Miami Heat: What’s wrong with the team’s offense?

Dwyane Wade returned from paternity leave with a few educated guesses as to why the Miami Heat continue to struggle on offense.

In keeping with the Thanksgiving theme of reflection, the Miami Heat enter the holiday season with plenty of things to think about.

Miami has dropped its last five home games, all of which featured the team’s blacked out Vice theme. The Heat are also 1-6 in their last seven games, with three of those losses accompanied by the inability to break the 100-point mark.

The losses aren’t entirely unjustified.

Still reeling with injuries—only Josh Richardson, Rodney McGruder and Bam Adebayo have played in all 17 of Miami’s games—head coach Erik Spoelstra and the Heat are searching for answers, as roster consistency becomes one of the team’s biggest questions.

Despite players being toggled between active and inactive lists, Spoelstra has effectively limited the team to an eight-man rotation, one which has left players like Adebayo, Derrick Jones Jr. and Kelly Olynyk on the outside looking in.

Olynyk’s case is particularly worrisome, as he began the season as a starter, only to be relegated to a paltry 18 minutes per game since.

"“Obviously, you want to play, and you expect to play,” Olynyk said to the Miami Herald, “but coach has decisions to make and that’s the decision he made. You respect it.”"

While the roster situation might be amicable for now, Dwyane Wade, who recently returned to action after missing time following the birth of his daughter, made a point of calling out the locus of Miami’s failure to secure victories.

Noting Miami’s emphasis on winning with defense, Wade made clear that the NBA’s switch to playing faster and shooting more 3’s, has put a damper on Miami’s progression.

"“You just want to play, so it’s just trying to get comfortable with where the NBA is,” Wade told the Miami Herald. “It’s three-pointers, and it’s floaters and layups. And everyone knows that, so everyone plays that, as well. Some guys are great at it and we’ve got guys on this team that’s trying to figure out how to be better.”"

He’s right.

Not everyone on the team is suited for pace and space.

Where the Milwaukee Bucks are reveling in Brook Lopez’s ability to stretch the floor as a 7-footer, Miami doesn’t have the same luxury. Neither Adebayo nor Hassan Whiteside are 3-point threats, and Olynyk’s lack of playing time has made fielding a 3-and-D lineup, an impossibility.

But even if Miami did have a top-to-bottom 3-point shooting lineup, the team’s defense hasn’t been worthy of meshing with the pace and space theme.

For the last four seasons, Miami’s offense has been led by Goran Dragic, a player who, despite his firm handle and proclivity to pound the paint, ranked 52nd among starting guards last season in pace (98.25 possessions per 48 minutes).

Remove him from the lineup and Miami’s pace dropped even more, down to 97.78 in the 2017-18 campaign.

The change in pace has also impeded Justise Winslow, Miami’s most frequent backup point guard this season. Winslow has increased his pace this season, but in the process is posting a career-low in net rating, a minus-7.1/

Thus, Dragic and Winslow, Miami’s most reliable and available options at point (James Johnson is only two games back from his sports hernia), are not suited to playing the modern NBA’s fast-paced game.

This season, both have tried to up the speed, as the pace rating jumped to 105.46, but Miami’s losing record suggests that these efforts have come up short.

While the struggles at point, which came to a head in Tuesday’s loss to the Brooklyn Nets, are at the forefront of the conversation, Miami isn’t too far removed from making a run.

The team is sixth in 3-pointers made per game, and with the help of Hassan Whiteside, is cleaning up the glass at a top-10 rate as well.

The start to Miami’s season might not be pretty, but there is still plenty of time for the Heat to set a course towards the playoffs.