Chris Bosh-Dwyane Wade Duo Proving Underwhelming for Remade Miami Heat

The recently concluded Miami Heat dynasty—well, dynasty-lite—will be remembered as the Big Three era. It’s the way we talk about it now, at least.

LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh—three superduperstars in their respective primes—joined forces to create a terrifying, dominant, unholy alliance that swallowed the league up for the length of a presidential term.

But here’s the thing: Big Three implies approximately equal parts, and it wasn’t really that at all. In short, with respect to production and impact, it was LeBron, then a large step down to Wade, then another large drop-off to Bosh.

And this fairly obvious fact explains away a lot of the disappointment surrounding Miami’s newly constituted Terrific Two.

Let’s start with a quick look backward.

In LeBron’s four seasons in South Beach, he was obviously phenomenal, but what’s so startling is how great he was even relative to his two putatively superstar teammates.

In three of his four seasons with the Heat, James had more wins produced than Wade and Bosh did combined.

Over the course of his Miami career, James produced 73.2 wins. In that period, Wade and Bosh combined for 59.2.

As wonderful as Flash and the Bostrich have been at various points in their careers, they’re simply not in James’ league.

Andy Lyons/Getty Images

This is a problem for Miami—because they’re here, and James is gone—but more saliently because the Heat are two summers away from trying to rebuild another Big Three (or Four) via the star-studded free-agent class of 2016.

And Wade and Bosh don’t look like the type of players who can lure a fellow world-beater to Miami.

Though their reputations might help carry water their performance can’t, those will start to take a hit as well the longer the 17-21 Heat linger under .500.

The problems with Bosh are fairly clear. He’s a great shooter and an underrated, versatile defensive player—he’s 6’11” and can guard guys on the perimeter—but the former of these skills, in a bizarre way, can work against him.

Bosh has such great shooting range, that he’s evolved into a player who—relative to general big man tendencies—stays away from the basket. He takes a lot of relatively inefficient, midrange shots, and though he hits them at unusually high rates, this still puts a drag on his efficiency as a scorer.

In an article on the rise of James Harden and the Houston Rockets, Grantland’s Kirk Goldsberry made an interesting point about shot distribution that underscores the problem with Bosh.

"Being slightly 'inefficient' within an extremely efficient area, it turns out, is better than being efficient inside an inefficient area," he wrote.

To his credit, Bosh has developed a really effective three point shot—he’s shooting the triple at a 38.6 percent clip this season—but his efficient shooting within an inefficient area doesn’t do much to help his game.

Centers Who Have Taken More than 100 16- to 24-foot shots in 2014-15

	Attempts	Makes	Field-Goal Percentage
Paul Gasol	50	102	49.0%
Al Horford	86	177	48.6%
Marreessee Speights	57	119	47.9%
Anthony Davis	80	168	47.6%
Kevin Garnett	47	102	46.1%
Nicola Vucevic	53	116	45.7%
Chris Bosh	61	139	43.9%

Sam Forencich/Getty Images

Scoring efficiency aside, it puts a drag on his ability to collect rebounds, which in turn limits the number of shots his teammates can take—efficient or otherwise.

This season, Bosh is grabbing 10.5 rebounds per 48 minutes. This is his highest mark in three seasons, but it’s still 2.5 fewer per 48 than the average center pulls down. This puts the Heat in a bind, as big men are generally responsible for the lion's share of board gathering.

Not coincidentally, ESPN.com indicates that Miami is second-last in the NBA in rebounding rate. When the only team worse than you at something as essential as grabbing rebounds is the Philadelphia 76ers, you’ve got a problem on your hands.

Wade is a different kind of problem. While he’s still a very effective player on a per-minute basis, he’s been limited by injuries over the last several seasons.

It goes without saying, but you can’t contribute when you’re not on the floor. Often times, he hasn’t been. Durability is the best kind of ability.

With old age encroaching, it’s likely that Wade will be less rather than more available going forward. This is an assumption that, obviously, is baked into the consideration potential Heat free-agent targets will make in the next couple of summers.

All of which points to a problem the Heat will have to solve in the summers of 2015 and 2016.

When they thought they had three superstars, it turns out they had one.

And now that they think they have two, they really have none.

Fortunately, the Heat have the firepower to address this. According to HoopsHype, the only contracts Miami has on the books in 2016-17 belong to Bosh and Josh McRoberts.

That will give the team plenty of spending power to rebuild what it's lost. Given Miami’s track record as a destination city, and Pat Riley’s recruiting prowess, it's a good bet to rebuild it.

But Wade and Bosh, rather than being part of the solution, might be part of the problem for Miami.

Unless otherwise noted, advanced statistics courtesy of Box Score Geeks.