dunks are worth three points, three-pointers are worth three points and midrange shots count for just one point.
“That just shows you how much emphasis we’re putting on getting wide open threes and wide open layups or shots at the basket,” Jaquez said. “I’m excited about it and I think the guys are, as well. It’s going to be a fun fast-paced year and we’re all excited for it.”
Excited for something slightly new that the Heat hopes leads to much more efficient results.
“You can’t revamp and start a whole new offense,” Spoelstra said. “That gets people out of rhythm. But there has to be some sophistication, there has to be some added new innovation to bring out the best in everybody and everybody has to have those kind of collaborative intentions. This is a group, we have offensive talent everywhere you look and it should be a group that brings out a higher level if we work together to be able to put some points on the board.”
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