The Culture Report: Herro's Most Impressive Scoring Game, Needing to go for the Lottery, Wiggins & Adebayo
A breakdown of Herro's efficient 36 points vs the Hawks, a discussion on needing to go for the pick & some talk on the offense from Wiggins and Adebayo
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.
Heat Check
Here is where I give a “heat” check on the team through a weekly ramble that’s me simply ranting about the Heat and a handful of other newsworthy topics that occurred throughout the week or trends to talk about. This can be a quick, brief discussion on multiple smaller topics that should be noted for a deeper look at in the future.
So, the Heat have won three straight — that is just the fourth time this season they reached this streak. Granted, it did come against the Charlotte Hornets, a Stephen Curry-less Golden State Warriors and the Atlanta Hawks. On the flip side, though, those are the caliber of teams they have lost to either way.
The Hornets game went down as it should have the last time they faced each other. This finally snapped the 10-game losing streak. It was one hell of a game from Andrew Wiggins, who scored 42 points on 10/13 2pt, 6/8 3pt, and 4/7 ft with 5 assists. Tyler Herro helped with 29 points on 9/14 2pt, 2/5 3pt, and 5/5 ft. Although the Hornets did somehow have a lead early in the first half as big as 12, the Heat took control to finish the half and they never looked back in the second half.
Simply have taken care of business.
Following that was one of the more anticipated games of the season because who wasn’t looking forward to Jimmy Butler coming back to Miami? Watching him play in Golden State didn’t hit the same until he played against the Heat. That’s when it was like “damn, he really is on a different team now”.
Unfortunately for Butler, this probably wasn’t the outcome that he may have wanted. It was a blow out win for the Heat, as they dominated on both sides of the floor. Everyone did their part offensively, and that’s why they shot 17/25 from 3pt(68.0%). This was also as much of a defensive game as anything else. The Warriors pulled the Heat, as they didn’t even crack 90 points and shot sub 40%.
This definitely felt like a game that everyone wanted to make sure that they won.
And they capped off the week with an impressive win against the Hawks, behind Herro’s 36 points on 9/11 2pt, 4/6 3pt, and 6/7 ft with 4 assists. Another game where they had absurd shooting, going 18/33(54.5%), and had contributions from Herro, Davion Mitchell, Haywood Highsmith, and Alec Burks all making 3 or more 3s.
Considering how the Heat have played recently, this really was an impressive win, especially considering how they were answering. They fell behind quickly in the first quarter but regained the lead immediately. The Hawks were looking to make a push, but the Heat didn’t let that take over.
With all of that said, one of the first thought I had was to check Tankathon. Yes, that is kind of shameless but blame the way the league is set up.
There are takes that hoping for your team to get more lottery balls makes you less of a fan and I get that.
Rooting for your team to lose can be looked at a certain way, especially because it would mean that the players would have to be bad. Looking at it in that way, it does feel kind of shitty to want players on the court to have subpar performances.
But it also wouldn’t be the end of the world if the opponent is just better or if the coach waves the white flag sooner. If they can ethically lose because they got outmatched, so be it. I wouldn’t be mad.
And those situations arise because of how the league works. It would be great to have the idea that you always need to look to win because that is the only way to get better. That’s not always the case and there are certain circumstances that can happen at times that would benefit the team more to lose in the short term.
That’s another point about all of this. This isn’t embracing a general approach to tanking or selling out the whole core to go through 82 games focusing on losing.
But with the Heat in this specific situation, there’s almost no benefit to winning more games, unless the team really does want to just get into the playoffs, which then having home court in the play-in or having two chances instead of one is the deciding factor.
There’s also the deciding whether they want to give up a couple of unprotected picks next year or just one, which is likely the reason for the push now.
A counterargument, though is that this will likely be the highest they pick in a draft in a while. If they go down the route of making the playoffs to avoid sending out more picks in the future, then I don’t see them being worse than they are now. Having a potential 8th pick is likely going to be the best they’ll get and that could change a lot for them.
I know they have drafted well in the past in mid to late first, but the likelihood of hitting on such high-potential talent decreases as you go further down. And it’s not just about the Heat’s approach to drafting, but getting a higher pick also makes it more likely that you won’t get beat by a team before you.
In 2017, they missed the playoffs and took Adebayo with the last pick of the lottery. But this was also a very fortunate outcome that happened in spite of their goal. They looked to compete and turn the season around.
Imagine, if they didn’t have Dion Waiters suffering a season-ending injury and would have racked up a handful of wins toward the end of the season. Their last three losses came down to a single possession. With some random luck being in play, they easily could’ve ended up with those three wins and had a 44-28 record and that would’ve meant selecting at the 20th pick instead of 14th. I’m sure Adebayo would’ve been taken then.
This also isn’t the biggest issue this year because they won’t have the pick in the first place if they make the playoffs! This isn’t still hoping that they could get another steal of the draft. The choice is simple have the likely 8th, 9th, 10th, or 11th pick or nothing.
I think that reward is worth the potential risk of having to send out picks in the future, especially with how the draft has been talked about.
Unfortunately, that scenario is beginning to look less likely considering the schedule that they have. They have basically a cakewalk to end the season. The other teams in the lottery are also ones that would prioritize getting better odds, too. They’re going to get hurt from both directions.
The only thing left is to just to let this pan out how it’s going to be.
Herro’s most impressive scoring night
Herro against the Hawks had arguably his most impressive scoring night, considering how he did it because he has had higher scoring games with three 40pt games and he also has had games almost as efficient as he did.
But again, what made it impressive is how he got those looks within the offense and how he approached attacking out of those actions.
Here’s the whole highlights of his scoring:
There was the usual shot-making on those pull-ups that he usually loves, but I want to focus on these plays:
These are the looks that he got attacking without the ball or even without having the play be run for him to get the ball.
There was a catch-and-shoot off a two-man action with Burks. As Burks draws the defense on the drive, Herro does a good job finding that space by slightly moving to the corner. A small movement, but it was that move that created that opening in the first place.
He had one more C&S possession, which came from Adebayo being doubled in the post and leaving a wide-open Herro one pass away. That was certainly a choice to leave him open.
I also loved the decision on the back cut that originally looked to be a stagger for him with Anderson as the hub. He hit the defender with a good fake, jab, and cuts to the rim. Those are the kinds of reads that need to happen more often with the way he gets overplayed as a shooter.
But it’s the rest of the looks that I enjoyed the most. It’s those attacks off the catch that resulted in drives to the rim. That was the most impressive part.
The first was being in the action that had him attack as a secondary option against a moving defense. But then it’s him not settling for a bad shot, killing a possession, or attacking for a pull up. Instead, it all looked like an intentional attack to get to the rim off the catch and beating closeouts.
The last clip was one of the more impressive decisions to quickly snatch the pass and go. Not thinking about anything else. Catch the ball and attack. That had Mann unable to recover and it’s attacking a late defense rotating, which results in a foul.
Three of those attacks off the catch had the defense caught off guard and resulted in a trip to the line. That’s three actions off-ball getting the most efficient shot at the line.
Combine that with a handful of solid shot-making in the process, this was easily the most impressive scoring night for him all season.
Do you really need Wiggins’ offense?
I had talked about Wiggins' offense recently and how it has been very pick-and-roll or isolation-heavy, which has been a drastic change in how he played with the Warriors. And with the recent high-scoring games from him, that topic came up on my timeline again.
For me, these games don’t really change the view on the way his getting offense isn’t ideal even considering the team context.
Not specific to the Heat, but there’s always this idea that players have to play above their roles in very different ways if the team doesn’t have reliable, effective on-ball options.
If a team doesn’t have a good number one or two, that just means the rest of the players simply have to be the ones taking those tough shots and be the source of the offense on-ball because that’s obviously the best alternative.
That has also been a topic surrounding Herro last year, especially in the time that he was out.
Again, this view isn’t specific to the Heat but my whole take on that is if a team doesn’t have great offensive options to be running the offense on-ball, the alternative isn’t to get average players doing so at high volume. The offense doesn’t have isolation and PNR to bad players or nothing, especially when the former is also equally as bad but it takes up a high portion of the offense.
No one on this team should really dominate the ball and take a high volume of shots and others should be pushed to do so just because there’s no other option.
Now, looking at Wiggins specifically, here’s the Heat’s offense post-ASB, with:
Wiggins on: 111.1
Wiggins off: 114.4
Wiggins not playing(5 games): 113.2
Wiggins not playing but with Herro/Bam on: 117.1
Wiggins/Herro/Bam on: 111.0
Looking further into it here are some individual’s usage rate with Wiggins on the court, Wiggins not playing, Herro/Bam on with no Wiggins, and with all Wiggins/Herro/Bam on:
Wiggins: 27.9% / - / - / 25.6%
Herro: 26.3% / 29.8% / 27.4% / 26.3%
Adebayo: 20.4% / 27.3% / 24.5% / 20.2%
Mitchell: 13.0% / 14.7% / 14.1% / 12.1%
Ware: 14.4% / 15.5% / 12.8% / 13.1% /
Duncan: 15.1% / 19.6% / 22.2% / 14.4%
Highsmith: 9.5% / 11.2% / 9.7% / 10.0%
Immediately, the first thing that shows up is with Wiggins on or playing, Adebayo drops considerably. There’s also a decrease in role players like Duncan.
As talked about last week on how we haven’t been able to see three of them having great games together, and I mentioned that it’s how they all get their offense. You have three players getting their offense primarily through on-ball actions. And with none being the kind of players that generate rim pressure or are elite passing, that makes those actions less effective for others.
Without Wiggins, you’re taking one mouth away to feed and are able to redistribute it in different ways that doesn’t require isolations or post ups.
That’s why I ask, do we really need that kind of offense from Wiggins? Yes, this team doesn’t have Stephen Curry, but that also shouldn’t be an excuse to lean into the other direction heavily.
On that point, I also had this take:
Roster construction can make role players worse but that’s only if they’re in that role in the first place. This applies to players like Duncan, Strus, Gabe, and Caleb having a worse impact as role players on worse teams. We can see that with other teams that have good role players but are on bad teams(Hello, a lot of the Nets in the past).
But roster construction shouldn’t make players go completely outside of those roles to that degree. That’s where I don’t see the roster as an argument that a player plays in such a way because of it.
Bam’s recent quiet two games
So, in this three-game win streak, Adebayo had 10 shots against the Hornets and nine against the Hawks — he did have 18 against the Warriors, though. But both of those games were very quiet scoring-wise from him, with only scoring 11 and 12 points.
For the season, he’s had 13 games with single-digit shot attempts. He’s also had 18 games with sub 20% usage rate.
Just as a comparison for previous seasons:
2024: 8 & 10
2023: 3 & 11
2022: 9 & 9
2021: 11 & 11
2020: 27 & 33
He’s already exceeded what he’s done in every season outside of 2020. That’s definitely something worth keeping a note of.
But when thinking about why this may have been the case, it got me thinking again about his offense. Now, this isn’t anything official but solely based on an eye test, but it does feel like a lot of that comes from his lack of PNR actions involved as the roll man.
He’s still involved with the ball. He’s still the hub. He’d still set screens, but I don’t remember him actually rolling constantly hard at a higher volume.
And going back to the same topic around Wiggins where it’s tough to feed three players requiring the ball, if Adebayo isn’t fed his post-ups and isolations, or allowing him to work in the mid-range off the rolls, how else is he getting his offense?
For the season, he’s averaging 3.3 possessions as a roll man, which is around 18.5% of his offense. Out of 13 players with at least 3 possessions, that frequency would rank 12th. Out of 35 with at least 2, that would rank 28th.
These are just possessions ending as a roll man. What I’m wondering about is more how he goes about rolling — that’s where the lack of public data ruins any of that analysis, unfortunately.
A lot of my thoughts on Adebayo’s offense have been focusing on his isolations and post-ups, but I think that was the wrong focus because digging in more into his self-creation over the years, that has remained fairly similar(more or less). I now don’t think that’s been the main question around his offense.
Now, I believe a lot of it has to do with the screening. Some of that change can be reflected in his efficiency and FG% as a roll man:
2025: 0.98 points per poss on 47.5% FG
2024: 1.04 on 51.2%
2023: 1.14 on 55.1%
2022: 1.11 on 54.9%
2021: 1.32 on 67.7%
2020: 1.18 on 62.4%
His efficiency has completely fell off the cliff. It has been a gradual decrease and this year it just went poof.
One reason for that is the shot that he hunts in the action, which is as a result of his screening and rolling. Before it was more intentional, strong, and hard rolling that meant more shots closer to the rim. Even as he went further away from the rim in 2023, a big part of his offense was still at the rim. Now, that has flipped.
And without those strong rolls, if the only way he’s used in the action is to get his mid-ranges, then if a team goes to Wiggins(who had high scoring games) or elsewhere, there’s no way of getting Adebayo the ball. It’s either get those mid-range pull ups and catch & shoots or it’s be a hub as a passer. Before, even if you didn’t feed him those touches, you’d still had his shots at the rim as a weapon.
When looking at his game logs of when he had low rim attempts, those were some of the games that also had low usage rates. He’s had eight games with no shots at the rim, 15 with one or fewer, and 24 with two or fewer.
This is something I’ll look to go further into and see how his screening has looked over the years, focusing on the change in this year because I think that has been the biggest difference in his offense changing.
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.
Davion has helped a lot. There are drives like these(video courtesy of Brady Hawk) that have been showing up more often, especially in bursts in key moments. He’s also having the best 3pt shooting stretch in his career!(stats courtesy of Couper Moorhead). He’s shooting 52.7% from 3pt over the last 20 games, which is up from 43.3% for his second highest % over 20 games. But it’s this that I think has helped the most, where the Heat average 14.8 fast break points, which would rank 16th with him on. That is a big jump from 9.4(30th) without him on the court. That’s over five points in the open court that are much more easier to get and more efficient
The Heat are currently 11th on defense with 113.8 DRTG, per Cleaning the Glass. They are 0.7 behind the Grizzlies for 10th spot. I need them to reach that number to keep the streak going!
Speaking of the defense, it has been different. The Heat have been one of the best rim protecting teams in the league consistently, usually ranking top five in rim rate. In March, however, that has dropped all the way to 21st and that’s also combined with 20th in rim FG%. That’s interesting because they are still 10th in that span
One other change related to that is they have the 19th lowest opponent corner 3pt rate. That again is very different compared to what they always have done. They’re sitting at 9.7% freq — for comparison the last time they were in single digits was in 2018
Ware in his last eight games is shooting 42/55(76.4%) from 2pt
The Heat are shooting 40.8% from 3pt in wins and 33.0% in losses. This would be the fourth highest difference in 3pt% between wins and losses. Their 3pt% in wins is also the third highest in the league. They need their 3pt shooting to win
They are 23-15(60%) when shooting above league average(36.0%) but 9-26(25%) when shooting below
In March, they are the second worst offensive rebounding team
In March, they are the worst at getting to the line but they are also the second best at preventing the opponent getting there. That is likely to be a big factor in their defense being good, considering they’re 17th in eFG%, 9th in TOV%, and 12th in ORB%. The free throw rate is carrying
Alec Burks is shooting 47.5% from 3pt in March. He’s 19/40. For the season, he’s now shooting 42.8% on 10.8 3s per 100
On the other hand, Rozier is 11/41 but that’s probably why he’s getting DNPs now. He has not played in the last five games, since only playing ~5 minutes against the Knicks. His time in the rotation might actually be over
That’s a similar case to Jaquez, who in the previous stretch was tasked with a lot more responsibilities that didn’t pan out well, and now he’s not stepping on the court
Great breakdown.