The Miami Heat's offense has changed, but so have how their top players score

A couple of weeks ago, I went through the changes that the Miami Heat made to their offense. We’ve seen the gradual drop off in their efficiency, a shift in their shot profile, and which play types they prefer to lean on.

Continuing with the changes in their offense, we’ll be digging deep into the individual players.

We went through the system. We went through the changes as a whole for the team. But equally as important in these changes is what happened with the players over the years.

The players and their skills, abilities, strengths, and weaknesses provide that foundation. The players make up the system, which is why as players develop, everything else can change, too. Other factors matter, too, such as players’ age, how much workload one can carry, their potential development, and how much stock you may have in a player.

This has been the reason for their gradual shift to this kind of offense. As discussed in that deep dive, the Heat have been trending towards a more isolation and post-up-based offense rather than the movement offense we saw in 2022. This means that certain players have drastically different play styles, too.

So, that’s what we’ll be looking at today.

Only four players are on the current team and played in 2020—Jimmy Butler, Bam Adebayo, Duncan Robinson and Tyler Herro. We’ll focus on their changes because we have all the data for them.

Jimmy Butler

Over the years, Butler has changed quite a lot about his game, especially compared to his first two seasons with the Heat.

Before even getting to how things changed, arguably the more important change is how often he’s being used in anything period. Here are his usage and tracking stats:

The first glaring change is he simply doesn’t have that many touches, nor does he dominate the ball as often. He had a career low in touches per 75, time with the ball in his hands, on-ball action share, scoring possessions per 75, total offensive load, and initiator rate. That’s understandable given his and how he ended each playoffs with an injury.

Although those stats aren’t available for different lineups, but if we look at his usage percentage with both Adebayo and Herro on the court, you can see another drop off. With both on, Butler has a 20.2% usage. It’s fair to assume a lot of those tracking stats would be even lower in those minutes, too.

That has been the biggest difference out of any year. We’ve never seen Butler be this little involved on the ball and that alone makes the biggest difference in the team’s offense as a whole.

When looking at his play type frequency and efficiency, there’s a noticeable shift.

Here’s his pick-and-roll frequency(and efficiency) since 2020 in the regular season:

• 35.5%(0.86) → 33.5%(0.92) → 21.9%(0.92) → 24.9%(1.09) → 20.7%(0.84)
  

He dropped his PNR frequency by almost 15%! In those two seasons, over a third of his offense was this and now it’s barely a fifth. His efficiency has been relatively steady outside of the 2023 season.

Instead, he’s been going for a lot more isolation and post ups:

• 16.5% → 15.8% → 27.2% → 26.5% → 26.0%
  

I’d assume that if the PNR usage drops, it would be because he’s more off-ball, but that’s clearly not the case. All it did is increase other on-ball usage, which came in that 2022 season. Over a quarter of his offense ends in isolation or a post up.

Although it makes more sense given his improve efficiency, particularly in isolation:

• 0.95 → 0.91 → 1.01 → 1.05 → 1.07
  

He had a career year creating a shot for himself in isolation. At the same time, he also had a career low in post ups with 0.84. A lot of that has to do with the shot profile and foul drawing that differs in those areas.

In isolation, Butler is a bigger foul merchant than prime James Harden. 27.7% of his isolation ends in shooting foul — Harden in 2019 was at 15.0%. Whereas in the post, it’s only 17.2%, so he’s not making up the efficiency with free throws, but is also struggling shooting from around the paint.

As noted, he has been used a lot more off-ball. That’s also shown in his spot up and cutting usage:

• 15.1% → 16.7% → 18.1% → 18.2% → 22.2%
  

Butler is almost used off ball just as much as he is in isolation and post ups, which is both good and bad, depending on how you look at it. He is a *very* efficient off-ball player. That’s how can easily feast. He scored 1.42 points per possession on cuts this year and 1.23 on spot ups! But there’s also a reason why he has to be more off-ball to preserve him.

One last point is that his transition has been steady both in efficiency and frequency. You can always count on him to get easy shots well.

For the most part, his shot profile remains the same. There’s no noticeable change in any of rim, short mid-range, or long mid-range frequency — there are some changes if we look at 2023, which was his career year for a reason.

A couple things to point out, though. He is taking the fewest pull up 2s with 18.1% of his shots. He still gets to the line just as easily. It looks like he has improved his pull up shooting to be roughly a 40% shooter compared to 34% in the first year.

Related to his spot ups, you can see the uptick in his 3pt volume. 9.2% of his shots came in the corner, up from his next highest at 6.3%. For the first time, he reached over 10% of his shots as catch and shoot from 3pt. He’s also shooting 40.7%, which is going to matter a lot if that is to remain.

Overall, the biggest change is easily the usage and tracking stats. But again that’s understandable, especially given what he does in the playoffs, where his usage skyrockets. But it’s also interesting to see wanting to be more in isolation and post up. Maybe that’s also down to age where he can slow it down and control the pace without always needing to go downhill.