Hollinger's take. Methinks maybe the Big Three are all partying too much or something?
Seventy-three and nine?
Ha. Try 9-9.
That will be Miami's record if it doesn't win Monday. Nine and nine. And while the schedule-makers have handed the Heat a near-certain respite from .500 with a home game against Washington, Miami may not avoid that destination for long if its play doesn't improve significantly.
Following the Great Hatefest in Cleveland on Thursday, Miami's schedule difficulty steepens in December. Nine of 14 are on the road, including two West Coast trips, and home dates against New Orleans, Dallas and Atlanta offer little relief. The Heat may not be .500 at the end of Monday, in other words, but they could be by the time you're done with Christmas dinner.
The Heat aren't quite as bad off in the Power Rankings and playoff odds -- 10th in the former, slated for 48 wins and a No. 5 seed in the latter. But saying, "They're better than their record," while technically true, also completely misses the more important point that they're still dramatically worse than anybody could have possibly expected.
Moreover, they're trending in the wrong direction. Miami's first 12 games, when the Heat were supposed to be building their chemistry, were actually quite strong. In between close losses to Boston and New Orleans were a series of one-sided wins, including an impressive blowout of mighty Orlando, and a fluke loss to Utah in which the Jazz made four 3-pointers in the final half-minute of regulation.
In contrast, the past five games have been pitiful -- Miami barely beat Philadelphia at home and dropped the other four. While the embarrassing home loss to Indiana looks slightly less embarrassing in the wake of the Pacers' win at the Lakers on Sunday, the overall body of work is difficult to explain away. Faced with a slate in which one would have expected Miami to go 3-2 at worst, the Heat were 1-4 with a minus-29 scoring margin.
So how the heck are they 9-8? We've heard all kinds of reasons. Put Miami under the microscope, and you'll be amazed with how many factors aren't to blame. Compare the Heat's play to date with what we expected before the season, and here's what jumps out at you:
It's not the injuries to Mike Miller and Udonis Haslem.
No disrespect to these two fine gentlemen, but if you can't overcome the loss of Miller and Haslem, you probably weren't destined for greatness to begin with. Haslem had a player efficiency rating of 12.80 before he went out, and Miller's PER last year was at 14.00. Both players are helpful at the margins, in other words, but they're not the difference between world domination and drawing Indiana in the 4-5 series in the East.
More importantly, it's come to my attention that the Heat have not been the only NBA team to suffer an injury this year. By and large, they've been among the fortunate ones. Any health issues with secondary players have been more than offset by LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh appearing in 50 of a possible 51 games -- more than could have been expected given the histories of Bosh and Wade in particular.
It's not the one-ball theory.
With only one ball to go around, the theory goes, Wade, James and Bosh were bound to suffer because each would have to settle for fewer shots. When I modeled this problem before the season, my answer was that the usage rate for each player (the percentage of possessions used by each player) would diminish by surprisingly little.
The drop-off has been a bit worse than I expected. James, at 32.3 last year, is at 30.3 so far. Wade, at 33.2 a year ago, has fallen to 28.2. And Bosh has suffered the most, falling from 25.9 to 20.4. But even those drops are not dramatic enough to explain the Heat's failures thus far.
And there's a particular reason for part of the drop that isn't endemic to the one-ball issue. We'll get to that in a minute.
It's not the lack of point guard and center play.
Miami's two starters at those positions have not been dramatically worse than average. Carlos Arroyo, with a PER of 13.05, and Zydrunas Ilgauskas, with a mark of 15.23, have actually been somewhat better than most analysts expected. At times, in fact, the Heat's most coherent offense has come from pick-and-pop plays involving the two. The mystery here is why they haven't played more -- the duo averages just 40 minutes a game between them.
We can extend this point further, actually, because it's not just the other two starters who have given the Heat little to bemoan.
It's not the supporting cast.
Sure, it would have been nice if the Heat hadn't thrown out Dorell Wright with the bathwater or given up on Michael Beasley a year too soon, but Miami's supporting cast hasn't been dramatically different from what we expected.
By and large, they've done exactly what they've been asked. The players who are supposed to space the floor are making their 3s -- Eddie House is at 40 percent and James Jones is at 40.5 percent, while Arroyo has chipped in a rather unexpected 61.9 percent clip. The reserve big men -- Jamaal Magloire, Juwan Howard, Haslem -- have largely played to expectations, with Magloire in fact being a bit better than hoped for.
The lone disappointment from the group has been Joel Anthony, but (A) this didn't exactly come as a huge shock, even to people (like me) who expected big things from Miami, and (B) every other Heat player to play at least five minutes per game has a PER of 11.0 or greater. That's about as much as Miami could have hoped for.
So ...
If it's not the rest of the roster, and if it's not that the lack of touches, and if it's not injuries, that leads us to only one conclusion:
It's the Big Three, stupid.
The reason the Heat are struggling so much is because all three stars they signed this summer have performed dramatically worse than anyone expected. This has been offered by many people as an item in a list, sort of a partial explanation of Miami's struggles. But that misses the point. The struggles of Wade, Bosh and James aren't a part of the explanation; they're the entire explanation.
Everything else has gone more or less exactly to form except one major factor: James and Wade are headed for their lowest PERs since their rookie seasons, and Bosh is on pace for his lowest since his second campaign. Together, they've dive-bombed more than 20 points of PER, with Wade's 8.57-point decline representing one of the greatest in recent NBA annals. The three players who ranked first, third and fourth in PER a year ago can't be found in this year's top 10.
Offensively, Miami hasn't scored more than 95 points in any of its past six games, and the Big Three's numbers explain why.
James, a 47.4 percent career shooter, is shooting 43.6 percent overall and 26.2 percent on 3s. He's also averaging more than four turnovers a game, after posting among the lowest turnover rates at his position while he was with Cleveland.
Wade is shooting a career-low 44.1 percent, and while it may seem he's become more reliant on the 3, actually the difference is microscopic. Wade has gone from taking 16.1 percent of his attempts beyond the arc last year to 18.4 percent this year. Given the 17-game sample, this is hardly a difference worth mentioning.
What is worth mentioning is that his turnover rate, like that of James, has skyrocketed in the early season, and that like James he's having an unusual amount of trouble making 2-point shots.
Bosh has suffered the smallest PER decline of the three despite the greatest decline in shots, and in his case the entirety of the change can be explained by a lack of rebounds. Bosh pulled 12.0 boards per 40 minutes in Toronto last season, but has fallen to a meager 8.6 this season. His inability to rebound, especially on the offensive end, has largely explained why the Heat have been so mediocre on the glass this year despite having two of the best rebounding perimeter players in the world in James and Wade.
Bosh's low offensive rebound total also explains why his usage rate has declined so much. It's not the lack of a ball to share that's hurt him; it's that the touches he got from second shots have vanished.
The star trio's decline shows up in some other areas, too. Last year, for instance, the Heat ranked third in the NBA in defensive efficiency despite a lack of quality size, because they were among the most disruptive teams in basketball. Miami narrowly missed leading the league in blocked shot rate and was a top-10 side in forcing turnovers. With Wade and James playing the passing lanes and wreaking havoc from the weak side, that figured to continue.
While Miami's overall defensive stats remain very respectable (the recent losing streak has mostly been an offensive phenomenon), they'd be a lot better if the Big Three were at their norms.
Remember all those chase-down blocks LeBron had in Cleveland? He has nine blocked shots in 17 games with the Heat.
Remember how Wade would dart into passing lanes? He's down to 1.2 steals per game, a far cry from the 1.8 and 2.2 he averaged the previous two seasons.
Remember when Bosh would grab defensive rebounds? Not happening in 2010-11 -- fully a quarter of his defensive boards have vanished into the ether.
We can offer up all the tangential reasons we want, but for this edition of the Heat it comes down to a very simple reality. Either Wade, James and Bosh will revert to playing somewhere near their historical levels and resume their quest for domination over the free world, or they will continue putting up these relatively paltry numbers, which won't be nearly enough to overcome a supporting cast that's exactly as limited as we thought.
There is no amount of Mike Millers, Udonis Haslems or Erick Dampiers that can offset or overcome this singular issue: James, Wade and Bosh simply must play better. Some might note that this 17-game sample is an aberration from the 500-game sample of the rest of their careers, and note that this means Miami's odds of recovery are good. But time's a wastin'.
Let's try to elevate the level of discourse in this byeetch. Please
11/29/2010 1:11 PM
