The Miami Heat’s three best lineups of the 2017-18 season
By Rob Slater
Goran Dragic, Wayne Ellington, Josh Richardson, Kelly Olynyk, James Johnson
Minutes: 56
Offensive Rating: 128.2
Defensive Rating: 103.9
Net Rating: 24.4
True Shooting Percentage: 67
Assist Percentage: 73.6
The ninth most-used five-man lineup offers up a pair of unique combinations, most notably the frontcourt pairing of Olynyk and Johnson. Pairing Johnson with Olynyk balances out a defensive deficiency, while also allowing Olynyk the proper spacing to operate offensively, as opposed to inserting Whiteside, who would hurt the team’s overall spacing.
The pairing of Olynyk and Johnson has played a combined 469 minutes together with a net rating of 3.7 and has proved successful overall, especially when surrounded by the shooting of Goran Dragic, Ellington and Richardson.
Once again, this lineup shares the ball at a high rate and shoots incredibly efficiently. It’ll be interesting to see if those numbers keep up as the sample size increases, particularly since this lineup gives up a bit on the defensive end. While Johnson and Richardson (and to a lesser extent Dragic) are plus defenders, they mainly cover up the deficiencies of Ellington and Olynyk.
Along with the power of the Johnson/Olynyk frontcourt pairing, a three-man rotation of Ellington/Olynyk/Richardson is the best the Heat have to offer, with a 11.4 net rating when they’re on the floor together. Putting all of this together with the leadership and decision making of Dragic (who also generally plays at a higher pace) leads to a high-powered offensive lineup that is also able to defend at an acceptable rate.
This lineup emphasizes ball movement and spacing, much like The Platinum Group, but does so at a faster pace thanks to the addition of Dragic. They’re able to achieve an offensive rating of 128 because they create the type of fast, efficient offense, that allows them to score at a high level.
The pressure that can put on a defense shouldn’t be understated.