Contender Or Pretender: Are The Miami Heat A Legitimate Threat To The Cavs For East Supremacy?

With their win over the Cavaliers last Friday night (who were minus one player in particular), the Miami Heat vaulted into the number one spot in the Eastern Conference standings. They’ve since fallen to fifth after Wednesday’s loss to Charlotte, but this is essentially the position they hoped to be in at this point in the season: Competing for one of the top seeds in the East and establishing themselves as a legitimate threat to the reigning conference champs.

DIME Contender or Pretender

Less than a year after losing LeBron James to free agency, Pat Riley and the Heat somehow cobbled together a roster that, on paper, boasts a starting five arguably as good or better than anyone in the league.

Much of this is thanks to Riles’ savvy as an executive, but it ultimately took a perfect storm of front-office finagling and right good fortune for Miami to get back into contention so quickly. For starters, the Heat’s defensive anchor, Hassan Whiteside, came out of nowhere last season after bouncing around the D-League and overseas to become one of the most formidable frontcourt defenders in the NBA.

And in a true stroke of luck, the Heat were able to scoop up Goran Dragic from the Phoenix Suns at the trade deadline thanks to his growing discontent over the team’s lack of clarity and vision for an overloaded cast of backcourt players. If all that wasn’t enough, they watched Justise Winslow fall into their lap with the 10th overall pick in last summer’s Draft and convinced Luol Deng to re-up with the team after it initially looked like he was ready to skip town.

With Chris Bosh healthy again after a potentially life-threatening bout with blood clots and Dwyane Wade back in the fold following contentious contract negotiations, the Heat were poised to do big things this season. So, how have they fared so far?

The good news is that they have the second stingiest defense in the entire league behind only the San Antonio Spurs, allowing a mere 96 points per 100 possessions. That shouldn’t come as a surprise, given that they have one of the best rim protectors in the entire league in Whiteside, a solid frontcourt mate in Bosh, and a still-effective wing defender in Deng, not to mention a fledgling rookie in Winslow who has been a big disruptor off the bench. They’re number one overall at defending the three-point line and the sixth best team at defending the rim. They lead the league in blocks at 7.6 per game, and Whiteside is responsible for an astounding 4.5 of those swats.

The bad news is that their offense has been positively mediocre. Their 102.2 points per 100 possessions ranks 13th overall, and they’re currently the fourth slowest team in the league in terms of pace (95.93) despite boasting one of the speediest point guards in all of basketball, who they brought in precisely to help them push the tempo. They rank 25th in assists, which is yet another byproduct of their lack of floor spacing and ball movement.

But perhaps the most disconcerting reason for their low-scoring output is a glaring lack of long-range shooting. They’re the third worst three-point shooting team in the league, behind only the Memphis Grizzlies and the Brooklyn Nets, and they’re 25th overall in attempts per game. That’s not an enviable position to be in, and it’s difficult to imagine them improving much over the course of the season.

Wade is a historically poor three-point shooter, and though Dragic is a career 36 percent shooter from downtown, he’s well below that average so far this season. Deng, likewise, doesn’t move the needle much in this department. It’s not a good sign when Bosh is your best three-point shooter, especially at a meager four attempts per contest. Again, they defend the three well, but it’s a real concern whether they can keep up with the run-and-gun style the rest of the league is trending toward.

And this is where Erik Spoelstra comes into the equation.

The Heat got a taste of super-small ball against the Washington Wizards Monday when Randy Wittman put five guards on the floor in the second half, to which Spoelstra responded by benching Whiteside (who was a perfect 7-of-7 from the field) for the final 14 minutes of the game. The Heat would go on to lose 114-103, but it was how they lost that should give fans pause. Per NBA.com, it was the first time in the history of the franchise that the Heat lost a game while simultaneously shooting 59 percent from the field. They got beat on the offensive boards while still allowing the Wizards to shoot 50 percent from downtown.

Sitting Whiteside against that smaller lineup was an experiment that ultimately backfired, but at this point in the season Spoelstra can afford to take certain risks. His next experiment should be forcing smaller lineups to match up against Whiteside and possibly trying some variation of a zone defense that would allow Whiteside to stay near the paint where he’s most effective as a defender. Spoelstra might also consider just letting Whiteside get his feet wet guarding players out on the perimeter, which is a challenge the big man has said he’s eager to undertake.

The other big question mark is how to get the most out of Dragic. The Dragic/Bosh pick-and-roll potentiality was something the organization and their fans salivated over when Dragic came over in the trade, but was stunted when Bosh was forced to miss the remainder of last season.

At this point in the season, it’s still a work in progress, but they’ve made promising strides of late, especially in their win over the Cavs. Bosh, in fact, has been the second best roll man in the league up to now, scoring on better than 54 percent of those types of possessions. Dragic’s track record suggests he will eventually flourish in those situations as well once they find some consistency together, which could make for a deadly pairing.

But arguably more important than their halfcourt sets will be figuring out how to get Dragic loose in the open court. That’s no easy task, given his backcourt mate’s perpetual need to nurse a pair of rickety old knees. Dragic has looked timid and uncertain at times and has had eight games total where he failed to reach double digits in scoring and nine games where he failed to make a three-pointer.

But going into Wednesday night’s game, Dragic has been looking more and more like his old self. He had 14 points, seven assists, and two steals on 54 percent shooting and 2-of-2 from downtown in a win over the Thunder last week, and 17 points and eight assists on 63 percent from the field, including 3-of-5 from long-range against the Cavs. Despite the loss to Washington, he posted a season-high 20 points and nine assists on nearly 60 percent shooting overall and 50 percent from behind the arc. It’s a trend the Heat hope will continue.

Spoelstra also needs to keep tinkering with his lineups. Simply substituting Gerald Green in for Deng with the starters kicks their field goal percentage from 44.3 up to 50.8 and their 3-point percentage from 26.9 to 40.9. It’s already their third most-used lineup, too, and catapults them out of the red in terms of their overall plus/minus numbers  despite the fact that Green is posting career lows in shooting efficiency. That’s partially because that lineup averages the second most fast-break points of any other configuration. And lo and behold, Spoelstra inserted Green into the starting lineup over Deng on Wednesday night against the Charlotte Hornets.

But it didn’t make much of a difference, as the red-hot Hornets pounced on the Heat early with their uptempo play, ball movement, and three-point shooting. Charlotte went on a 20-6 run during one six-minute span and took a 20-point lead into halftime. They racked up 18 total assists to Miami’s seven and shot 41 percent from downtown, while the Heat managed just 2-of-9 shooting from long-range. In short, all of the Heat’s deficiencies were on full display.

The other big question mark is their overall depth. They currently rank 25th in the NBA in bench scoring, and that shouldn’t come as a surprise because they have a trio of aging and oft-injured players – Amar’e Stoudemire, Udonis Haslem, and Chris Anderson – who rarely, if ever, sniff the court. Aside from Green, Winslow and Tyler Johnson are their only other semi-reliable rotation players, which absolutely isn’t going to cut it come playoff time.

And that’s before you even take into consideration that Wade’s knees have limited him to around 60 games per season in recent years. The Heat seem like a good candidate to make some sort of move by the February trade deadline to try and bolster their bench in anticipation of the playoffs, but that might be too little too late. Or, depending on how things pan out with Whiteside, might they consider dealing him before the deadline, sliding Bosh over to center, and going full-steam ahead into the small-ball era? That might not be as crazy a proposition as it initially sounds.

Despite their early-season resurgence, there are simply too many x-factors and too many problems to address to see them as a serious threat to the Cavs at this point. In the wide-open East, barely a game-and-a-half separates the two seed from the eight seed, so the wild fluctuations in the standings will likely continue on a daily basis before things even out. Regardless, the Heat seem like a good bet to make the playoffs and possibly even secure a very high seed, but it’s very difficult to imagine them overcoming the many obstacles they’ll face on an extended postseason run.

*Statistical support for this post provided by nba.com/stats.