Playing Together, Playing Efficiently

It was a familiar sight. Thrilling for all those watching it happen, but still a performance the likes of which LeBron James has offered up before. And it began inconspicuously, with James coming off a screen and hitting a jumper assisted by Mario Chalmers.

Then this happened:

James Fadeaway Jump Shot: Made.
James Jump Shot: Made.
James 3PT Shot: Made.
James 3PT Shot: Made.
James 3PT Shot: Made.

Over a four-minute stretch of the third quarter, with no misses in between, James completely took over Miami’s eventual 120-98 victory over the San Antonio Spurs. He shot off the dribble, he shot stepping back and he shot falling backwards, but he kept making shots. And with both James and Dwyane Wade, that’s something Miami is used to.

But in the past, it hasn’t always been a good thing.

Yes, nobody is ever going to complain about an elite scorer getting hot. Even if the points come from generally inefficient jumpers and they tend to lead to a pretty poor look early in the shot clock – otherwise known as the Heat Check – points are still points, there are intangible benefits to dominating stretches and as Erik Spoelstra has said in the past, he’s OK with the looks as long as they’re in-rhythm vs. hero shots born of desperation.

The issue was often with what came after those stretches, and what would happen to the offense. After the flamethrower ran out of fuel, players would get caught ball-watching, off-ball movement would cease and execution would fall a step or two slow. For stretches sometimes even longer than the scorer was hitting shots, the offense would reach utter stagnation.

“Last year I think we struggled to weather those storms where we had a lot of isolation basketball, we could never recover from it,” said James Jones, who started in place of Dwyane Wade. “It kind of just over-powered us and just took on a life of its own. Down the stretch we ended up shooting a lot of contested jumpers or one-dribble jump shots.”

This time, in one of the best examples of the growing cohesiveness and maturity of this core of players, there was never so much of a hint of offensive issues. After all of James’ dominance, Miami’s offense began generating even better opportunities than before. The result was a 71-35 second half, with 15 of 21 non-LeBron field-goals assisted.

Even better, Miami’s second-half offensive efficiency (points per 100 possessions) of 160.2 was the third-highest after halftime of any team, in the regular season or playoffs, since the beginning of the 2010-11 season, and easily Miami’s most efficient half with the current core. Though the HEAT earned a number of looks in the first half, contributing to an offensive rating over 100, the team still jumped 53.8 efficiency points in the second half, their biggest halftime leap by more than 25 points per 100 possessions.

In other words, Miami not only had one of the best second halves in the past 18 months, but had it’s single greatest in-game offensive adjustment over the same span.

Is it sustainable? Not at all. Was the defense holding San Antonio to 35 percent shooting after halftime equally as important? Absolutely. But being able to balance overwhelming individual performances with consistent team execution is a huge development.

Because, in the midst of those performances, the HEAT still managed possessions like this:

Once the ball is inbounded, Miami overloads the left side of the court to clear space for James, who had just hit four unassisted jumpers in a row. When Joel Anthony comes across the paint to set a pick, and the screen gives James space in the right corner, the possessions appears to be on the direct path to another jumper.

Notice the defensive positioning when James picks up his dribble. Every single defender has his head turned to James and the defense is sucked into the lane, leaving Chalmers open on the wing.

So, instead of taking the jumper, James finds Chalmers. Three points.

Two unassisted jumper from James later, the same thing happened:

“It’s team trust,” James said. “A year helped that. Everyone, no matter how many shots I hit tonight or the shots that I was hitting, everyone still felt in rhythm. Rio was able to his some shots, CB was hitting some shots, Mike Miller hit shots. Everyone was staying in rhythm, and that’s just chemistry, the camaraderie that we’ve had in the last year and coming into this year has really helped us.”

“The other guys got involved after that and that was good to see that our maturity after that, even LeBron, that we started to execute and now the other started to get involved and we took advantage of it,” Spoelstra said.

The HEAT are playing faster than last year. They are executing far better in the half-court than they were 13 games into last season. And they still have oodles of offense-dominating talent. What they showed against the Spurs wasn’t just incredible shooting, the HEAT showed an ability to keep those things from being independent of one another.

“We turned a corner yesterday,” Chris Bosh said. With LeBron, he did go on one of his tears, he can get hot, very streaky sometimes and he hit about four or five threes in a row. You know, that’s where we got points where we were stagnant [last year]. But after he missed that one shot it was like, ‘Alright, the heat streak is over, let’s get into something, let’s get moving.’

“It’s great to ride the wave while it’s going, but after that we have to execute and make sure we get the best shot possible.”

This smooth transition from isolation to execution is new. This is something few teams fully grasp. This is something that could matter months from now.