Erik Spoelstra Should Absolutely Be ‘Tickled’ About Goran Dragic And Chris Bosh

Goran Dragic, Chris Bosh
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The Miami Heat are overflowing with talent. If basketball was played on paper or name recognition alone, they would be something close to title favorites. But nuance of the game is sweeping; great individual players don’t make a great team unless a coach can find a way to seamlessly fit those puzzle pieces together.

Miami still has a long way to go toward achieving that arduous task. Even so, Erik Spoelstra already seems quite confident that the most basic of NBA plays will set his team up for success.

Goran Dragic is a devastating penetrator. He shot a league-high 57.1 percent on drives during his time with the Heat last season, and generated 12.3 points per game for Miami on those forays to the paint – a top seven mark.

There may not be an interior player in basketball who’s a better stand-still shooter than Chris Bosh. He made an elite 46.6 percent of his catch-and-shoot attempts in 2014-15, a mark that includes 3-pointers. And the lefty is no slouch from beyond the arc in that scenario, either. He shot 40.1 percent on spot-up treys last season, the league’s highest percentage among bigs.

And here’s what probably made Spoelstra’s pleasure so noticeable: Dragic and Bosh put up those awesome numbers without one another. Just a day after Pat Riley swung for the fences by trading for the Phoenix Suns’ disgruntled point guard, the Heat’s star big man was lost for the season due to the discovery of blood clots on his lung. But Bosh will be a full participant when Miami opens training camp next week, and is already forecasting big things for his team – as long as it can develop the synergy necessary to make good on all that talent.

Finding that continuity, however, takes time. There’s a reason newly-constructed teams rarely win the league’s biggest prize in June. Until the Heat can forge it, Dragic-Bosh ball-screens figure to be Spoelstra’s most workable set. How does the opposition defend a play involving arguably the game’s best penetrator in addition to its best frontcourt shooter? There’s no easy answer – every strategy yields options a defense would rather not surrender.

Spoelstra’s basketball mind, though, extends much further beyond that first action. He’s not only excited by what it will do for Dragic and Bosh individually, but how it will bend the defense to create opportunities for their teammates. Offense is rarely about the first means of attack; ones that stem from it normally glean the greatest chance for success.

And with Dragic and Bosh, Miami seems to have found that crucial starting point.

(Via nba.com/stats)

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