Heat’s New Faces Leading The Way

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The Heat had a clean sweep this week (vs Pistons on Tuesday, @ Cavs on Thursday, and vs Pelicans on Saturday) that helped make up for a bumpy 1-2 road trip. That trip included losing Justise Winslow (concussion) and Derrick Jones Jr. (hip) to injuries that they still have not returned from. The team came together and put together a perfect week against teams that are clearly below this version of the Heat and it was great to see that they were able to do the thing that great teams need to be able to do: beat bad teams.

Let’s dive into what have been some of the major driving forces behind the team’s continued strong play this season.

Jimmy Butler Doing Whatever It Takes

It was always clear from the moment the Heat traded for Butler that he was going to be a leader for this franchise moving forward. What was unclear is how he was going to lead, from both an on-court fit perspective and a personality perspective. What’s clear with Jimmy in regards to his actual play is that he has tailoring his game to what the team needs from him, and the injury issues with Justise Winslow have provided an early trial for that.

Jimmy and Justise have only played 2 games (vs. ATL & @ DEN) together this season, and there has been a noticeable difference in Jimmy’s statistical output in those games compared to the rest of the season. Two things stand out about the games Jimmy has played with Justise: Butler had his highest FT attempts of the season in those games as well as two of his lowest assist games. When playing with Justise, Butler understands he must take on a more assertive, attacking role (hence the jump in FTA) with Winslow responsible for organizing the offense and initiating the action.

Taking the reigns of the offense with Winslow out with a concussion, Jimmy has had two 13-assist games in the last week as he wreaks havoc with his dribble penetration and kick out game. On top of that, Butler continues to wreak havoc defensively:

  • He’s currently 3rd in the NBA in deflections per game, getting his hands on 4 passes per game
  • He’s currently holding opponents to the 3rd lowest field goal percentage (34% FG) in the NBA among high volume defenders*
  • He has 25 steals to 10 fouls called this season, which is an insane stat. Fun Fact: The only active players in the NBA with more steals than fouls are Jimmy Butler and Kawhi Leonard.

He’s shown his ability to rise to the moment of taking on elite offensive players. This season, Jimmy has defended LeBron James, James Harden, Devin Booker, Russell Westbrook, and Luke Kennard for a combined 88 possessions this season where they scored a combined 19 points on 31.6% FG while turning the ball over a combined 10 times, according to NBA Advanced Stats Player Tracking data. James Harden was the only one of those players to arguably have a successful time working against Jimmy, but despite Harden’s efficiency Butler forced him into 5 turnovers.

Here is another fun super-cut of Jimmy showing off his elite hands from the games this week:

Kendrick Nunn Making An Early RoY Case

The tweet above was actually written before the game against the Pelicans, but everything above is still true except that P.J. Washington has now taken a slight lead in Win Shares (1.0 vs Nunn’s 0.9). That in itself is a tremendous resume for a still-way-too-early look into the Rookie of the Year race. I don’t think anyone was expecting that Kendrick Nunn would be the leading the Miami Heat in offensive possessions used 12 games into the season, nor that he would be doing it with the efficiency that he’s shown so far. Nunn set the bar pretty high for himself during his first Heat action during Summer League, and one of the biggest surprises of this season is that he has maintained his impressive output as he’s progressed through pre-season and now into the regular season.

Kendrick is the real deal from a scoring perspective as he has a patience and range to his game that already is allowing him to create serious problems for established defenders around the league:

Nunn is currently using 16% of the Heat’s offensive possessions, the highest usage on the team, and he’s averaging just shy of 1 PPP, which puts in in the 63rd percentile in the NBA according to Synergy Sports. The fact that he’s putting up a 47% FG – 38% 3P – 84% FT shooting line while still maintaining a respectable 1.4 Assist to Turnover ratio shows that Spoelstra was justified in entrusting him with such a large part of the offense. It’s going to be interesting to see if Kendrick can keep up this usage and efficiency throughout the grind of an entire NBA season, but it seems the organization is prepared to give him the opportunity to carry the load.

Duncan Robinson Needs To Play

Robinson may not necessarily be a new face, since he has been in the Heat’s program since they signed as an un-drafted free agent in the summer of 2018, but his impact certainly has been an unexpected development. Robinson gives the Heat a nice dimension as a properly sized wing who is sound defensively and can offer serious upside when his shot is falling. One of the biggest struggles with Duncan from last season going through summer league and pre-season this fall was the inconsistency with his shot-making. That seems to be in the past, as Duncan has found his groove and is now shooting 41% from behind the arc on almost 6 attempts per game.

Duncan-related notables**:

  • He’s 9 of 12 finishing at the rim so far this season, with a lot of that coming on great cutting action on his part.
  • He’s 1 of 8 on jumpers off the dribble and he’s barely taken any mid-range attempts.
  • He has been a flame thrower when left open and a brick layer when he’s been covered in catch and shoot situations:
    • Catch and Shoot – Guarded – 5 of 28 from the field – 0.54 PPP (17th percentile)
    • Catch and Shoot – Unguarded – 19 of 26 from the field – 2.15 PPP (100th percentile)
  • Not only is Duncan getting most of his touches in high efficiency areas, but he’s scoring from behind the arc and at the rim at elite levels through the first 15% of the season:

It’s difficult to say what is going to happen to Duncan’s playing time. Winslow and Jones Jr. are coming back from injury soon and who knows if we see a re-emergence of James Johnson or Dion Waiters. It will be interesting to see how Spoelstra manages that dilemma because Robinson has showed that he provides the shot-making and spacing, combined with solid overall defense, to warrant consistent playing time.

I may have not talked about Bam Adebayo in this article, but he has been absolutely tremendous the past couple weeks. He’s looking more confident offensively and is just showing tremendous stamina with how engaged he is defensively. If the Heat stay towards the top of the East, he should absolutely be in All-Star consideration.

MAILBAG!

Q: 

A: I suppose this is one of the only real downsides of the situation Erik Spoelstra is in right now. He’s got an entire team of players playing well that all deserve to play, with more players that have earned rotation spots still on their way back from injury. Probably the most amazing stat of this start for Miami is this: The Heat have played winning basketball (+/-) with all 12 players that have played at least 50 minutes this season. For context, the 2012-13 Miami Heat only had 11 players with 50+ minutes in positive net ratings. James Johnson is +27 in his 57 minutes and at the bottom is Goran Dragic at +1.6 net rating. There hasn’t been a clear, glaring weakness exploited yet.

Considering there are only so many minutes that can be handed out during a game, it’ll be interesting to see if the Heat FO sees this log-jam of competent players and decides it has enough reasons to justify flipping multiple pieces for a big fish. (Which they do.)

Q:

A: The Heat have a +6.4 net rating when Bam is on the court and a +9.0 net rating when Bam is off the court, so the numbers say they’re better without Bam. The reality is that the reason the Heat have been slightly better without Bam is due to the great play of Chris Silva, with a lot of those minutes against secondary units. Not to mention the last time a rotation Heat player had a net rating as high as +6.4 it is was in the final year of the Big 3, so perspective is important.


Q:

A: Accountability is clearly something that means a lot to Jimmy Butler and that started right after his post signing vacation. When him and other Heat players started putting in practice sessions at 3:30 AM when the rest of the league was still enjoying themselves, you knew things were going to be a little different moving forward. The other variable is the fact that the Heat have SO MANY new faces and those new faces are playing quite a bit. In fact, 46% of the Heat’s player minutes have come from players that either were not on the team or did not contribute last season. What has made this a special start for Miami is that all of these new faces are contributing in a positive way.

Q:

A: In the wise words of the beloved Coach Tony, “Yeah Baby!”.

*minimum 10 defended field goal attempts per game and 5 games played (via www.nba.com/stats)

*all data referenced in this section can be found at Synergy Sports

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