Timing Is Everything: The Main Character In Miami’s Story Is Shooting, And It Has Them Three Wins Away From A Title

Does this sound familiar?

Trailing by multiple possessions in the fourth quarter of a postseason game, the Miami HEAT went absolutely bonkers on the offensive end, hitting just about anything they put up on their way to a stunning victory.

They did it to Milwaukee. Twice. They did it to Boston. Now Denver gets to join the club. And then some.

If the HEAT have been painting fourth-quarter masterpieces all postseason, this was their pièce de résistance, 36 points on just 19 possessions. That was good for 1.89 points per possession, the fourth-highest mark in a postseason fourth quarter of the past 10 years – and the third-best final period of this year, including the entire regular season. Better yet, on possessions that didn’t include a turnover in that final period, Miami scored 2.12 points per. This is special, historic stuff in a special, historic postseason.

Let’s go one step further. The HEAT are now scoring 1.25 points per possession in fourth quarters during these playoffs. Of the 80 teams that have played at least 200 possessions of postseason basketball in the past decade, that 1.25 mark ranks No. 2, trailing only the 2021-22 title-winning Golden State Warriors, and just ahead of the 2019-20 HEAT.

That’s the thing about this team. It’s not that they’ve always been dominant – though they certainly have been at times. But when they’re at their best, they’re unbelievably timely, plugging away again and again, never stopping never stopping, until they breakthrough at just the right moment, hitting a handful of threes in a row, while their opponent is left to pick up the pieces and try to salvage a game with minutes remaining.

You can say the ability to do that comes from playing a metric ton of clutch, close games – with a three-point victory in Game 2 Miami is now tied with two teams from the 1970’s at 44 games decided by five points or less, regular season and postseason combined. You can say that’s a shining example of Erik Spoelstra’s coaching, making all the right in-game adjustments, swapping into a press zone when trailing in the fourth quarter again, that can swing a result. You can say it comes from being a tough-minded group that never snaps, never breaks and only bends just enough to make you think it’s safe to get comfortable. You can say it’s what happens when the right kind of talents come together and stay together, playing the way that works for them.

You can say a lot of things. Ultimately this is a team that, up a little, down a little or down a lot, is always hanging around for just the right moment to crack a game open. That’s what got them to the NBA Finals. That’s what has the series tied, 1-1.

THEY MISS(COMMUNICATE), YOU MAKE

The shooting is still the thing.

If this HEAT run was a movie – and it very well may be a movie at this point – then Three Point Shooting might be the name above the title, the name on the marquee. It’s the thing that brings the entire picture together. We all love Terminator 2. We love James Cameron, Linda Hamilton, Robert Patrick, motorcycles, trucks, helicopters, special effects and liquid nitrogen. Would it have still been a great movie just with all that? Almost definitely. Would it have been a phenomenon without Arnold Schwarzenegger?

Of course, shooting isn’t a person. It’s something a group of people do. Is that interesting? Probably not. Nobody wants to see a movie headlined by a statistic. We want heroes and villains. We want stars and underdog stories.

It doesn’t matter what we want. Miami isn’t here without the shooting. In Game 2, they shot 11-of-22 on heavily contested threes, the fourth time they’ve made as many in the postseason.

While they came one miss away from breaking a tie with the 2015-16 Cleveland Cavaliers for most games in a single postseason run of 50 percent three-point shooting on at least 25 attempts – Miami is currently at four, having done it three times against Boston in the Eastern Conference Finals – after hitting 48.6 percent of their deep shots in Game 2 Miami is also tied with that same Cavaliers team with six games over 48 percent on at least 25 attempts.

“We made shots,” Jimmy Butler said. “That’s what this league is, that’s what this game is, make-or-miss game, make-or-miss league. We made some shots. They didn’t.”

You may look at Miami’s 39.2 percent overall for the playoffs and think that it’s strong but somewhat unremarkable – even if that number alone would be one of the best, if not the best, postseason shooting stretches of all time – but each series is only about what needs to be done to get to four wins. Miami was able to shoot 30.6 percent from three against the Knicks because New York only had one offensive player, Jalen Brunson, who posed a clear and present threat in each game.

How about just to beat superior teams in Milwaukee, Boston and now Denver? In their nine wins over those teams, it’s taken 46.9 percent shooting from three, including 48.7 percent on shots logged by Second Spectrum as heavily contested. Call them Colin Farrell because at those numbers they might as well be up for the role of Bullseye.

Is there luck involved? Of course there is, especially in the statistical sense. That’s just how these things work. Unless you’re dunking the ball every time down the court, there will be natural variance in anything you do. The best shooters don’t make all the time, the worst shooters don’t miss all the time.

But does being lucky mean your achievements are unearned? Hardly. Especially when you set yourself up to take advantage of luck. Plenty of teams have shot well in the playoffs, including 50 percent from three on at least 25 attempts. Most of those teams have had their runs cut short because they didn’t defend like Miami, they weren’t as tough as Miami or they didn’t have flexible, two-way stars like Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo. The only way you can keep enjoying great shooting nights is by staying alive and playing more games.

It also helps that the HEAT don’t rely on any one player for their three-point volume, which means there isn’t any one player for a defense to key in on. What might make their shooting less narratively interesting – they don’t have a Steph Curry making a million threes or a LeBron James setting the table for everyone with cross-court slings – is also what makes them so potent. In Game 2 it was Gabe Vincent and Max Strus each hitting four threes, but Kevin Love, Jimmy Butler, Duncan Robinson and Kyle Lowry all hit at least two.

They spread the defense thin with options, and options playing at pace forces the other team into plenty of mistakes.

Take these plays, for example…

And here’s what Denver coach Michael Malone had to say about them.

“It was definitely a breakdown in communication. It was definitely a breakdown in our game plan,” he said.

Granted some of those plays are fairly simple switches that Denver will likely clean up, but they happen because the HEAT aren’t giving the defense time to process. The more mistakes you force just by playing your game, the more your tough makes are going to matter.

And then your tough makes are also going to induce mistakes, like an overzealous closeout or putting two on the ball when Jimmy Butler has the ball at the arc a couple possessions after draining a contested corner three.

If Miami goes on to win this series, the shooting is going to be part of their story. There are only five games left in the season, maximum – hardly enough time for true regression to the mean to play out. And they only need to shoot well in three wins, anyways. If they go on to win, they’re going to be known as the team that got hot at the right time, in the right games against the right opponents. That shouldn’t be taken as a slight or an insult. There’s blood, sweat and tears behind everything that they do.

They’re also winning in the way they need to win, and that’s a heck of a lot better than losing.

If it wasn’t made clear already, this has been an offensive series for Miami so far, at least when it comes to their own win conditions. Through two games, Denver is scoring 1.16 points-per-possession against Miami’s half-court man-to-man with Bam Adebayo on the floor.

That’s not to say there aren’t plenty of good things happening on defense – Nikola Jokic had just 13 passes leading to a shot in Game 2, down from 31 in Game 1 – but Denver, as they’ve shown all postseason, continues to show an ability to adjust on the fly, take punches and keep chugging along scoring at a very high rate. Miami’s answers, such as they are, have been to vary up coverages, giving Jamal Murray and switch here or a containment trap there, and do it with precision, pressure and discipline. This is not a case where, as against Milwaukee and Boston, a specific scheme is going to cause the other side to unravel. Denver may have a weird possession here or there – they’re scoring better against the zone than the man-to-man, even if the zone changes the rhythm of the game – and they will have stretches of missed shots, but everything we have seen from them in this series suggests a resistance to discombobulation.

If the HEAT want another ring, then, they’ll have to keep scoring – and their margin for error on that end is quite small. In Game 1 they were a 40 percent night from three, with Denver below 30 percent, away from a tied game in the final minutes. In Game 2 it took making nearly half of their threes, with Denver just a tick above average, to win by three.

The good news is that beyond the make or miss of it all beyond the arc, there are specific actions that are getting under the skin of a Denver defense that is better than you might think.

Through two road games, Miami’s shot quality against Denver has been marginally lower than it was against Milwaukee and Boston. With the Nuggets dropping back with size and helping in the paint, the HEAT are generating just 17.4 shots per 100 possessions in the restricted area, about what they got against the Bucks. On all other shots, their Shot Quality, per Second Spectrum, has been the equivalent of what it was against Boston – their lowest of the postseason. On only threes, their Shot Quality is again equivalent to what it was against Milwaukee and Boston.

On paper Denver is the inferior defense to those two teams, but they’re doing things in their own way – helping more in the paint and switching more than Milwaukee while being more strident in their paint protection than Boston was. They also have a weak spot in Jokic who, while proving himself an excellent rim deterrent, isn’t the most mobile of centers. If Jokic is dropping back and Bam Adebayo is getting a catch around the free-throw line – with the other Nuggets defenders creating a pocket around him without obvious passing lanes – then Adebayo is getting shots Denver can live with. But when Jokic has to play higher up on the action because the HEAT’s shooters are making them pay, then Miami’s offense comes to life.

To the Nuggets credit, they know this. Part of the reason for their huge second quarter run with Jokic on the bench was because they upped the pressure on Miami’s bread-and-butter actions and forced turnovers – something which required more of a mental adjustment rather than anything Erik Spoelstra could draw up on a clipboard.

“Just kind of having an approach and a disposition to not kind of just let them take me out of what we’re trying to do,” Robinson said. “So that’s a start.

“Doing it with a brain, as well, and, you know, not just going out there mindlessly and just trying to run off a hand-off,” he added. “Instead being a little more patient, a little more thoughtful with it.”

Across 86 pick-and-rolls with Jokic as the screener defender, Miami is producing 1.07 points-per-screen including assist opportunities. That’s already good, but there is a significant split when it comes to Jokic and the varied depth he’s playing at. This isn’t Milwaukee, with Brook Lopez in such a deep drop that Vincent can simply come off any screen and find a comfortable look.

“Jokic switches up what he does in pick-and-roll a lot,” Vincent said after scoring 23 points on 12 shots. “You know, they kind of keep you thinking, so I’m just trying to be aggressive and find my spots when I can.”

When Jokic has been dropped back in a pick-and-roll, 27 of them in total though not all have been directly used by the HEAT, then Miami is producing 0.55 points-per. About two thirds of those have been Butler actions, with Denver daring him to shoot. The Butler-Adebayo actions, Miami’s bedrock during this run, have yet to find traction at 0.78 points-per so far.

But when Jokic is up to touch, as tracked by Second Spectrum, or otherwise at the level of the screen, Miami is producing 1.33 points-per across 18 screens.

Miami’s best fourth quarter possession looked like this, too, with Jokic worried about Robinson, though it ended with an awkward turnover despite Adebayo getting a dangerous 4-on-3 catch.

“We know they are going to try to stop Duncan from shooting threes,” Adebayo said. “You know they are going to guard him.”

Miami didn’t score a single point on Robinson’s handoffs in the first half. In the second, they scored nine points on six of his handoffs. Robinson’s 12 off-ball screens also produced 19 points, both directly or indirectly, for the HEAT in the fourth-quarter alone.

Denver deserves credit for jamming Miami up as much as they have in stretches. Miami deserves credit for drawing mistakes out of them, too. But it’s these actions, where Jokic is drawn out of the paint, where the HEAT have most consistently had their best half-court flow. It doesn’t solve everything but knowing you can get a defense scrambled with the right execution – or otherwise get a relatively clean look – matters in a series as tight as this.

As long as Miami isn’t getting much at the rim, it’s all going to come back to their shooting. If they keep touching history from beyond the arc – barring a deep slump from Denver –  the title is well within their grasp. And there’s nothing wrong with that being a major part of their story and success. You dance with who you brought with the dance, and when you’re making a sequel you bring back the Austrian bodybuilder you started the franchise with.

-Denver scored 1.31 points per possession against zone in Game 2, an improvement on Game 1, and 1.20 points-per with Jokic on the floor (10 possessions). They also only scored a modest 110 points per 100 possessions with Jokic playing overall, but that is largely impacted by them shooting 30 percent from three in those minutes.

-After driving just eight times in Game 1 for 0.66 points-per, Jimmy Butler had 19 drives in Game 2, for 1.00 points-per.

-Jokic is producing 1.71 points-per across his 18 post-ups so far. Any Denver possession that features a post-up has been worth 1.66.

-Denver had just one hockey assist in Game 2 – the passes that lead to the assist – after seven in Game 1.

-Jamal Murray scored 1.16 point-per in pick-and-roll in Game 2, though just 0.75 against drop coverage versus 1.80 when Miami switched. That includes assist opportunities, such as a pass to Jokic on the switch.

-When it comes to shotmaking on threes – actual effective field-goal percentage over expected – Miami now owns the first, second, third, fourth, and seventh (Game 2) and tenth best games of the 2023 postseason. That’s out of 174 total games, including the play-in rounds.

-Miami’s 1.32 points-per-possession in Game 2 was their best mark of the postseason against half-court, man-to-man defense.