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

Bam Adebayo

Adebayo is completely different to what we’ve seen from him in 2020. This is nowhere near the same kind of player. The touches and general involvement remains roughly the same:

You can see that his touches, his on-ball percentage, scoring possessions, total offensive load, and dribbling are all within range. He hasn’t been used a lot more. He’s been used differently.

We went away from the passing hub being his primary role. His potential assists went from 9.0 in 2020 to 6.4 this year.

Although this doesn’t entirely show passing stats, it’s still worth noting. He averaged 7.8 elbow touches in 2020 and had it dropped to 5.4. We remember him being the hub for those handoffs at the elbow.

But the biggest change has been the play types. Similar to Butler, his usage in isolation and post ups increased a lot.

• 14.4% → 22.4% → 24.1% → 24.0% → 32.2%
  

Adebayo has more of his offense in isolation and post ups than Butler does in those play types *or* PNR. It’s at the level as some of the Butler’s PNRs in previous years. That’s not even a big change. That’s a humungous change.

As seen, he also has almost 70 touches, 25% usage, and is involved in an offense 35% of the time. You combine *that* with the fact that almost a third of his offense is self created, and that’s a game changer.

The only issue with that is the efficiency:

• Isolation: 0.81 → 0.95 → 1.04 → 1.02 → 0.99
  
  

• Post ups: 0.90 → 0.98 → 0.98 → 0.95 → 0.99

When we include passes for this year, it’s not much better either. For both post ups and isolations, it jumps to 1.00.

One other significant change is where he’s placed off-ball and how he goes about it when he gets the ball. His cut usage declined by almost half:

• 24.0% → 20.4% → 19.5% → 15.7% → 14.0%
  

One reason for that is even when he’s off-ball, he doesn’t finish on those passes quickly. Here are the percentage of his 2s within 2 seconds:

• 58.1% → 55.3% → 52.5% → 51.5% → 43.4%
  

It’s a gradual decline over time. Now, whenever he gets the ball, it will turn into a post up instead. He will jab, hesitate, look to back down and go up for a shot then. That does hurt his efficiency a lot, though.

As a roll man, his frequency is the same, with slight fluctuation. The bigger issue there is with the efficiency:

• 1.18(62.4% eFG) → 1.32(67.7%) → 1.11(54.9%) → 1.14(55.1%) → 1.04%(51.5%)
  

Going down from over 1.2 points per shot to just over 1.02 is a huge difference. That difference can effect the whole team significantly(and it has).

The reason for all of this is the shot profile:

Look at that rim frequency and short mid-range. Over half of his shots were there in 2020. It was still in a good range in 2022 with 44.6%. It became worrying in 2023 with 35.7% and that was a sign that it had to change. It didn’t. It dropped to 30.5%.

At the same time, his short mid-range frequency reached over 50% in these two seasons. He’s good at those shots, not great or elite, but good enough — not good enough to have it be over half of his shots, though.

His long mid-range jumper is a consistent as the Heat’s health.

That’s where we see the drop offs in his play types. It’s relying on tough shots that even a good shooter will make 45-50%, which isn’t efficient at volume.

The best thing that has changed in his shot profile and hopefully it’s here to stay, it’s the 3pt shooting. That can change so much. That would hopefully replace a lot of those long mid-range shots, those catch and shoot 2s, give him a better option off-ball instead of being in the dunker, and it opens up for better shots as a popper.

Overall, the biggest change in his game has been falling in love with the mid-range and preferring that slow, grind, isolation in the post.