The Miami Heat love guys who play defense and don’t need the ball to be effective on the floor. The next guy or guys are just that.
Steals Per Game Leader
The Miami Heat are all about the effort, the tenacity, and the defense. That’s the way to endear yourself to the organization, the coaches, your teammates, and the fans in Miami.
That’s apart of the reason why Jimmy Butler was the great fit that he has been because he values all of those things too. Then it should be no surprise that he led the team in steals last season as well.
His 1.8 per game came in a half steal over the next guy, who is no longer employed by Miami, might I add. As a matter of fact, along with second-placed Jae Crowder, two more of the top five ball thieves on this team from a season ago aren’t there anymore in Solomon Hill and Derrick Jones Jr.
Bam Adebayo has a shot to increase his steal numbers but I don’t see it being enough to overtake what Jimmy does. He’s consistently been a pest in the pilfers department since entering the league.
Steals Per Game Leader- Jimmy Butler
Player Efficiency Rating Leader
It’s good to just get all of a guy’s accolades out at once when doing things like this. Ok, then you probably guessed it.
Jimmy Butler will lead the Heat here too. In case you aren’t familiar, the Player Efficiency Rating or PER is a metric used to account for all a player’s contributions, while computing it and spitting it out as one whole number.
The league average for PER is always 15. Look it up.
With a PER of 23.6, he outdid the next closes by quite a bit, who just so happened to be Bam. Now we know how much Bam impacts the game and he only had a PER of 20.3.
“Only” might be strong but when Jimmy’s is 3.3 points higher, it’s an “only”. That’s why I think Jimmy Butler will lead the team in Player Efficiency Rating this upcoming season because his fingerprints are always all over his teams.
PER Leader- Jimmy Butler