If the preseason is any indication, the Miami Heat’s offense will be one of the worst we’ve ever seen finishing at the basket.
So, uh, here’s hoping preseason is not, in fact, an indication of everything that’s to come.
Miami is currently shooting 56 percent at the rim. That isn’t just bad. It’s putrid. The NBA’s average finishing rate at the hoop so far is 66.2 percent. This puts the Heat more than 10 points below it. Only the Los Angeles Lakers are faring worse.
The biggest culprits of the Heat’s poor finishing are…
…arguably their three best (healthy) offensive players.
Norman Powell (50 percent), Nikola Jovic (57.1 percent), and Bam Adebayo (25 percent) are all going through the motions when attempting to finish at the biggest. Of the three, Powell’s issues are the most troubling, because his deep-into-the-paint drives are supposed to be a fulcrum of the offense.
Chalking this up to preseason noise is fine. Powell shot 65 percent last season inside the restricted area, and has dipped below 60-plus percent just once over the past seven years.
With that said, his takeoff points when getting into the lane have been weird—so much so that just 19 percent of his preseason attempts are even coming at the rim. That represents a steep decline from last year (28 percent), and would be the lowest share of his career.
What would typically be restricted-area finishes for him are instead coming floaters or running layups barely inside the paint. He is, as a result, shooting 37.5 percent on layups for the season.
Similar issues have plagued the rest of the roster. In the one game each played, neither Pelle Larsson nor Kasparas Jakucionis got all the way to the basket all that much. Nearly everyone, meanwhile, has reacted to any sort of traffic or rotations in the lane by prematurely deferring or taking bail-out runners long before they sniff the hoop.
Miami needs to make the most of its rim attempts
This admittedly could be nothing. Preseason is a time for experimentation. Miami is doing plenty of that. It is attempting to play faster, and continues to futz and fiddle with how it wants to use Powell, Dru Smith, Jaime Jaquez Jr., and others.
Some of the rim noise can be attributed to the second-half rotation, too. Head coach Erik Spoelstra is giving run to everyone. This includes guys who won’t play during the regular season, or even necessarily be on the roster.
Most critically, the Heat are schlepping through a feeling-out process. Timing has been off on a lot of alley-oop passes and catches. Those will get better with time. The returns of Tyler Herro and Davion Mitchell loom large as well. Herro isn’t known for his finishing, but he led Miami in assists generated at the rim last season by a cosmically large margin. For his part, Mitchell finished second in that same category. And unlike Herro, he’s known for his rim pressure.
There is a chance, then, that the Heat’s struggles at the hoop are only temporary. Especially as they inch closer to a fuller-strength rotation. Still, the issues thus far are worth monitoring, if only so we know what—and who—needs to change head into the regular season.