The Heat beat a good team last night. They played the Dallas Mavericks, which are a very good team. Their lineup has athletic big men which I wish were on the Heat (Gaffords, Lively.) The Mavericks were in position to win the game. Kyrie Irving scored 27. Dallas outscored Miami 26-18 in second chance points. What was different? Was it just Jimmy Butler?
No Luka, no problem
Dallas beat Oklahoma City and Denver in the week before. The offense is more efficient without Luka Doncic hogging the ball. Look at this writeup here on The Smoking Cuban Dallas fan site. I always love hearing when stars hog the ball too much. My take: There is no NBA player that can win a championship when their team plays better without them on the floor.
Daniel Gaffords and Dereck Lively asserted their presence in the paint. Gaffords had three blocks, but only had three points. Lively had 13 rebounds. They were up 114-112 with 8 seconds in the game. Kyrie Irving scored 27 points, PJ Washington had 21 and 10 and Klay Thompson had 15. They had enough stars. Miami hasn’t beat good teams or even played well against good teams.
Miami isn’t “entertaining”
Jimmy Butler scored 33 points and tied the game with a dunk off a Spoelstra play call. Look at this writeup here from the Sun Sentinel on the game. Jimmy Butler was attacking for the Heat and slowing the game down, getting to the foul line. Tyler Herro had 18 and 10 (8 of 25 shooting, 1 of 10 from three.) Bam Adebayo had 19 and 11. My article here on our site shows the Heat offense is effective in the half court. They aren’t the “run up and down” with threes and layups team, but they could learn these trends.
Check out these stats here from NBA.com. The Heat are at the bottom of the league with total offensive possessions per game. But, they are at the top of the league averaging 1.28 points per possession, so they are very efficient. The Heat are 11th in the league in transition defense. They allow 1.08 points per possession. The top team in a lot of the defensive transition categories is Golden State (go figure.) Miami plays Milwaukee tonight in another Emirates NBA cup pool play game (let’s see if this isn’t a “one off.”)
