The Heat Are the East’s Most Confounding Team

A season ago, Miami was on the verge of making the NBA Finals. This time around, lackluster shooting is standing in the team’s way.

A season ago, the Heat were the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference and the No. 1 three-point shooting team in the NBA, and they came one Jimmy Butler three away from potentially making the Finals. Fast forward to March 2023, and Miami is fighting to stay out of the play-in. The Heat are the No. 27 three-point shooting team in the NBA and looking up at all their younger, hotter conference rivals. And all of that is happening despite a hyperefficient season from Butler and a career year from Bam Adebayo. Can the Heat be fixed? Or is this their new normal?

It’s not too difficult to diagnose Miami’s biggest problem this season: shooting. A recent slide notwithstanding, the Heat are still gritty as ever defensively, ranking fifth in defensive efficiency. Offensively, Miami ranks 26th in points per 100 possessions, ahead of only four blatant tank squads. Effectively, the Heat have the worst offense in the NBA among teams that are actively trying to win games.

Miami’s offense was slightly above average last season, buoyed by its three-point attack. That shooting has fallen off a cliff. The Heat converted a league-best 37.9% of their threes in 2022. This year, they are shooting 33.7% on 34.6 attempts a night. Pretty much everyone on the roster bears responsibility. Tyler Herro, Kyle Lowry, Max Strus, Gabe Vincent, Victor Oladipo and Duncan Robinson have all seen their three-point percentages dip. P.J. Tucker, a reliable corner option for much of last year, is no longer on the team. Strus and Oladipo went from shooting in the low 40s to the low 30s. Their outside shots were all necessary to keep Miami’s struggling half-court offense afloat last year. This season, the team has cratered on that side of the floor.

The result is a team with three 20-point scorers (Buter, Adebayo, Herro) unable to really score. Butler is shooting the best field-goal percentage of his career and continues to get to the free throw line at will. Adebayo has made immense strides in creating his own offense and turned his paint jumper into a legitimate weapon. Herro has dipped a bit efficiency-wise, but is by far the team’s best volume shooter.

The regression everywhere else is pretty inexplicable, unless the answer is the players who shot well were never good shooters this whole time. Even if the Heat could land somewhere in the middle of what they shot in 2022 and ’23, they would likely be a much, much better team.

Instead, the reality is Miami cannot score well enough to be taken seriously as a contender. And the Heat have fallen back, while everyone else in the East made major upgrades since last summer. The Bucks have put the most depth they’ve ever had around Giannis. Malcolm Brogdon is a potential Sixth Man candidate on an already loaded Celtics team. The Cavs made the Donovan Mitchell trade (and are now No. 1 in net rating). The Knicks signed Jalen Brunson and picked up Josh Hart at the deadline. The 76ers stole Tucker. Even the postimplosion Nets have looked frisky after trading Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving.

All of this sets up a pretty major summer for Miami. Butler proved in the playoffs last year he could go toe-to-toe with anyone in a series, and he came back improved this regular season. Adebayo is entering his prime and unlocking new levels of his offensive game. On paper, was anyone impartial taking Brunson and Julius Randle over Bam and Jimmy before the season? Now think about how much better the Knicks have been, and how well their stars have played with the right pieces around them.

The solutions won’t be simple for the Heat in the offseason. Herro’s contract takes a massive jump in value as he’ll enter the first year of his $120 million extension. Lowry, who has been either ineffective or hurt for most of this year, is owed nearly $30 million next season. Robinson, who has been largely out of the rotation, will still have three years left on his big deal. Strus and Vincent will both be free agents, and if they walk, they won’t be easy to replace because of how much money Miami has tied up elsewhere. The Heat are very fortunate to have Bam and Butler, but rebuilding around them will be a complicated undertaking due to the team’s relative lack of attractive pieces and an owner who has been reluctant to pay the luxury tax. Miami is neither in pole position to trade for another star nor make big moves in free agency.

As far as this season goes, the Heat are in seventh place despite having the worst point differential of the top 11 teams in the conference. Even after a nice pair of wins against the Hawks at home, it’s difficult to see this team making a serious playoff push. A year after coming to the brink of the Finals, and with two stars still playing at a high level, Miami should be better positioned than it currently is. But getting back to where the team was last May won’t be an easy task.

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