Hidden Advantages the Miami Heat Have in the 2015 NBA Playoffs
If the Miami Heat make the playoffs (which is looking more and more likely with the team currently positioned alone as the No. 7 seed), they aren't exactly going to be favored in their first-round series.
Regardless of whom the Heat end up taking on in their first playoff matchup, they're going to be underdogs—especially if they have the misfortune of landing the Cleveland Cavaliers or Atlanta Hawks, both of whom are mowing through the rest of the league at the moment.
With all that being said, it would be a mistake to completely disregard Miami in the postseason. The team is certainly not a favorite, but it does have a few small advantages that, at the very least, could make it a dangerous opponent when the playoffs roll around.
Dwyane Wade's Resurgence
In the first two months of 2015, a banged-up Wade played some of the worst basketball of his career, averaging 16.9 points, 4.7 assists and 3.8 rebounds per game on just 47.5 percent true shooting and looking nowhere near himself physically.
Wade's usage rate is 34.7 percent, the highest mark he's posted since the 2009-10 season. That's a lot for a 33-year-old guard to handle. It was beginning to look like the wear and tear of the year had finally taken its toll on him.
Apparently not.
Wade's productivity has exploded over the past month. Up to the Heat's March 31 game against the San Antonio Spurs, he was averaging 25.2 points, 4.5 assists and 3.1 rebounds per game on 57.5 percent true shooting on the month. You have to go back to the 2010-11 season to find a month in which he scored with that combination of efficiency and volume. He's been outstanding offensively.
He recently told ESPN's Michael Wallace:
"This is the best I've felt in years right now. You question it. And you try not to question it, like 'Why? Why couldn't I feel like this the last two years?' But it is what it is. I'm feeling like this now, when I need it individually to (carry) more of a load to help this team.
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Wade is not doing anything drastically different in terms of shot selection—he's just hitting more from everywhere on the court.
He's been especially good in the paint. Nearly 44 percent of his offense is coming from within 10 feet, and he's hitting 59 percent of those shots. He's finishing almost everything at the rim (where he's shooting 71 percent, per nbawowy!) and is drawing fouls at a hefty rate, as well.
Wade is great at navigating the no-man's land between turning the corner on a screen and getting to the rim. He's a really patient player and is excellent at teasing defenders out of position with hesitation dribbles or ball fakes. He's also flashed some killer floaters whenever opposing bigs hesitate to step away from the rim to challenge him.
He's clearly been looking to score more recently, and as a result, his assist rate has dipped to 27.7 percent over his past 13 games. But that's no slight on his passing. He's been fantastic at finding cutters in pick-and-roll situations and even better at seeking out corner shooters when he drives to the rim.
Some of the passes he's throwing are absurd. Just look at this cross-court feed to Mario Chalmers.
Miami has less depth than perhaps any other playoff team. Henry Walker is getting 27 minutes a game for goodness' sake! To have any shot at making noise in the playoffs, the team needs brilliant individual performances from its stars. Right now, Wade is delivering that every night.
Unpredictable Lineups
The Heat have been absolutely destroyed by injuries recently. Virtually half of Miami's roster is nursing some kind of injury, and that's not an exaggeration.
In some ways, though, those injuries have given the team one of its biggest advantages: sheer unpredictability. Miami is so thin, it's throwing out just about every lineup imaginable right now.
Over the past month, just one Heat lineup has logged over 50 minutes (a fairly traditional unit featuring Hassan Whiteside at the 5 and Udonis Haslem at the 4). That's it. Only four others have logged over 25 minutes. A whopping 20 (!!) separate five-man combinations have recorded double-digit minutes over Miami's past 15 games.
That's madness.
Just look at some of the groups that head coach Erik Spoelstra is throwing out. The Heat's third-most utilized lineup starts Michael Beasley at center. They're routinely playing units featuring three or four guards and one forward. In a recent game against the Detroit Pistons, Walker (who's 6'6") started the fourth quarter at the 5. He was matched up against a 6'10" Andre Drummond.
Believe it or not, the Heat actually outscored the Pistons 14-6 in the four minutes during which that group was on the floor. Drummond scored three points and snagged an easy offensive rebound, but he was totally clueless as to how to defend Walker on the other end.
This one sequence sums up how difficult it can be for teams to defend Miami's patchwork lineups.
Detroit has no clue how to rotate on this play. None. Tayshaun Prince actually does a decent job sticking with Wade (who acts as a screening big), but Drummond is clearly uncomfortable matching up with a corner shooter, and Jodie Meeks wasn't prepared to close out on Walker after allowing dribble penetration.
These are the types of awkward rotations that the Heat are forcing opponents into every night.
Of course, it's worth pointing out that Miami has to undergo similarly uncomfortable rotations when it plays such weird lineups. Walker is just as out of place defending Drummond in the post as Drummond is checking Walker on the wing. A lot of the Heat's small lineups have been huge busts, and many (if not most) are getting torched on the defensive end.
But even so, playing such creative lineups opens up positional mismatches. And though those mismatches run both ways, they at least give Miami obvious holes to attack. It's simply a way to level the playing field (at least a little bit) against deeper, more talented teams.
At the moment, Miami is only playing its super-small groups because of injuries. There's a chance—and maybe a good one—that those lineups will be shelved if the Heat get healthy. It takes a lot of guts to throw Walker out to defend Timofey Mozgov in a meaningful playoff game.
Still, unpredictability has become a real weapon for Miami. The team shouldn't play its weirder groups all the time—not when the roster is healthy, anyways—but, in small doses, they could be a big help come the postseason.
All statistics accurate as of March 31, 2015 and courtesy of NBA.com/Stats or Basketball-Reference.com unless stated otherwise.
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