The Culture Report: Butler's Best Statistical Game, Trade Rumours Thoughts, Vucevic's Fit
Welcome to The Culture Report! A Weekly report rounding up everything that you need to know about the Miami Heat to get up to speed on what’s been going on. This will be through “What’s Been Heating Up” where we go through all of the games and main takeaways. There will be additional breakdowns and pieces either on Simply Ballin or AUCH that dives in deeper into other topics and questions compiled here with additional thoughts. Following that is a Weekly Ramble to share any unscripted, unplanned thoughts, before going into The Heatle Things where it’s everything in between + compiling any other best Heat work from other creators.
For this week, we’re going through:
The one game against the Pistons
Butler’s performance with his triple double
Trade rumours
Nikola Vucevic’s fit
Is there any move that makes sense to do?
What’s Been Heating Up
We’re starting off the report by going through thoughts from the games, a bunch of film and Xs & Os, and any newsworthy topics that arise during the week. This will include going through an individual’s performance, key reasons why they won/lost, and a handful of little takeaways. If you missed a game or if you want to dive into some of the main takeaways, this is for you.
124-125 OT LOSS vs Detroit Pistons Thoughts
Another roller-coaster game. Another Pistons loss coming in overtime to the last second — this time, though, there weren’t any Chris Webber timeout moments.
But regardless of what happened in the last few seconds of the game, it shouldn’t have come to that. They shouldn’t have been down 19 points multiple times to the Pistons that was without Tobias Harris, Jaden Ivey, and Isaiah Stewart later in the game. This was already a shorthanded Pistons team.
This was a struggle on both ends of the floor at different points in the game.
The Heat couldn’t get anything going from deep, as they shot 12/43(27.9%). Tyler Herro had 23 points on 9/25 shooting(5/8 2pt, 4/17 3pt). Terry Rozier, Kevin Love, and Jaime Jaquez Jr combined for 1/9 from 3pt. A lot of the looks were open to wide open by good shooters in rhythm.
But at times it was shots that the defense could’ve lived with because of who shot it or how it was shot. A contested, late clock, off-the-dribble 3pt is a decent look to give up instead of anything easy.
They also did make up for it by scoring 62 points in the paint. With their poor shooting, that was needed. They ended up shooting 18/24 at the rim, and we can think Jimmy Butler for that as he had 10 of those 18, which we’ll get to shortly. Add in a handful of drives in transition and five solid cuts, they were able to put up points to keep themselves in the game.
That started with Butler, mainly in the second quarter where he had 14 points on 4/5 shooting and 6/6 from ft.
But the reason they were also in the game all came down to Tyler Herro scoring 13 points on 5/9 shooting in the third and making some damn tough shots to bring them back and force overtime:
In overtime, they also got quality looks, which gave them an eight-point lead with a couple of minutes left. Robinson had two buckets that made something happen in late-clock situations. Butler added another two, one that could’ve been a potential game-winner. But then down by one followed a 3pt pull-up miss from Herro, a Butler missed a layup but with a foul on the floor, and a potential game-winner miss from Herro.
The defense was also equally the issue until the fourth quarter. By the time the Pistons were up 19 points with 8:05 remaining, they had scored 40 points in the paint on 33 shots but on top of that, shot 16/27(59.3%) from 3pt. That was the game. That was the reason why they were down 19. Despite forcing 17 turnovers(19.1% TOV rate), they still had a 121.6 ORTG because they had 71.1% TS. Their 3s was basically it. That was the reason why they did what they did. That also showed up in overtime with Tim Hardaway Jr making 3 straight 3s:
But I do want to touch on that before the THJ 3-point eruption, since getting a 19-point lead, they scored nine points on 21 shots and had an 18.5% TOV. They had a 66.7 ORTG with 36.2% TS. The Heat’s defense made them so uncomfortable and without the 3s falling, they had nothing else.
In the end, they shouldn’t have been in this position. They also shouldn’t have needed that kind of performance from Butler either. This was a frustrating loss.
Butler’s Best Statistical Regular Season Game With the Heat
According to Basketball Reference’s game score, Jimmy Butler had a GmSc of 44.5. This is the highest GmSc with the Heat and the second highest in his career — his highest came in 2017 with the Bulls against the Hornets where he had 52/12/6 on 15/24 shooting and 21/22 ft.
This was also his 13th triple-double with the Heat, as well as a career-high 19 rebounds that had him grab seven offensive ones. He stuffed the stat sheet. It really is a shame that they couldn’t pull it off.
When Butler looks to be aggressive, he still is one of those players that you just can’t stop from getting to the rim. The Heat had a rough scoring stretch(5 points in 5 minutes) before he checked in and took over. All that was is Butler's PNR and isolations that got him easy drives to the rim
The first time he scored, it was a Butler-Duncan PNR with him rejecting the screen and going straight to the rim. Hardaway Jr did make the rotation but it just doesn’t matter. That’s what you’ll see from the 0:40s mark in the second quarter. It’s rejecting those PNRs and getting those drives in. No one was able to stay in front or be a deterrence at the rim.
But he also did his damage finding opportunities to clean things up. He had timely cuts in transition. Those timely cuts also resulted in being in the right place at the right time which gave him easy putbacks.
The potential game-winner:
This came after a late clock possession with Adebayo having to create something. Butler was there to clean it up.
Some of his passing made a significant impact too:
He was drawing the defense to be rotating early because they were anticipating his drives, so it’s an easy swing. If he got his drives, it forced the initial rotation and that opened up a pass to Smith on a baseline cut at the 0:15 mark. He also had post-up possessions that resulted in a double and creating looks that way.
This was one of the better performances from Butler in a while. Picking defenses apart with him in control and being able to punish them still off the ball.
Heat Check
Here is a weekly ramble where it’s me simply ranting about the Heat and giving a “heat” check on them. No plan. No script. There’s not much analysis or breakdowns here. It’s me giving my thoughts and opinions on the state of the team and where I’m at with them. Plus some additional thoughts I may have that could be interesting or anything newsworthy to add.
So, there’s only been one game this week. I don’t know what went into making this schedule for the Heat with all of the long breaks that they’ve had. They are tied with the 76ers for least games played so far with 24.
But even without the games, there’s still been plenty of news going around to discuss, a lot of which revolves around trades. And all of those potential rumors have also opened a bunch of questions for this team now and going forward.
There’s been so much already about Butler and everything going around his situation with Shams doubling on his reports, Bernie(Butler’s agent) going back and forth on Twitter, and Butler just continuing to do his thing on the court.
I went on a little rant this week about that whole situation that you can find here:
Right now, I don’t think there’s any scenario where the Heat trade him. It does feel like whatever happens later during the off-season, whether he will walk away for nothing, do a sign-and-trade, or bring him back to whatever deal he wants, they’ll be comfortable with whatever scenario arises.
The more likely scenarios are ones that continue to help the team to compete now, even if it comes down to trading Butler, the goal will likely be prioritizing win-now players, which would certainly be a choice — one that I’d wholeheartedly disagree with.
With all that in mind, let’s look at some of the rumors they’ve been involved in.
Vucevic trade & fit with Adebayo
The most recent one has been around Nikola Vucevic. There are many reasons why I’d just scrap that completely. The first one has to do with Vucevic himself.
He is having one of the best seasons of his career across the board. He’s averaging 22.7 points, 10.5 rebounds, and 3.5 assists per 75 possessions on 66.9% eFG and 68.9% TS — both are career highs with 57.3% eFG and 59.4% TS being his next highest.
His metrics also show one of the top seasons. He has a +3.2 EPM, which is in the 93rd percentile, just a notch higher than Kevin Durant! This has been a really good season at face value.
But there are the defensive concerns, the fit with Adebayo, and how much of his stats are legit and not just a small sample on a bad team.
Here are some defensive on/off stats for Vucevic in Chicago:
2025: 119.4 on / 112.0 off
2024: 118.2 / 114.4
2023: 114.9 / 108.0
2022: 114.5 / 113.7
2021: 114.9 / 111.8
That’s a red flag. Yes, he would be coming to the Heat but I doubt how much the system and Adebayo can carry that.
But even then, the whole fit with Adebayo I can’t see. There’s this constant conversation that comes up time and time again that the Heat need size and the way to do that is by moving Adebayo to the “four”.
I still don’t know what that even means. Adebayo doesn’t have the skillset to reliably be anything other than the big involved in actions. He will still and should be as big as the hub. He should be the one who still defends the PNRs. He should still be the one who is used as the screener. That’s the way to maximize him — we’ve seen what he was like to start the year as a spacer.
So, what would Vucevic do? Will he just be the spot up guy? Is he just placed in the corner? He’s third in PNR as a roll man with 4.7 possessions and takes almost 28% of his offense. He’s also adding 3.2 post ups, which is 19% of his offense. That’s 47% of his offense involved in the actions that will take up the same space as Adebayo. That’s also what Adebayo’s most common way of getting points are. 10% of his possessions are on cuts, that again brings up the issue of fit.
Vucevic would do great offensively with Butler. If the shooting would hold, too, that would just be a much, much more deadlier version of what Love has provided. There’s the shooting, where he’s scoring 1.25 points per possession on spot ups. But would also the element of a deadly pick and pop, where he has a 64.0% eFG as a roll man that scores 1.26 points. The vision would be there offensively if we don’t consider Adebayo.
But I doubt Vucevic would be coming off the bench, even at this point in his career. And there’s also a very likely chance that he looks to revert back to normal ranges. At the end of the day, this would just feel like a 2k trade.
Is there any move worth doing?
That also made me wonder if there is any move to be made that is somewhat realistic and worth doing. The Heat don’t have many assets to go about offering and the money to match.
There’s Rozier and Robinson as the most likely money needed to make anything work. And then, there’s either Jovic or Jaquez to maybe entice a team to take on Rozier.
That’s one of the big issues here. How much value does even Rozier have to get a quality role player that would fit better? Is he and Jaquez enough to get a Dorian Finney-Smith? That would be one trade that would make the Heat better but is that also a player that you want to give up an asset for right now.
I’m against any kind of win now trades but I know that is definitely something the Heat are likely to do. But then I still don’t know what potential moves are even out there. Ideally, you get someone like Cam Johnson, but again, are you that confident in this team that you’d offer the remaining assets that you’re already lacking?
Because that just sets you up in a worse spot to transition into a different build or era, whether they’ll be looking to compete or not.
Also, as far as Duncan, I’ve seen trade packages that included him, particularly for Vucevic. Now, Duncan has been one of the more important players again.
Here are some on/off numbers for the offense:
Duncan on: 119.3
Duncan off: 112.2
Duncan/Bam on: 119.5
Bam on, Duncan off: 113.6
Duncan/Bam/Herro on: 124.6
Bam/Herro on, Duncan off: 112.2
That’s a big difference, particularly with Bam and Herro on. If you’re looking to compete, there’s not going to be many moves to replace that high volume, elite off-ball shooter. Whatever upgrade it is elsewhere, is it enough to offset everything else that Duncan adds with the shooting, fit, chemistry, and gravity?
Unless the deal is for a first that gets flipped for a better player elsewhere, I just don’t see any other way of moving on from Duncan and getting better this year.
Looking ahead
So, where does that leave the Heat going forward? Right now, they should stay put. I don’t see a deal in the horizon that will make them better enough to warrant moving whatever assets they have.
The team is right now rolling, despite a loss to the short-handed Pistons. But they are also 9th on offense and 11th on defense, per Cleaning the Glass, though they are still only 11th in net rating with +2.7.
Looking at other teams that have a top-10 offense and defense:
Cavaliers: 2nd Off / 8th Def / 2nd Net with +11.2
Celtics: 3rd / 9th / 3rd with +10.8
Mavericks: 4th / 10th / 7th with +6.6
Grizzlies: 5th / 4th / 4th with +10.6
Thunder: 7th / 1st / 1st with +11.8
That’s a big difference and that is what matters more. They have certainly been figuring stuff out and have looked much better than at the start of the season. I was pretty lower on them even in the regular season, and they’ve been showing out, though, I’m still cautious for their ceiling in the playoffs.
They’re going to have a busy schedule. They have six games left in 2024 with the Thunder, Magic, Nets, Magic, Hawks, and Rockets. I’m highlighting all of the games outside of the Nets.
I want to see how they will fare against a switchy defense and ones that have those wing defenders everywhere.
Right now, though, it’s just making sure to keep afloat and not lose any games that they shouldn’t. This is exactly how you end up in the playoffs. These bad losses in December will come back to bite you when the race is close.
The Heatle Things
To end the report, here are some random tidbits that could be stats, lineups, plays, actions, or anything that I found fun, as well as compiling some other content that I found interesting.
Tyler Herro has made the NBA’s MVP ladder!
Herro has been on one when it comes to shooting. Out of 25 players with at least 4 pull up 3s, he’s 4th in % with 41.4%. Out of 24 players with at least 5 catch and shoot 3s, he’s 9th in % with 41.5%. Here’s a tweet that has all of the points added on all kinds of jumpshots. Herro is 5th with 55.5, a notch behind Stephen Curry at 56.5.
There’s plenty of talk about the Heat’s rankings but competition matters. The Heat have a 115.6 ORTG(113.7 average) and 112.9 DRTG(113.7). But against top 10 offenses(8 games), their defense is 119.2(118.5 average vs top 10 teams). And against top 10 defenses(5 games), their offense is 105.8(108.9 average). They have performed below average against better competition