The Miami Heat have taken the league by storm since January 17. One of the keys to their success has been the way head coach Erik Spoelstra has formulated lineups that provide the most punch.
Up until January 15 of this season, the Miami Heat were a miserable team.
The following is what they had accomplished up until that point:
- Win/loss record: 11-30 (Ranked 29th)
- Three-point percentage: 33.7 (28th)
- Points per game: 98.3 (29th)
- Offensive rating: 101.0 (27th)
- Defensive rating: 104.9 (12th)
- Net rating: -4.4 (24th)
Since then, the turnaround has been simply phenomenal, as is evident by the following numbers:
- Win/loss record: 21-5 (Ranked 1st)
- Three-point percentage: 40.3 (1st)
- Points per game: 108.6 (8th)
- Offensive rating: 110.6 (6th)
- Defensive rating: 102.2 (2nd)
- Net rating: 8.3 (2nd)
Other smaller details have also emerged. Prior to January 17, the Heat were hitting just 37.8 percent of their wide open three-point shots (six-plus feet from the nearest defender) which ranked 16th in the league. Since then, they are ranked first, hitting on 48.3 percent of such attempts.
Another noticeable difference has been the Heat’s conversion of three-point shots classified as above the break 3’s. Their accuracy has risen from 31.7 percent over the first 41 games to 39.8 percent during their current hot streak.
You could point to a number of factors that have contributed to the drastic improvements in production and efficiency. But the overall health of the roster is one major contributing factor.
Prior to January 17, here are the games missed by key Heat players due to injury:
- Justise Winslow – 23 games (out for season)
- Dion Waters – 20 games
- Wayne Ellington – 20 games
- Josh Richardson – 13 games
- Goran Dragic – 8 games
- James Johnson – 5 games
- Willie Reed – 5 games
Naturally, such a disruption in regards to player availability is going to have some effect on the team’s performance. But when you factor in that four of the six players listed above are new to the team (Waiters, Ellington, Johnson and Reed), this effect is going to be more pronounced.
So with these players now regularly available, continuity and familiarity has started to kick in. And the results have thus far spoken for themselves. The Heat’s recent 13-game winning streak even drew praise from recently departed Heat legend Dwayne Wade:
"“We did it with Chris Bosh, LeBron James, Ray Allen. This streak right here to me is as just impressive with guys names that aren’t as big as we sit here today.”"
One way of analyzing the Heat’s recent/current hot streak is to see which lineups have been successful during this period of time.
Note: Due to such a small sample size of minutes played together, 5-man lineups will not be analyzed.