In the last two seasons, the Miami Heat have been one of the worst offensive teams in the league. Even beyond the usual offensive rating numbers, they looked bad. There was too much stagnant offense, a lot more isolation and post ups, shot profile resembling a team from the mid 2000s, and it revolves around producing a bunch of inefficient looks. But it wasn’t always like this. Their offense wasn’t always in the mud.
Here are the Heat’s offensive ratings -- overall and in the half-court -- over the last five seasons, per Cleaning the Glass
- 2020: 112.9 overall ORTG (7th) / 98.9 half court ORTG (3rd)
- 2021: 111.9 (17th) / 97.5 (12th)
- 2022: 114.2 (11th) / 97.6 (11th)
- 2023: 113.3 (25th) / 96.7 (23rd)
- 2024: 114.4 (21st) / 99.6 (13th)
That 2020 season is like a polar bear in Arlington, Texas.
What is different about this team and one that was third in half-court offense? Is it as simple Jimmy Butler playing better? Is it Duncan Robinson having one of the most efficient shooting seasons in NBA history? Or was assistant coach Dan Craig behind it all, and he took the offense to Los Angeles when he left?
On that note, it does *kind of* make sense when you look the team’s rankings on defense and offense. Erik Spoelstra is an elite, *elite* defensive coach and I would trust that man to build an elite defense with me as the starting guard!
Which is why out of 16 years, he had 13(!) seasons in the top 10, five seasons in the top 5, and only *one* season below average. But when you look at offense, nine out of 16 are below average, only five in the top 10, and five in the bottom 10.
Because there’s nothing else going on in the NBA world (Stephen Curry getting extended for one year was the highlight of the week), I ended up going down rabbit holes and looking at all kinds of stats.
How often the Heat use different play types... How efficient they were in those play types... The tracking stats for both team and the players... The touches... The passes... The shot profile. All of the main indicators of what and how the offense was run.
So, let’s review all of that and see how it has combined to contribute to their lackluster offense in the last two seasons.
Some notes regarding the stats:
- Play type stats are from NBA Stats
- Shot profile with the rim, short mid-range, long mid-range, 3pt stats are from PBP Stats
- Pull-up and catch-and-shoot stats are from NBA Stats
- Advanced stats are from NBA Stats
- Tracking stats for drives, passes, touches are from NBA Stats
- The ranks in the playoffs are where they’d rank in that particular season
- /100 is per 100 possessions
- Potential assists = any pass to a teammate who shoots within 1 dribble of receiving the ball
- Secondary assists = A player is awarded a secondary assist if they passed the ball to a player who recorded an assist within 1 second and without dribbling
Play type frequency
There are already major points that stand out regarding what has drastically changed with their offense. Look at their frequency of isolations and post-ups in each regular season. They have been trending upwards with more self-creation.
7.4% → 8.1% → 10.9% → 10.9% → 12.7%
But that play type will always be the least efficient action. There’s no need for analytics here. I’m sure you always heard whether it’s from professional coaches or even from your experience playing at *any* level of basketball. Move the ball! You will get better looks off movement and passing than stationary, off-the-dribble basketball. Constant movement will be more difficult to defend than focusing on one player.
Look at their off-ball frequency (Spot ups, handoffs, off-ball screens, cuts):
43.0% → 44.4% → 41.9% → 40.9% → 40.8%
One of the main things that most fans would remember from the 2020 offense was the constant handoffs. That has been the staple of the offense. They ranked 11th this year. Not once before they ranked lower than 4th. All of that adds up. It makes the offense stagnant. I’m sure you remember all of the possessions with either Bam Adebayo or Jimmy Butler holding the ball while everyone else watched.
Play type efficiency
Their efficiency contributes to this just as much.
Look at all of those green rankings in 2020! Although that should’ve been looked at cautiously. The Heat had one of the most efficient seasons on handoffs out of every team since 2016. It wasn’t a sustainable rate.
The more worrying and one of the biggest reasons for their drop-off on offense is their efficiency on cuts. They were good in 2020, ranking just outside the top 10. But since then it’s 23rd, 30th, 23rd, and 25th. For a team that also looks to cut a lot, ranking that low on one of the easiest shots is a great way to not score points.
Another major standout is the roll man efficiency. It’s never been something that they used a ton off, but it’s always been an effective weapon and their best at generating rim pressure.
They had their lowest efficiency in an area that greatly impacted their lackluster offense. Previously, they were at least guaranteed efficiency close to the league average. Now, with a rating of 1.05, it's one of the worst. (We'll explore this more in a seperate breakdown soon to come.)
That’s a similar case with their isolations and post ups. You really have to be a generational talent to make those actions efficient at that volume. There are only a handful of players in today’s era that can make that happen. The Heat don’t have that, yet they continue to trend in that direction.
Scoring around 50% of the time or at 1.0 points per possession on self-created shots is a good thing for the player. That is an effective weapon but only at a certain volume to a certain point because math matters.
Shot profile
The glaring change is that rim efficiency. As much as the Heat’s rim pressure issues have been talked about, their efficiency at the rim is arguably more important.
Here’s a scatter plot of teams’ rim shot frequency and their rim shot FG% vs their offensive rating in the last five seasons:
There’s not much correlation with frequency. Teams can have a very efficient offense without getting shots at the rim at a high rate (rim pressure doesn’t always = shots at the rim).
You need to make shots at the rim, though. They should be the easiest and most efficient looks that you could get. Even the teams that don’t get many shots at the rim (Dallas Mavericks, Golden State Warriors, Phoenix Suns, Boston Celtics) tend to convert when they get there.
Notice where the Heat ranked in 2020 and 2021. They were one of the best. They’re near the bottom this year. Not only do they struggle to get to the rim, they also struggle to make shots once they’re there!
Although this is more about the frequency, it’s still connected. But the reason for such a drop-off in rim efficiency is that the team’s best rim finisher (Adebayo) has gone away from the rim. Now, you combine the fact that your guards and wings are struggling, and you get that poor efficiency.
Regarding Adebayo (who is the main culprit), there has been a shift towards taking more short mid-range shots (4-14ft per PBP stats). In 2020 and 2021, approximately 18% of the shots were taken from that area, but in 2023 and 2024, this figure increased to over 26%.
(This is also a big reason why they’re at the top in catch-and-shoot 2s being taken. It’s a low number in a vacuum, but it’s one of the highest relative to the league.)
The Heat get a huge amount of their shots in the short mid-range area.
- 24.8% at the rim
- 27.6% in the short mid-range
- 8.2% in the long mid-range
- 11.7% from corner 3pt
- 27.6% from above the break 3pt
They’re also among the top five in efficiency in that area. That’s great, right?
Wrong.
The issue is that being great from that spot means shooting 47.3%, which is 0.946 points per shot. Their most common shot is below-average efficiency. No other team has that profile.
Out of the last 10 years, the Heat have the fourth-highest short mid-range frequency (Grizzlies in 2021 and 2022, Suns in 2022 are ahead). On top of that, the Heat had one of six seasons where the short mid-range frequency was higher than at the rim. Here’s those team’s ORTG:
- Utah Jazz 2024: 115.7 (18th)
- Phoenix Suns 2023: 115.5 (15th)
- Miami Heat 2023: 113.7 (25th)
- Phoenix Suns 2022: 115.6 (4th)
- Memphis Grizzlies 2021: 112.8 (15th)
- San Antonio Spurs 2019: 113.5 (6th)
Only two teams had an above average offense and both either finished at the rim at a good level or had the best 3pt shooting. It’s not a good blueprint to have, though.
One encouraging point is that Miami consistently generates a high number of corner 3s. They were second this year, and their lowest was fourth in 2021!
Tracking Stats
A few thing showed up in the tracking stats.
For one, they love their drive and kicks. They are consistently one of the highest-rated teams when passing out of their drives. They don’t drive often. They don’t finish when they drive often, either. But they sure do kick it out.
This goes back to their play type frequency shifting towards more isolation and post-ups. Look at their passes made and potential assists. This was the lowest for both. The ball movement isn’t as crisp as it was before.
One reason for that is the elbow touches. That has been gradually decreasing (as post-up touches increased) and I’d assume that means going away from players being used as hubs to cutters and handoffs. There’s less of Adebayo being that hub for others and more of putting him in post-up positions for himself. It’s a drastic drop, too. Over 15 elbow touches per game in 2020 to just under 10 last season.
For comparison, the Denver Nuggets routinely have a top-10 offense while ranking first in elbow touches over the last four seasons.
Finally, some advanced and miscellaneous stats. There’s not much here apart from consistency. They don’t get their points in the paint. They don’t get fast break points. They don’t get second chance points. They do get points off turnovers, though. That is a good way of jumpstarting the offense.
Conclusion
So, to wrap up: The Heat have made drastic changes in their offense. They went away from the dribble handoffs, having Adebayo as the hub on offense at the elbows, and instead prioritized getting more self-creation going.
That includes using Adebayo and Butler more in the post or facing up. It also means more Tyler Herro running the picks and rolls.
As a result, that shift meant removing your best roller and the biggest source of rim pressure, which meant your efficiency at the rim fell off the cliff. And we can see that efficiency at the rim is highly important.
That’s why their shot profile is geared toward more mid-range shots, which, in a vacuum, has been good. The players taking them are converting at a good rate. But that doesn’t shift the defense to open up for more efficient shots that are at least average efficiency because shooting 45-50% will mean putting up 95 points per 100 possessions.
This is how the Heat’s offense has changed. We'll see if this trend continues or if Spoelstra has some adjustments up his sleeve this upcoming season -- because they're needed.
