The Culture Report: Shot Profiles, Pre-Season Takeaways & Looking Ahead

Welcome to The Culture Report! A weekly report going through the thoughts, discussion, and analysis of the Miami Heat. This is the place for you to get up to speed with everything that’s important, interesting, or simply fun — whether that’s news, specific games, box scores, actions, plays, signings, trades, trends, financials, schemes + everything else you can think off — and digging deeper into the how’s and why’s through film breakdowns, stats, and analysis.

So, the pre-season is now over. This felt like a different kind of off-season because, for the first time in two years, we did see Jimmy Butler play. That does mean we did have a look at what a full lineup could be doing. And we even saw plenty of different things, particularly on the offensive end.

So, let’s go through some of the takeaways from pre-season and some thoughts on the team just before the season starts.

What’s Been Heating Up

To start off the report, we’re going through a bunch of film and Xs & Os from the week. This will be in a form of both short-form and long-form breakdowns elsewhere, whether it’s through video or threads. This will include going through an individual’s performance, key reasons why they won/lost, and a handful of little takeaways.

• Starters offense vs the Pelicans, 14/10/24

• Game thread vs Pelicans, 14/10/24

• Game thread vs Spurs, 16/10/24

• Heat Xs & Os that stood out against the Spurs, 16/10/24

• Game thread vs Hawks, 17/10/24

• Heat vs Hawks film session: How Jimmy Butler and Co. got rim pressure, 17/10/24

• The Heat’s shot diet in pre-season with the starters

We start off with the starters’ offense against the Pelicans, where they scored 34 points on 12/21 2pt, 4/15 3pt, 4/4 ft in 15 minutes. This was the first time that we saw this 5-man lineup and it was a mixed result:

It was only 15 minutes, but looking at it after two more games, a lot of it has remained throughout the pre-season.

The biggest difference was the spacing alignment. You can see how in almost all of the plays, they were looking to go into a 5-out alignment. This was a clear emphasis to have Bam Adebayo in both the corners and above the break. There are still wrinkles that need to be ironed out to fully maximise the spacing, it is encouraging that they are going to it in the first place.

There was also a clear emphasis on being more active off-ball. That is still a much-needed work in progress, but the change is still there. This is also related to their uptick in 3-point shots because they are looking to set those flares and pin-in screens. As noted so many times in these two years, they were missing an active screener for shooters since PJ Tucker left.

They also made an emphasis to get better opportunities going downhill. They did so with ghost screens, shooter screening, and handoffs.

This was common across groups, whether it was starters or bench, there were a lot of shooters screening for one another. It’s a very simple concept, yet very effective to gain an advantage one way or the other.

Shooters are one of the best screeners because their shooting threat will cause so much confusion. If the ball handler is also a dangerous attacker, the defense will have to make a decision. Do you stick with the shooter, do you switch(most often the shooter would have a weaker or different defender), or go to any other option? Whatever you decide, is that going to be instant and on point? Any small and brief confusion could result in open drive or 3pt.

For the Heat, it resulted in many more drives. They have the shooters to do so. Duncan Robinson, Tyler Herro, Terry Rozier, and Alec Burks, all have gravity as shooters that can cause confusion. One point about that, though is that I’d like to see better execution. They have gone to those screens often, but at times it lacks purpose and effort where it doesn’t hit the same.

With the handoffs, it allows the receiver to get freer and be faster going downhill. A player will be faster without the ball and defenders tend to relax once the player passes or starts off the ball. That’s why you see Rozier turning the corner or having a burst going baseline.

Going back to their biggest difference being the 5-out alignment, that is also linked to their shot profile. The analytics have finally won. The Heat have eliminated the long mid-range and even went away from a lot of the paint shots too.

It’s Morey Ball in Miami now.

But not every rim and every 3pt is created the same. The how in the shot profile is more important. That’s where there were some issues, concerns, or at least, a “let’s hold up” moment.

The starters in their three games went 38/58 from 2pt and 16/55 from 3pt. That’s almost a 50% 3-point rate. Digging deeper into their shots, I did come away encouraged and that’s mainly from where the Heat were last year. At the same time, it’s not feeling encouraged to think that this might make a significant difference in their offense or that any of their real issues have been addressed. This still feels like multiple band-aids to mitigate it.

With their rim shots, almost half were in transition or semi-transition. 18/40 shots at the rim, were that. 12 of them were either off a steal or on a fastbreak that generated easy shots or lobs. Then the other 6 were off pushing pace that attacked a non-set defense.

Then we have 22 in the half-court:

That’s not a great number. This is where throughout the pre-season when I saw their rim attempts being cited, I thought it was a bit misleading. Getting fastbreaks at the rim is helpful, but that is a completely different discussion compared to rim pressure against a set defense off isolation, PNR, or off-ball. That’s where they still lacked it.

This became even more apparent when you looked at their 3-point shooting. That was another drastic change in their shot profile, though this was a lot more positive than the rim pressure.

But on that point, many of their 3s came as a result of this:

It’s swinging the ball side to side. They are in the 5-out alignment. There is ball movement. The defense isn’t working, though. This is where they don’t maximise that spacing. The ball doesn’t cross the 3pt line! That just can’t happen. 3s without the inside-out approach, aren’t typically great 3s and it’s not a good offense if it makes up a lot of those attempts — almost 20% of their 3s were like that.

Yes, they put up more 3s, but this is making yourself more 3pt reliant without any of the rim pressure or making the defense react. Even with the ball movement, the defense can simply follow the ball, walk to their rotations, and contest a shot.

But they did get a lot of 3s up in a good way. With that inside-out approach, with rim pressure, and with the defense needing to react in different ways:

Notice how different those 3s. Many are the same catch and shoot, but they are in rhythm and have more space. That’s what you get with actual rim pressure. When there is a paint touch, good things happen. But for that to happen, there needs to be some kind of dribble penetration or beating the closeout.

The good thing is they did so in many ways. Here are their 3s off a post up:

The principle is the same. Working with an inside-out approach, you get a paint touch or force the defense to react and rotate, then you go from there. You make that kick one pass away or a skip and now the defense has more ground to cover.

I also liked their 3s off a PNR but this will also either be better with more rim pressure(by opting for more handoffs and ghost screens) or better decision making:

In a lot of those clips, it’s the ball handler seeing extra help and you either need a quicker pass to the shooter or make that skip pass. At times the skip pass was missed, but they knew the shooter was there, so they swung the ball. The issue with that, the extra pass allows the defense to recover better.

One encouraging point was that I didn’t see many off the dribble 3s:

This is whether in isolation or on pull-ups in PNR. This was very limited and I liked that. The Heat don’t have the shooters for those kinds of looks, so it makes sense to not go them often.

Overall, the shift in their shot profile is definitely encouraging. Wherever they shift to, it will at least not be in the extreme opposite of what they were last year. That alone can be a difference maker, even if the things that they do aren’t different in themselves.

Pre-Season Takeaways

How much can you actually take away from the off-season? Is there anything that you can take away stuff from either positive or negative?

For me, pre-season is mostly looking at individual players or aspects on its own. Nothing that happens during pre-season is enough to make me feel one way or the other. Instead, I feel mostly the same as if there wasn’t a pre-season to begin with. The little part is just making a note of a few things going forward.

As noted previously, one of those things has been their 5-out offense. I think that in itself is something to watch out for going forward. They clearly put in the emphasis on being in that alignment overall. Whether the results were good or not is irrelevant to me because it is 2-4 games. But the fact that they made a conscious decision to do that for most of the game, when they never have done before is a sign.

How they will go about it throughout the season and how well it will work is a different story, one that will only be shown through the regular season against good teams.

But again, this has never been a thing. That’s one of those drastic changes. It’s not affected by small samples or results.

Another point of emphasis that does look like a drastic change is getting out and running more. With the turnovers, that has been a thing for them. They regularly ranked at the top in turnovers forced and points off turnovers. Though I also wouldn’t pay that much attention to the actual number for the pre-season because that is affected by a small sample and lesser-quality teams. The amount of sloppy plays and bad unforced turnovers will rack up those steals.

The pace is interesting because that has been a repeated thing before each season. They always want to go faster and usually in pre-season they also do do that. And when looking at their past seasons, they also tend to start out faster and gradually decrease(after being fast in the pre-season). This is one of those areas that I don’t know how much you can take away from.

There are also other little like more ghosts screens, guard screening, handoffs, and off-ball screens. That has all been emphasised that could carry on through the season. These are the games that you could try and see what works and doesn’t.

But then on the other hand, how much can you take away from the game when your best player doesn’t have many on-ball touches? Unless that in itself is something to monitor again. Butler had the lowest usage and touches during his time with the Heat. Is this because it was pre-season or is it a sign of something more?

As a result, we also got to see a lot more of Terry Rozier handling the ball. I will already say that if the offense is going to be anything similar to that, they’re going to struggle significantly again. This offense was a lot of Rozier dribble-dribble-dribble. That was apparent in the first game and I’m not even slightly a fan of it.

I was also surprised to see that Adebayo had only one FGM being unassisted.

So, what am I supposed to take away from that? Pretty much nothing. The extra stuff that they’re doing offensively is worth noting, but if your conclusion is anything beyond that on how it can transform the season in any way, then that’s reading too much into three 3 games vs. elite talent.

It’s nice to new things. That is what pre-season should be about, on top of getting some reps to warm up.

Looking Ahead

With everything that has happened in the Olympics, off-season, and now pre-season, how should we feel with the season starting next week?

For a more in-depth season preview, I went through that here:

But trying to decide now right before the season how to feel… I don’t see that much encouragement yet.

The differences in their shot profile is a good adjustment. That alone is a good thing but that will only happen if so many other things have changed too, which we won’t know during pre-season.

Do we really think Adebayo will have 1 shot made self created? Will Herro continue to have majority of his touches off-ball? Will their shot type flip completely?

Because those things are what matters in their shot profiles going forward. The screening, off-ball screens, 5-out offense, Jovic being used in the post, and looking to get out in transitions are band-aids looking to cover up the glaring hole, but that can only take you so far.

All of that emphasis isn’t changing the biggest issue for the Heat and that is the team will suck if your best player is fourth on touches. We have no evidence of what to expect going forward at the moment.

But with reasonable expectations considering his age, I don’t think we’ll be seeing point Butler as we did in 2021. Because of that, whether we see more off-ball system with Rozier and Herro taking turns ball handling, that is not instilling any confidence.

The issues they had that caused them to score sub 100 points have not been solved. It’s been helped. They may not be bottom 10 offensively, but I wouldn’t say they’re likely to be clearly above average either.

But the main thing that I’m still curious about is how everyone will get their offense consistently. As much as we want to say there is a shift for more off-ball movement, that will require a drastic change to not one, not two, but three different players. Are all three of them changing their game completely? I don’t see it.

They eliminated some of the mid-range, but going against better defenses and ones where you can’t score most of your points in transition, will bring a lot of them back. Unless we’re saying that those three players have made significant jumps as on-ball players?

Right now, I just want the season to start and see what they will actually do in a real game.