South Beach Leftorium: Miami Heat Have All the Southpaws
MIAMI — Erik Spoelstra has a soft spot for southpaws.
"I like lefties," the Miami Heat head coach said, "but that's not why we have all of them."
All of them—he could not have put it a better way.
Lefties make up roughly 12 percent of the world's population. A normal 15-man NBA roster, then, should feature just one or two. The 2015-16 campaign actually trends a little below average, as only 39 of the 423 players to log a minute are left-handed (9.2 percent).
But the Heat have been collecting southpaws like coupons for the holiday shopping season. They broke training camp with five: Chris Bosh, Justise Winslow, Goran Dragic, Tyler Johnson and Josh McRoberts. They added a sixth, Beno Udrih, during the early-November trade that moved Mario Chalmers to the Memphis Grizzlies.
That's a whopping 40 percent of the roster who, in the view of this right-handed scribe, do things backward. There haven't been this many lefties under the same roof since the door-busting Black Friday crowd stormed Ned Flanders' Leftorium:
For the sake of comprehensiveness, not all six are full-fledged southpaws.
"I'm kind of a fake lefty," McRoberts told Bleacher Report. "I'm really right-handed.
"When I was a little kid, I shot kind of with both hands, so they just made me left-handed when I was young. I've been shooting left-handed ever since, but everything else in life I do right-handed."
And not everyone plays like a typical lefty.
"I go right more than I go left," Bosh said.
But still, seeing six lefty shooters on the same lineup only adds to the intrigue surrounding this team. Because they can collectively man all five positions, Spoelstra can roll out all-lefty units.
He's done just that eight times already with two different quintets.
| Udrih, Johnson, Winslow, McRoberts, Bosh | 2 | 14 | 110.8 | 87.9 | Plus-22.9 |
| Dragic, Johnson, Winslow, McRoberts, Bosh | 6 | 13 | 64.4 | 101.7 | Minus-37.3 |
As those numbers can attest, the evidence is either inconclusive or nonexistent that the lefty look comes with any on-court perks.
"I would like to think it could be an advantage in some kind of way, but I'm not sure," Bosh said.
Given how advanced scouting is at the NBA level, players with a dominant left hand aren't sneaking up on anyone. There might be some reactions where years of predominantly guarding right-handed hoopers results in a defender shading the wrong side, but big league coaches know where guys like to go and how they'll try to get there.
That doesn't mean, however, that the southpaw surge lacks significance.
For Johnson, a 23-year-old sophomore, having so many similarly unique players around him has been an effective teaching tool.
"I can learn a lot of things from guys like Beno and Goran, because they go left just as much as me," Johnson said. "They know all the little tricks."
Like leveraging a defender's natural instincts against him, perhaps.
"Everything we do, we do on the opposite side," Dragic said. "Maybe it's a little bit tougher for defenders."
For Spoelstra, who's helping to rebrand the Heat in the post-LeBron James era, it's something that helps this group stand apart.
"It's kind of cool," he said. "They take pride in it."
It is unique. Historical in a playful way even, as Tim Reynolds of the Associated Press noted:
It's also a little confusing.
The Heat attempt the fifth-most threes from the left corner in the league (3.7 per game). But no one has had more trouble with that shot, as they're converting just 16.9 percent of those attempts.
Miami is even more active from the right corner, launching from that spot 4.3 times a night (second overall). It's also lethal from that spot, hitting 44.1 percent (ninth).
"No matter what, if you're left- or right-handed, guys have their tendencies," Bosh said. "You're either going to go one of two ways."
Maybe this is just a fun quirk, then.
Truth be told, it might not even qualify as that much for Slovenians Dragic and Udrih. Somehow, the heavy-lefty lineups feel sort of like business as usual for them.
"Our national team has seven or eight [lefties]," Dragic said. "Maybe it's something in our food or water back home. Everybody is lefty there."
The Heat locker room hasn't tilted that far to the left yet, but it's clearly leaning that direction.
What does all of this lefty love mean? In reality, probably nothing more than a funny coincidence.
But probing around on the subject revealed a few truths.
One, Miami's lefties are acutely aware of how rare their collaboration is. Each wore a smile while discussing the southpaw collective, and most made it a point to mention that the all-lefty lineups have seen the floor.
Two, there's a limit on how deep the franchise's lefty love goes.
"It is not true we will be bringing [former point guard, current Heat radio broadcaster] John Crotty out of retirement to add another left-handed point guard," Spoelstra said.
Lastly, the link between lefties is a powerful bond.
"We gotta stand up for the lefties out there, man," a smiling Bosh said. "Kids gotta know that we exist. There's some left-handed kid right now in the park that knows he has a chance [because of us]."
All quotes obtained firsthand. Statistics used courtesy of Basketball-Reference.com and NBA.com and current through games played Nov. 30, 2015.
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