Miami Heat, the Eastern champion, the NBA finalist, the team that marveled at the Florida bubble, the Jimmy Butler pack, He’s not going to miss out on the playoffs, is he?
Truth?
This year it is more difficult to account because the new play in (different from Florida) with four teams in the lead, from seventh to tenth. Only six will be in the playoffs directly and without the surprises of the face or cross of that play in that will put the last two teams in the crosses (the one that wins a game between the seventh and the eighth and the one that takes another that the loser of that team will dispute and the one that has won a previous one between the ninth and tenth). But except cataclysm Sixers, Bucks, Nets, Celtics and Pacers seem unlikely to be left out of the playoffs. That is five places that can be covered. Miami, now far from that lot, can go to the fight for the rest from behind without problems, a race in which the Raptors, by the way, will also be, another classic (again) of the qualifying rounds in trouble.
The thing simply does not work
The thing is, Miami Heat it shouldn’t be like this, calming down because around him he sees Hornets, Knicks, Cavaliers and company, but he should be fighting in that noble zone where it seems there are teams seriously superior to them. To the champion of the East: as much as the line is continuous, in the NBA not moving does not usually mean staying in the same place. As others advance, the one who stops retreats. And in Miami it smells of singe as soon as things go wrong after a successful season: after the 2006 title, 52 victories became 44 and a very brief elimination (4-0) in the first round of the playoffs. In 2014 the departure of LeBron James plunged the team from all four Finals in a row to 37-45 the following season. On a smaller scale, between 2016 and 2017 they went from 48 to 41 victories.
After 21 games, the Heat are 7-14. They are the third worst team in the East and accumulate seven defeats in eight games. Until now, the alarms had not gone off. Jimmy Butler has missed 12 of those 21 meetings, ten in a row because of the coronavirus, which made him lose more than five kilos in a week. Tyler Herro has not played in seven and two newcomers to reinforce the defense have barely had an impact: Avery Bradley has 10 games, less than half, and Mo Harkless nine. Even a classic like Goran Dragic has missed five. With the rotation in frame, the thing was not for attacks of hysteria because also Bam Adebayo has hit another growth in the eyes of the entire League. A player once again improved upon his (fascinating) previous course, the first as all star.
The problem, now, is that with the rotation practically full the Heat have continued to play horrible. And losing. They are on a six-game stretch at home in which they have completed five and lost four, the last two against the Hornets and the Wizards. His only win was against the Kings, tied in the last possession (105-104) and impossible if Butler hadn’t been dull in his first game post COVID: more than 34 minutes on the court, 20 points, 7 rebounds and 8 assists. Then came the two losses against Hornets and Wizards, and now comes another game against the second and a double against the Knicks. The Heat better put wins in the bag because the next thing is a seven-game tour through the West that includes the Lakers, Clippers, Jazz, Warriors …
Those last two losses are a perfect microcosm of what it’s been all season for the Heat. Harkless and Meyers Leonard are still out (for the entire season with a shoulder injury) and Bradley came back … and broke again. But with the rotation close to its optimal version, the Heat wasted cushions of more than ten points, received many triples, activated and deactivated the defense as if they had a switch and had a lot of creation problems in attack: 100 points against the Wizards, that arrived with a balance of 4-13, in back to back and without Russell Westbrook. After 65 points in the first half, only 35 in the second, paralyzed by a zone defense (the biter bit) who smiled happily every time an attack ended with a triple missed by Andre Iguodala. Frustrated, Adebayo later said that they are not stopping anyone in defense. And Jimmy Butler pointed to the other side of the track: they do not defend because misfires wear down and consume mental energy that allows you to return quickly and apply with intensity in defense.
The numbers, the youth, the market
Numbers: The Heat are the fifth-lowest scoring team (106.5) and the fifth-worst attacking rating. Defense is the 20th worst and the resulting net rating is, of course, a bad team: -5.5, the fourth lowest in the league. The Heat are also the fourth worst in the ratio between assists and losses (another drag, the second that accumulates the most per game: 16) and the sixth worst in the percentage of rebounds they ensure (just over 48% of all possible) . The shot doesn’t help either: sixth worst percentage (35%) from a line of three that is bleeding them because his rivals are the ones with the most triples (15.8). And they do it by pulling above 38%. NBA defenses are evolving, less pending in the area and more to stop as the percussion Exterior. It is evident, for example, in the Lakers this season, for now the best defense in the NBA, compared to last season. But it is another train that the Heat have not taken so far.
Injuries are still a key factor, it’s obvious. Butler has had no continuity and Dragic has returned to a very low level after his absence. Bradley and Harkless have not been able to complete the defense or give the plus that was lost with the departure of Jae Crowder, how important he was on the path of the bubble. Also, Duncan Robinson is pulling three a little worse and Tyler Herro hasn’t stretched his boom of the playoffs and continues to teach an unquestionable talent between ups and downs that for now must be considered things of the age. He is not yet the great star that some imagine but he has just turned 21 years old. Spoelstra takes Nunn out of the rotation as soon as he can and feels like he’s putting a lot more on the track than Olynyk would like. What’s left The aforementioned inexhaustible progression of Adebayo, who is polishing a great mid-distance shot, and the positive minutes of Precious Achiuwa, a number 20 from the last draft with which the Heat can mold a mini Bam, and Max Strus, an undrafted shooter in 2019 who looks like one of those residual players the Heat take on.
Very little. And more in a team that had just been a finalist and that, let’s not forget, is on the point of winning now. Jimmy Butler arrived in 2019 and is 31 years old. Theoretically, the Heat were going to become definitely fearsome because they had a new jump in front of their young people (incomplete except in the case of Adebayo) and because their status as a finalist and the weeks of tribute to their culture that were won in the bubble were going to be the best ally to go to the market. But there were no great movements, neither via trade: Antetokounmpo extended with the Bucks, Harden ended up in Brooklyn and the closest thing to a seismic movement that Pat Riley could cause points to Bradley Beal and to deadline March 25. But neither Beal nor the Wizards smell like divorce for now (short term, medium … we’ll see), neither the capture would be easy with many suitors and few stars in sight nor the debates would be silent when deciding what is included and what is not in a package in which they would go, in addition to a few picks, at least a couple of the Herro-Robinson-Nunn-Achiuwa lot. Right now it seems difficult for Beal to end up in the Heat. And almost impossible to do it without Herro being the center of the return that the Wizards would receive in exchange for the best scorer in the NBA (almost 35 points a night, crazy).
It’s hard (yet) to imagine the Heat out of the playoffs. We’ll see in a couple of weeks. Just in case, It’s also worth remembering that they don’t have their first-round pick in the next draft. He belongs to the Pelicans because of the trade in which they took Goran Dragic in 2015. It is not difficult to imagine one more team to reach the playoffs, even at the cost of going through the trance of play in, where it does not seem that the level is going to be precisely unattainable in that area of the East. But the truth is that that, reaching the playoffs as outsider in the big fight, it wasn’t the goal of the season; and that the Heat gave themselves a great opportunity but also got into a express pot of pressure when they skipped several steps in their growth and took the East and the ticket for the 2020 Finals. It is difficult to bet against them, against the trident of Riley, Spoelstra and Butler. But for now things are going badly in South Florida. Very very bad.
