Knicks · The Miami Heat Model of Team Building for the Knicks (page 3)
Nalod wrote:Bucks were 52-8 before stoppage.
They were the mold.
MIami is kicking their ass and now the hot darling team. Getting Butler was huge.
PHX a few weeks ago looked great. The new Mold?
Portland did a great job once healthy and if stayed might have knocked off Lakers?
Buck had Giannis. They can’t be “the mold.” Miami is a contender without a superstar in a lot of people’s eyes. Definitely not a transcendent Star like Giannis or Doncic. They are just a well-built team.
Knixkik wrote:Nalod wrote:Bucks were 52-8 before stoppage.
They were the mold.
MIami is kicking their ass and now the hot darling team. Getting Butler was huge.
PHX a few weeks ago looked great. The new Mold?
Portland did a great job once healthy and if stayed might have knocked off Lakers?
Buck had Giannis. They can’t be “the mold.” Miami is a contender without a superstar in a lot of people’s eyes. Definitely not a transcendent Star like Giannis or Doncic. They are just a well-built team.
Before it was GSW. Before that SAS. In between it was Boston who for all their good ness has not exactly killed it either. They stay competitive and keep moving forward. Let Kyrie walk, let Horford. Yet they are not worse after pickup of Kemba and brilliant draft of Tatum. What happens to Toronto.
Knick fans we are looking up at these teams and saying “there is the model, do it!!”
Let’s hope we are now the model!
Nalod wrote:Knixkik wrote:Nalod wrote:Bucks were 52-8 before stoppage.
They were the mold.
MIami is kicking their ass and now the hot darling team. Getting Butler was huge.
PHX a few weeks ago looked great. The new Mold?
Portland did a great job once healthy and if stayed might have knocked off Lakers?
Buck had Giannis. They can’t be “the mold.” Miami is a contender without a superstar in a lot of people’s eyes. Definitely not a transcendent Star like Giannis or Doncic. They are just a well-built team.Before it was GSW. Before that SAS. In between it was Boston who for all their good ness has not exactly killed it either. They stay competitive and keep moving forward. Let Kyrie walk, let Horford. Yet they are not worse after pickup of Kemba and brilliant draft of Tatum. What happens to Toronto.
Knick fans we are looking up at these teams and saying “there is the model, do it!!”
Let’s hope we are now the model!
You’ve missed the point though. You’re just naming all of the good teams. I’m talking specifically about a dominant team without a transcendent star. All of the teams you named have franchise changing superstars. GS had Steph, Celtics big 3, spurs TD and then Kawhi etc. Miami is doing what they’re doing with a model that doesn’t involve a franchise changing talent on their roster. No top lottery picks or top 5 player. No one who you would say should lead you to a title. You’re just naming great teams with great players. Miami maximize their talent by fitting pieces perfectly together they other team should be able to emulate if they are smart without the luck of drafting a superstar or signing one. Again they have butler but no one sees him as a franchise changing star.
Knixkik wrote:Miami is doing what they’re doing with a model that doesn’t involve a franchise changing talent on their roster. No top lottery picks or top 5 player. No one who you would say should lead you to a title. You’re just naming great teams with great players. Miami maximize their talent by fitting pieces perfectly together they other team should be able to emulate if they are smart without the luck of drafting a superstar or signing one. Again they have butler but no one sees him as a franchise changing star.
Jimmy Butler is a legit "market max" franchise player.
Miami gave up assets to clear cap space for the Big Three Heatles. They also lost a lot of assets in the sign and trades that involved Bosh and LBJ's Bird Rights. Miami shopped the bargain bin post LBJ because they didn't have much of a choice. When LBJ returned to Cleveland, he walked onto a team that was still owed a pick by the Heat.
Drafting out of the top 10 gives you the unintended benefit of not having to heavily account for "value for slot" The Heat were compelled to take Justice Winslow because of "value for slot" Adebayo and Herro were seen initially as reaches but the level of acceptance for a reach in the middle of the draft is different.
There is no model, there is no plan. There are league trends you have to consider and you make each decision the best you can given the time and place. No team says, well I drafted a center last time, I need a shooter. They just take the best player on the board and figure it out later. The only teams who can legitimately draft for need are long standing contenders. Warriors could have used another wing prospect, but needed Jordan Bell to finish their roster. Things of that nature.
No one planned to have Herro and Robinson break out. They could have easily busted.
You only control your destiny in any draft in which you pick first overall. Every other team is dependent, in a large part, to circumstance and luck. You can't plan on circumstance and luck.
How Did the NBA Overlook One of the Best Shooters in Basketball?Every team needs 3-point shooting, yet few even gave Duncan Robinson an honest look. But the Heat believed in his potential, and got him to believe in it too.
By Rob Mahoney Sep 17, 2020, 6:30am EDTThe life of an NBA scout can lead down a winding, frozen road in small-town Lithuania, through the claustrophobic gym of a Rust Belt mid-major, or, on this particular occasion, to a pre-draft workout just a few miles from home. Chet Kammerer—a longtime talent evaluator with the Heat based in Southern California—barely had to leave his own backyard to satisfy his curiosity about Duncan Robinson. Over three years, he had alternated between hot and cold in his assessment of the Michigan forward, whose game had proved similarly inconstant. There were games when Robinson’s 3-point shooting from the corners strained defenses exactly as intended. And then there were others where the oldest, most experienced player in Michigan’s lineup would stand idly on the margins, contributing little. The opportunity to watch Robinson in a workout setting would perhaps provide some clarity.
In the spring of 2018, Kammerer looked on as Robinson, backdropped by wooden bleachers, put up jumper after jumper. There were the spot-up 3s that had accounted for most of Robinson’s collegiate diet, but also shots from handoffs and pin-downs, off the dribble and on a sprint in the open court. “It wasn’t just country-club shooting,” Kammerer says. The 3s came from everywhere. At a certain point, Kammerer stopped tracking Robinson’s makes and noted only if he missed two shots in a row. For the rest of the workout, he rarely did.
“I’ve been with the Heat now for 24 years,” Kammerer says. “I have never seen a guy shoot the ball like that for that length of time from every different way.”
Sixty-four college seniors had taken part in the Portsmouth Invitational just weeks earlier to showcase their talents to scores of pro scouts. Robinson did not participate. Sixty-nine prospects would later gather in Chicago for the annual draft combine—a parade of interviews, screenings, and exhibitions that provide NBA teams with the latest intelligence. Robinson was not invited. Kammerer had seen Robinson’s first workout for an NBA team, and he had been the only scout in an otherwise empty gym. He couldn’t even make it the few miles home before calling Heat coach Erik Spoelstra, his curiosity giving way to enthusiasm.
“At that point,” Kammerer says, “I was just hoping that he wouldn’t get drafted.”
The universe played along. Robinson slipped through the cracks of the draft and signed a summer league deal with the Heat based on their history of finding the talent in unheralded players. After two years in Miami’s developmental program, the shooter that no team thought to draft is now a starter in the Eastern Conference finals. Even more remarkably: Robinson earned his place in that series based on the very skill the teams that overlooked him have made a priority.
Misjudging up-and-coming players is an unavoidable part of the draft process—the natural byproduct of basketball’s soft science. Yet when 29 other teams passed on Robinson, they passed on a player who would soon become one of the most prolific long-range shooters the league has ever seen. There has never been a stranger time for NBA teams, in their spacing obsession, to collectively miss the deadeye shooter right in front of them. But miss they did; only five players have ever made more 3-pointers in a season than Robinson did this year, in his first campaign as a full-time member of the Heat. Among those five, only Stephen Curry shot a higher percentage. It should be lost on no one—least of all those working in player personnel—that Robinson came into the league through a blind spot only to find statistical company in a two-time MVP.
How did this happen? How could the wider basketball scouting community, with all its resources and wealth of experience, come to believe that a shooter capable of making history wasn’t even a sure NBA player in the first place? Robinson knows the answer, in large part because he once believed it himself.
The Heat may never have found Robinson if not for Charlie Villanueva and Josh Smith. Back in 2014, Robinson was a standout freshman playing at Williams College, a rigorous liberal arts school nestled into the forests of New England, just a few hours’ drive from his childhood home. He was drawn to Williams by its academic reputation. It also happened to be one of the top Division III programs in the country—one that Robinson pushed forward with another trip to the national championship game, the school’s fourth appearance in 12 years. Yet as Robinson was gearing up for his sophomore season, Mike Maker, the coach who had recruited him to Williams, was offered the head-coaching job at Marist College. That vacancy was created when the Detroit Pistons hired away Jeff Bower, Marist’s previous coach, to be their new general manager. A painful and expensive stretch had finally caught up to Pistons team president Joe Dumars, who chased six straight trips to the conference finals with a five-year run in which Detroit never won more than 30 games in a season. Villanueva and Smith were given lavish contracts that facilitated Detroit’s underachievement and, ultimately, Dumars’s undoing.
Maker took the job at Marist, and Robinson—the Division III Rookie of the Year—began to explore his options. After touring around, he narrowed down his transfer list to three schools: Davidson, the alma mater of Stephen Curry; Creighton, the college home of Kyle Korver; and Michigan, a big-time program that had just sent five players to the NBA. This was an enormous leap for Robinson, who had been so lightly recruited out of high school that he needed a postgrad year at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire just to find his way to Williams in the first place. It swung his decision when John Beilein, a former Division III coach himself, offered him a scholarship to play in Ann Arbor.
“Knowing that a kid is averaging 19 points as a freshman and leads his team to the national championship game,” Beilein says, “you don’t have to be that crazy to think this kid can play for us.”
In his first days on campus, Robinson scorched the nets in shooting drills, challenging records set by Nik Stauskas—whom the Kings had just selected with the eighth pick in the 2014 draft. It was an auspicious start for a transfer, and after redshirting for a season to meet NCAA requirements, Robinson quickly became a starter for the Wolverines on the strength of his shooting. From there, his career grew complicated. Playing at Michigan afforded Robinson the chance to compete on the biggest stage in college basketball while simultaneously refuting the idea that he could ever play in the NBA. Robinson lost his starting job not once but twice—the second time to a player four years his junior. “I’m sure he was disappointed,” Beilein says. “But he came off the bench and we were a better team because of it. That’s who he is.”
After a run to the Sweet 16 in Robinson’s junior season, Beilein asked the NBA’s Undergraduate Advisory Committee—a panel of team executives who offer anonymous feedback for players considering the draft—to evaluate Robinson as a prospect. Most players are given a percentage breakdown of where the panelists believe they’ll be selected: in the lottery, later in the first round, in the second round (divided into halves), or even if they’re expected to go undrafted. Robinson was an exceptional case. “They did not have a rating on him,” Beilein says. “Which means that no one ever considered him being a pro.”
And why would they? At the time, Robinson was a 23-year-old stretch 4 who had managed just 7.7 points and 1.7 rebounds per game. College offenses can be overly complicated and self-stifling, but Michigan ran a modern, four-out attack driven by the high pick-and-roll. More than 45 percent of the Wolverines’ shot attempts came from beyond the arc, a proportion that—allowing for a shorter 3-point line—would outpace the majority of NBA teams. Robinson, however, was not a driver of that offense; he was an accessory to it.
“I was asked to be a floor spacer, and basically draw the attention of one defender—in the corner, for the most part—and let everyone else play four-on-four,” Robinson says. “I wasn’t involved in a lot of the action, and that was a strategic choice by Coach Beilein. He wasn’t wrong for it. We were really good, and we won a lot of games.”
That’s what matters most. Yet for the scouts who considered Robinson at all, Michigan’s reputation for showcasing professional-level talent may have worked against him. In the past seven years, eight Michigan players have been selected in the first round of the NBA draft. Only five schools have produced more first-round picks overall. This wasn’t a case of a player striving in obscurity; Robinson was a part of a huge program in a major conference that made long, celebrated tournament runs. The wealth of talent at a school like Kentucky has sometimes masked the skills of future NBA stars. Michigan, under Beilein, was known for uncovering them.
“We played a lot of national TV games,” Robinson says. “So I feel like a lot of people understood who I was as a player—or thought they understood who I was as a player.”
The same system that put Stauskas in the spotlight and teased Caris LeVert’s potential moved Robinson to the edge of relevance. When a pro scout would stop by the Crisler Center for a big game, they might see Robinson attempt just three shots in 24 minutes without so much as an assist, steal, or block. Even some who believed in his shooting found it difficult to see how the skinny forward hanging off to the side of a college offense would make a meaningful contribution to an NBA team. Robinson wasn’t entirely sure, either. All he knew was that when he would spot up for possession after possession at Michigan, he could feel the edges of his role.
After a loss in the 2018 national championship game to end his senior season—in which he averaged just 9.2 points per game—Robinson went to work to prove it. For eight weeks he trained with AJ Diggs, now a development coach for the Pelicans, so that he might show teams a different player than the one they saw on tape. Robinson toiled through every demanding, high-intensity session under the expectation he would not be drafted; the goal was to join the right team through the side door, parlaying a summer league spot into a training camp invite and a real opportunity to make an NBA roster. “I was able to get 10 or 12 workouts, which at that point I was thrilled about,” Robinson says. As it turned out, he needed only one.
The night before the draft, Robinson’s phone rang. It was Spoelstra. “He was the only coach to call me,” Robinson says. Spoelstra told him about Kammerer, and the other side of the workout that Robinson had experienced through a trance state of swished jumpers. He noted that Miami didn’t have a pick in the draft, but extended the exact kind of opportunity Robinson had been looking for. “We’d love to have you for summer league,” Spoelstra said.
In Robinson, some scouts saw the next Steve Novak—the kind of limited, standstill shooter that has been filtered out of the league by natural selection. Some saw a player who would already be 24 years old on the day of the draft and hadn’t produced in the way younger prospects had. Some saw a defensive liability, or a limited athlete. Some saw a specialist who, in his senior season, made just 38.4 percent of his 3-pointers—a mark that ranked 287th among college players. Some saw a prospect so far outside the consensus that drafting him could get a general manager fired.
“I guess,” Beilein says, “people didn’t see what Miami saw in him.”
Before Robinson had played a single game for the Heat summer league team, he was already driving the coaching staff crazy. Miami’s featured players for the exhibition slate were Bam Adebayo, who was building on his rookie season by handling the ball and running inverted pick-and-rolls during practices, and Derrick Jones Jr., a reality-bending athlete who was working to round out his game. It was Robinson’s job to shoot when the ball came his way, and yet the undrafted, unproven rookie kept looking for reasons not to.
“At that point, he was shot-faking to death,” says Eric Glass, who coached the Heat in summer league. After imploring Robinson to shoot and getting nowhere, Glass moved to what is now a time-honored tradition for the fitness-obsessed Heat: punishing a shooter’s hesitation with calisthenics. Spoelstra would make Wayne Ellington, the Heat’s designated shooter from 2016 to 2019, run sprints after every pump fake until the coach broke him of the habit. If Robinson so much as blinked on the catch, the summer Heat coaches would stop practice and have him do push-ups. At one point, Adebayo stopped a drill himself to exact the toll from his new teammate.
This was all part of Miami’s design. The first step for Robinson wasn’t to shed his defender, put the ball on the floor, and make The Right Play™. “No,” Glass says. “You get in there, and when you’re open, you shoot it every single time. That was an evolution that he had to learn.”
The Ringer’s NBA Restart OddsRobinson had the option to play for the Lakers in summer league, but preferred the opportunity he saw with the Heat. “I wanted to go to a place that didn’t have a ton of young guys or a ton of young draft picks,” Robinson says. “The Heat kinda fit the bill.” He would have faced long odds to make the roster of a team that already had Brandon Ingram, Lonzo Ball, Kyle Kuzma, Josh Hart, Alex Caruso, and Svi Mykhailiuk under contract—along with Ivica Zubac and Robinson’s Michigan teammate, Mo Wagner. Miami’s relative scarcity of young perimeter talent afforded Robinson a different level of attention.
Most of the teams Robinson met with during the pre-draft process discussed some version of the same proposal. “‘Look, you shoot at a really high level,’” Robinson recounts. “‘You have that skill. How can we grow your game in other areas to kind of surround that?’” Spoelstra, on the other hand, had the intention of elevating what Robinson already did best. The way to make him the most dangerous shooter on the floor was to remove the guard rails that kept Robinson in the corners—to erase his instinct toward self-restraint.
“There are some guys, you just put ’em on any court and they can just hoop,” Robinson says. “They can just be who they are. I’m not really that way. A big part of my career has been really growing that deep, inner belief that I’m good enough.” A lanky teenager had to convince himself he could play at Williams College; a Division III transfer had to believe he was worthy of a spot in one of the biggest college basketball programs in the country; and a 24-year-old senior who knew he wouldn’t be drafted had to talk himself into the idea that he could find a place in the NBA.
Thus began what Glass calls the “most extensive” player development program that he’s encountered during his 10 years with the Heat. Miami signed Robinson to its roster as a two-way player in the summer of 2018, and threw him into the gauntlet—starting with offseason training and continuing with a business trip to South Dakota.
The Sioux Falls Skyforce are based more than a thousand miles away from Miami, the farthest geographical distance between any NBA team and its direct G League affiliate. Considering how many of those G League operations have been relocated in recent years by their parent franchises, it’s fair to assume that the Skyforce are kept willfully remote. There is instructive value in having young players make the trek from Miami International to Joe Foss Field, the seven-gate mixed-use airport half a country away. It has become part of the Heat experience for those on the fringes of the roster to bounce between the shine of life on South Beach and winds so frigid and intense that they sometimes make it impossible to even open the door to the practice gym.
Robinson’s rookie season played out in that balance. The majority of his time was spent down in the G League, where then–head coach Nevada Smith—who had previously taken the Rio Grande Valley Vipers to the vanguard of the 3-point revolution—emboldened Robinson to hunt for his shot. Development, in the eyes of the Heat, began with volume. “Every time he could see the rim,” Smith says, “they wanted it going up.” When Robinson took eight 3-pointers in a game, Smith would push him for 10 in the next. If he took 10, Smith might press him for 15. “He basically made it nonnegotiable that every night, I had to go out and be aggressive,” Robinson says. By season’s end, Robinson would average more 3-point attempts per game (9.8) than any other G League regular while setting the new franchise record for single-season 3-point percentage (48.3).
On defense, he was given the toughest assignments in another play for volume. The only way to get Robinson up to NBA speed was to have him chase shooters, wall up in isolation, and fight through as many ball screens as the schedule could offer. After Skyforce games, Spoelstra would text Smith for an update on Robinson’s progress. He always wanted to know about his defense.
The Heat would recall Robinson from time to time, and Spoelstra would throw him into live game action alongside NBA veterans. This has also become a rite of passage; when Jones was playing on a two-way contract the season prior, Miami called him up from Sioux Falls only to make him the primary defender against James Harden that same day. If Robinson was on the active roster, he could—without warning—find his way onto the court for 10 or 20 meaningful minutes. Rarely has Spoelstra seemed so proud as when Robinson went 1-for-7 from beyond the arc in a high-stakes game last season that the Heat needed to keep their playoff hopes alive.
“He’s an elite shooter—one of the best shooters I’ve ever seen,” Spoelstra told reporters afterward. “But you have to show the courage to keep on shooting it.”
Getting to that point took the work of an entire staff. Smith helped Robinson to find his inner gunner; Heat assistant coaches Chris Quinn and Rob Fodor turned every practice into a battleground; Eric Foran, Miami’s strength coach, gave Robinson the tools to survive on defense by working on his lateral quickness; and Spoelstra invested in the progress of an undrafted player on a two-way contract as if he were a rising star.
“We believe in those kinds of stories,” Spoelstra says. “We’ve had a lot of guys come through here on a similar path. And this started with Pat [Riley]. He’s always believed in the player development program and giving guys a chance, going back to his Knicks days with [John] Starks and [Anthony] Mason. Guys that had to come up a different way.” Hassan Whiteside played pro ball in Chengdu and Tripoli before finding a place with the Heat—and, eventually, a four-year, $98 million contract. Josh Richardson didn’t even crack the top 100 ranking for his high school class, flew under the radar for four years at Tennessee, and then slipped to the 40th pick in the 2015 draft. He built a career in Miami as one of the league’s top perimeter defenders and became the centerpiece in Miami’s trade for Jimmy Butler. Udonis Haslem didn’t have the proportions of an NBA player when he left the University of Florida. Now, after 17 years and three championships with the Heat, he leads the huddle in critical playoff games.
“Some people look for youth, experience,” Butler says, grasping at some explanation for how a player like Robinson could go undrafted. “It ain’t my job to do all that. But I know that the Miami Heat look for those diamonds in the rough: guys with that grit, that dog, that underdog mentality, all of that. We’ve got a roster full of ’em.”
The Heat are the kind of franchise that looks at a rim-running center and sees a game-changing playmaker. They watched Tyler Herro live on catch-and-shoot jumpers in Lexington and redirected his game to the point that he now, as a rookie, runs his own pick-and-rolls to sustain Miami’s fourth-quarter offense.
(When discussing Robinson with people in the league, Herro tends to come up, one way or another—if only for their contrast in playing personality. One Heat staffer described Herro’s confidence as an “aura.” It’s rare to see a first-year player closing out playoff games—much less having plays run for him to knock down shots in crunch time.)
"“I know that the Miami Heat look for those diamonds in the rough: guys with that grit, that dog, that underdog mentality, all of that. We’ve got a roster full of ’em.” —Jimmy Butler"Player development, like scouting, is an act of imagination. Anyone could see that Robinson was a good—if limited—shooter. Understanding how that shooting could be unlocked with motion, however, required creativity. It took vision. Spoelstra understood that the way to maximize a shooter is to make him accessible. “I’m put in so much more action,” Robinson says. “A lot of times it’s a decoy, but the reality is with how we play, it’s never actually a decoy. Everything is always live. As a result, it just creates a lot of overreactions. When you see the way the NBA is going, obviously there’s such an emphasis around shooting 3s. So as a result, there’s such an emphasis around stopping good 3s from being taken.”
Where other players drop weight to meet Miami’s strict fitness standards, Spoelstra challenged Robinson during the offseason to add 10 pounds. You can see the difference when a defender makes contact. The lighter Robinson—the G League Robinson—could run a perfect curl to ready himself for a shot, only for an opponent to throw off his footwork with a single bump. Ten pounds later, Robinson is still slight by NBA standards but more resilient in his routes. Defenses are compelled to lunge in his direction while giving up wide-open dunks to the Heat’s two All-Stars.
Miami has made clever use of a number of excellent shooters—Ellington, Ray Allen, and Mike Miller chief among them. Robinson is operating on a totally different scale. The core misunderstanding of Robinson’s NBA potential came from overlooking all that his height would make possible. It’s hard to challenge the shot of a 6-foot-8 shooter after fighting through staggered screens. It’s not as easy as it seems to iso and score on a player that long, particularly when he’s spent two years working on his body and sharpening his disposition. Those qualities have allowed Robinson to give the Heat 26 good minutes a night through their first two series, a playoff commodity worth eight figures on the open market. In just two years, Robinson has developed into the kind of shooter the Heat, due to some salary gridlock of their own making, would never have been able to afford in 2018. His ascent doubles as creative problem solving.
Even still, Robinson has to contend with his own nagging doubt as to whether he really belongs competing for a spot in the NBA Finals. Years of fighting the same battles (and ongoing work with a mental coach) have at least made clear where he can find relief. “For me,” Robinson says, “it really comes from two places: My work ethic and my habits and knowing that I’m prepared for opportunities—knowing that I’m deserving of them and that I’ve put in the time; then, the other one is actually experiencing success, seeing it come to fruition. There’s no substitute for that.”
Miami, then, may be its own peace of mind. It’s hard to imagine a more successful start to Robinson’s career than historic 3-point shooting in service of a long playoff run. Every streaking jumper is a reminder that his game has become a collaborative project. Robinson transformed who he was as a player to bring a coach’s abstraction to life. The Heat, in kind, gave him the power to prove he belongs.
Much more circumstance than luck.
I wonder what practicing with Herro has done for Robinson's "inner shooter". Michigan non-shooting, extraneous piece to NBA 48.3% from 3. That's insane.
I guess you can reach and invest in seemingly deranged projects like Robinson when your fanbase doesn't really give a shit.
I hate the Heat. 
franco12 wrote:BigDaddyG wrote:knicks1248 wrote:BigDaddyG wrote:knicks1248 wrote:Knixkik wrote:BRIGGS wrote:Knixkik wrote:franco12 wrote:NardDogNation wrote:The "Miami Model" has nothing to do with the players they have. I think they've demonstrated over the years that they can pull players from the scrapheap and give them the tools to succeed. What they do takes place behind the scenes and involves people that may not have even played college ball, let alone seen a NBA court. Unless we make a goodfaith effort to invest in our scouting department, medical staff, strength & conditioning team, our G-League, we'll never come close to touching what the Heat...or the Jazz...or the Raptors do on a year-in, year-out basis with no-name players. Seriously, the fucking Raptors are elite without having a single lottery pick their rotation!This is the model - they just have incredible people in their FO & at the top.
I've said Dolan should offer Pop part ownership, and put him in charge.
Hopefully, we'll see if our brain trust can move the needle enough to stay. If these guys are smart and they can get enough time, hopefully they can start building something.
The thing is, if they can get it right then players will want to come here. NY is an attractive market and being part of a knicks resurgence has the most upside for any player looking for a career or legacy boost. But we need to show some semblance of a plan first.
I was thinking out of the draft. Let’s increase our 3 point shooting
Nesmith Bane. 37 find pg who’s left who can shoot 3s abd handle Riller Howard etcI like Christian wood. He’s flexible good d and under rated. Wood Robinson Randle all we need upfront
3pt shooting is more important to our rebuild than a PG in my opinion.I Can't believe you think that, that's like saying my arms are more important than my legs, you need both to fully function. Both are equally important because without a penetrating guard who's going to put pressure on the defense to collapse, your going to play east to west?
Maybe in the days of post ups and ISO's that maybe have been the case, not today.
Doesn't necessarily have to be a point guard. This is the age of point forwards. We've even seen Steph play off the ball for stretches. I agree, we do need a penetrator and creator. Maybe RJ has that potential, but we can't count on it.Thats the thinking that got us where we are today..pointguardless
No, I'm pretty sure we've brought in enough point guards to fill a starting five. I think bad talent evaluation is what got us here today. Or do you think we just brought in DSJ to have a representative in the slam dunk competition?
I agree bad talent evaluation has plagued the organization. But we need a pg far more than 3pt shooting. A solid pg can unlock a lot of talent that we have.
Just imagine a real pg like Rondo running the p&r with Mitchell- that is an easy +10 points every game.
Sure, add a 3pt shooter and that is an even better +10.
But we have to find a better pg option than Payton, and if we don’t, we better bring him back and hope between him, Frank & DSjr one of those three can take a step forward.
3pt shooting is definitely 1b on our list.
having a Center that can't shoot perimeter shots is going to limit mitch is minutes, mark my words.
You need 3 point sho0in8 from all 5 positions, and at least 8 of your rotation players
TripleThreat wrote:https://www.theringer.com/nba/2020/9/17/...How Did the NBA Overlook One of the Best Shooters in Basketball?Every team needs 3-point shooting, yet few even gave Duncan Robinson an honest look. But the Heat believed in his potential, and got him to believe in it too.
By Rob Mahoney Sep 17, 2020, 6:30am EDT...
“At that point, he was shot-faking to death,” says Eric Glass, who coached the Heat in summer league. After imploring Robinson to shoot and getting nowhere, Glass moved to what is now a time-honored tradition for the fitness-obsessed Heat: punishing a shooter’s hesitation with calisthenics. Spoelstra would make Wayne Ellington, the Heat’s designated shooter from 2016 to 2019, run sprints after every pump fake until the coach broke him of the habit. If Robinson so much as blinked on the catch, the summer Heat coaches would stop practice and have him do push-ups. At one point, Adebayo stopped a drill himself to exact the toll from his new teammate.
This was all part of Miami’s design. The first step for Robinson wasn’t to shed his defender, put the ball on the floor, and make The Right Play™. “No,” Glass says. “You get in there, and when you’re open, you shoot it every single time. That was an evolution that he had to learn.”
We should do this with Frank. Hopefully the new leadership actually develops our talent.
https://www.espn.com/nba/truehoop/miamih...
Spoelstra brings Ducks' spread to NBA
Dec 22, 2011
Tom HaberstrohAfter the Heat's Finals loss, Erik Spoelstra wanted to change things up. He found an answer in Oregon. Victor Baldizon/Getty Images
Erik Spoelstra was on the sidelines when he had his moment of clarity.
Only, it came on a football field in Eugene, Ore., and with an Oregon Ducks logo, not a Miami Heat one, on his collared shirt.
On a sunny August morning, two months removed from watching his Heat team collapse against the Dallas Mavericks in the NBA Finals, Spoelstra stood on the sidelines at the Ducks' training camp, trying to absorb any insight into the contrarian mind of famed Ducks football coach Chip Kelly.
This was the first stop on what Spoelstra refers to as his lockout-induced sabbatical, a trip born of summer boredom. After six weeks of cathartic film marathons in his Miami office, Spoelstra finally had enough, so he mapped out a tour around the country to pick the brains of the collegiate coaching ranks.
"The No. 1 thing I was trying to do was learn," said Spoelstra, who is beginning his fourth season as the Heat's head coach. "I had a lot of time on my hands and I didn't just want to sit there."
As he saw it, the NBA's labor stalemate offered a rare opportunity to become a student again -- on a college campus, no less.
It's fitting that Spoelstra, an Oregon native, kicked off his tour in Eugene. For two coaches who shared similar success so early in their coaching careers, the meeting between Spoelstra and Kelly was long overdue. Not to mention that each has recently come excruciatingly close to winning his first championship.
Over the course of a two-hour conversation on the sidelines, Kelly explained in detail the thinking behind his wildly successful up-tempo spread offense. Spoelstra hung on Kelly's every word. Not just because he is a Ducks fan. But because it was all coming together. Finally.
As Kelly spoke, Spoelstra's mind was consumed with one idea:
"Could a no-huddle spread offense work in the NBA?"
These are the words that Kelly used to describe the principles behind his signature spread offense that he rode to the BCS National Championship Game in 2011. They're also the same ones often used to describe a Heat team led by LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh.
At least, that's what the team is supposed to be. By most accounts, the Heat underachieved both competitively and aesthetically in the Big Three's debut season. Miami didn't smash the record books and played at one of the slowest paces in the NBA in 2010-11. As the one calling the shots, Spoelstra received much of the blame. But rather than deflect the responsibility, the Heat coach went back to the drawing board to find a better model. So he bought a plane ticket to go see Kelly and ask him a simple, yet vexing question:
How exactly do you turn a collection of world-class athletes into a merciless scoring machine?
Kelly's answer made all the sense in the world to Spoelstra. To leverage the team's blinding athleticism, Kelly told him, one must spread the floor, turn up the pace and let it fly. Pace and space are essential.
And so the mantra for the new Heat was born. Under the watch of Pat Riley, the steward of the "Showtime" Lakers in the 1980s, Spoelstra set out to design his very own attack built on speed, versatility and athleticism. But there was only one small problem:
Spoelstra didn't have any players to mold.
After leaving Eugene inspired, Spoelstra continued his summer tour, visiting college luminaries such as Mike Krzyzewski, Billy Donovan, John Calipari, Tom Crean and even talking shop over dinner with Urban Meyer. He also paid a follow-up visit to Kelly in Oregon. This time, Spoelstra brought his own coaching staff along for the ride while constantly keeping Riley in the loop with his ideas.
But upon returning from the trip around the country, Spoelstra realized he was in a bit of a bind. He had all these compelling ideas about how to deploy his players on the court, except he had no players to deploy thanks to the lockout. So Spoelstra walked into the Heat arena and told his coaching staff to lace up and get out on the practice court.
Spoelstra and his assistants decided to play a game of pretend: Be the Miami Heat.
Their coach? That would be Riley. For the first time in years, Riley assembled his own (pretend) staff, too: Heat CEO Nick Arison and assistant general manager Andy Elisburg.
"Once or twice a week," Riley recalled, "Erik would take all of his eight or nine coaches and they'd be out there running through offense, experimenting on things, and I'd come out with Andy and Nick and we'd watch it. Then I started to go out on the court and say, 'Why don't you do this? Why don't you do that?' I loved it, and I loved what [Erik] was doing."
For Spoelstra, the exercise allowed him to see what they were missing all last season.
What exactly does LeBron see in the pick-and-roll with Bosh at the top of the key? Which lanes open up for Wade when LeBron sets a screen at the elbow? What happens when they switch spots? What will the defense decide to do when Bosh goes to the perimeter while LeBron flies down the lane in transition?
Spoelstra's discoveries from his conversations with Kelly were reinforced during the role-playing exercise. Everything needed to be fast, instinctual and responsibly impulsive. That includes forgoing play calls every time down the court.
Spoelstra realized that the Heat's playing style and roster didn't need to be confined by convention. No, the traditional principles of coaching become obsolete when three superstars, two of whom are perennial MVP candidates, decide to play together. And the Heat's trio is largely interchangeable, especially with Bosh adding a 3-point shot and LeBron polishing his post game.
"The more that we've tried to think conventionally in terms of guys playing just a specific position, it restricted us a little bit," Spoelstra said. "We can put pressure on teams to adjust to us."
Spoelstra and Riley understood that a change of philosophy was in order. So they drew up a game plan. They'd sell the players and potential free agents on an offense built on a foundation similar to Riley's "Showtime." Once the lockout ended, the Heat added to their fleet of versatile wings by signing free agent Shane Battier as part of the team's vision to load up on players who could render positional lines obsolete.
With an up-tempo vision in place and a roster filled with players who could fill any of the positions from 1 to 4, the Heat want to be unconventional and deploy lineups that may not have a traditional center. Everything began to come into place. The elderly, lumbering centers of last season were gone. Bosh bulked up with a goal of averaging double-digit rebounds. The Heat's speedy draft pick Norris Cole took training camp by storm. LeBron and Dwyane stayed in sensational shape in the offseason.
"We don't have Dwight Howard," Riley said. "We don't have an 18-rebound guy. We don't have a 7-foot-2-inch guy who's going to take care of that stuff. Playing bigger and thinking bigger is trying something new."
LeBron has carved out a fine career victimizing smaller opponents from the perimeter. This is his comfort zone. He has won two MVPs this way. But sliding to the power forward spot -- even if it's just a nominal title -- means more bruises and more physical exertion underneath for the 6-foot-8, 265-pounder with 5.2 percent body fat. When asked if he derives any enjoyment playing as a big man, LeBron maintains that he'll do whatever it takes to win, even if it means stepping out of that comfort zone from time to time.
"I was a perimeter guy my whole life," LeBron said with a hint of nostalgia.
LeBron may be the size of Karl Malone, but that doesn't mean he wants to play like him.
"I wouldn't say it's fun," he said. "It's never fun banging with big men. Nothing fun about it."
You can tell that LeBron doesn't like to be pigeonholed into one position. Be careful labeling him as a point guard. Be wary of calling him a power forward. While he may be the first to say that he could play any position if it truly came down to it, he doesn't want a single position to define him.
Wade sympathizes with him. As someone who plays taller than his listed height of 6-foot-4, Wade understands LeBron's reluctance to fully embrace being the Heat's second-largest guy on the court. But Wade also noted that LeBron has warmed up to the idea more since last season.
"He's a lot more comfortable now," Wade said. "But a guy like LeBron, he came in playing the 1, and to have him at the 4 is kind of like moving him down. You don't want to move that far down. You feel cool with the 1, 2, 3, but when you get to the 4, it's a different kind of ... look."
It may just be a matter of ease. When LeBron guards the Joakim Noahs and Amare Stoudemires of the league, the size advantage suddenly disappears and his job becomes a little tougher and a little more taxing. Picking on someone your own size is never the most convenient option.
But the Heat aren't looking for James to be a post-up machine on the low block. Far from it. While some might see LeBron's post game as a litmus test for all-time greatness, the Heat organization isn't concerned about LeBron's ranking next to Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant. What some people might overlook is that Jordan and Kobe infused a post game into their attacks once they lost their quickness. At 26 years old, LeBron is entering his physical prime. And if all goes to plan, LeBron won't often be stationary on the low block this season. Any offseason tutelage with Hakeem Olajuwon is just icing on the cake.
Still, Miami does want to take advantage of his unique size. The Heat ran teams out of the gym when LeBron played the 4. Consider that the five most frequent Heat lineups with LeBron at power forward led to the their outscoring opponents by 39 points in about 100 minutes of action last season, which is the equivalent of winning by about 20 points in regulation. And some of those lineups included Joel Anthony at center, not Bosh.
Spoelstra inevitably came across these astounding numbers while doing his homework. Checking lineup data is something he routinely does during the season, but he decided to put his small-ball lineups under the microscope this offseason.
His takeaway? Small ball worked.
"Sometimes you think that if you're smaller, you don't rebound as well, or you might not defend as well," Spoelstra said. "But those were not true in our case."
However, as stunning as the results were, the implication is that success was achieved before LeBron became fully comfortable with his new role. In order to achieve that, Spoelstra had to switch hats from coach to salesman.
When the Heat's training camp finally opened after the five-month lockout, Spoelstra explained his new philosophy to his players by appealing to its offensive freedom. Inspired by Kelly's gridiron principles, Spoelstra laid out a simple offensive blueprint: spread the floor, maintain spacing and create controlled chaos.
By doing this, Spoelstra was essentially burning his playbook and relying on his players' basketball IQ to make decisions. The Heat coach had to think long and hard about taking his hands off the wheel. Ultimately, he decided that easing off might be a good thing with players of this basketball acumen.
There is, however, a fluid framework in place, with infused elements of Rick Adelman's elbow offense and a motion dribble-drive offense, something Spoelstra picked up from his trip to Lexington, Ky., to see Calipari. Spoelstra's pitch to his team involved a very simple transaction of trust:
Do what I want, then you can do what you want.
The concept isn't an entirely new one for the Heat. In the middle of last season, as something of a motivating technique, Spoelstra told his players that if they locked down the defensive end and created turnovers, they could run all they pleased. But that didn't seem to change much of anything. After all, it was midseason and habits are difficult to adjust on the fly.
But after a crushing Finals loss to Dallas, the Heat were ready for a fresh start. Now, the team seems fully on board with what they call "the triangle on steroids," and players have even adopted Spoelstra's "pace and space" terminology in their press conferences.
You could see it in action early in the first quarter of the team's first preseason game against Orlando. LeBron quickly dribbled up the court with Hedo Turkoglu defending and immediately fed the ball to Wade on the right block. Turkoglu turned his back for a moment and that was it -- James made the read, darted to the baseline off Wade's left shoulder, and by the time Turkoglu knew what was going on, Wade had already given the ball to LeBron on a handoff. LeBron soared to the basket and finished a reverse layup on the other side of the rim.
That wasn't a play call. It was a read.
"And that's the way we like to keep it," Spoelstra said, recalling the possession. "We want to continue to develop more actions where the two of them are involved and it's not necessarily scripted."
Spoelstra made a grand total of three play calls during the entire game. Yes, it was preseason, but the Heat won by 33 points.
What happens when the Heat lose three games in a row this winter? What happens when the Chicago Bulls go on an 8-0 run down the stretch of a crucial game? What happens when Spoelstra needs to take advantage of a hole in the opposing defense with sharp X's and O's?
It remains to be seen, but the potential benefits are hard to ignore, and the players seem happy with the tweaks. LeBron says he loves where the Heat's offense is right now. Wade believes Spoelstra has done "a great job."
And Bosh? He's gushing about Spoelstra's new groove for a different reason: You can't really scout it.
This is perhaps the greatest potential benefit of all. Opponents knew where LeBron, Wade and Bosh would be last season because they memorized Spoelstra's playbook. The Heat were predictable, and that's what made them beatable at times, especially in the playoffs.
Armed with a unique roster, Spoelstra is thinking outside the box and the plan seems to be working for now. With his own spin on "Showtime" in place, Spoelstra is hoping his moment of clarity in Oregon will lead to a moment of triumph for Miami.
This narrative has quite a bit of spin to it, but it's from a guy who wants to keep his job writing for a team and for professional sports.
Spolestra told LeBron James that the Heat could take the East easily every year. But to win in the Finals, against a team that would be talented enough to exploit any fundamental flaws, the Heat needed a more egalitarian type offense. Iso ball has a place and time but it can't be the format of an entire offense. LBJ wanted Spolestra fired because of the outrageous concept of taking what the defense gives you. And because LBJ is a coach killer, narcissist and an idiot. Riley forced a compromise, since he couldn't completely ignore LBJ. Do what Spo wants everywhere else but you and Wade can run the offense as you please, but don't complain if it doesn't work in the Finals. And if it doesn't work then never complain about the head coach again.
The key takeaway is do you see a guy like Fizdale beating the bushes all over the road to look for some incremental advantage? To learn? To be a better leader? To be more creative?
There are guys willing to work this hard all over the league at lower levels. Dolan has the cash to hire any number of them. But he'd rather play in a band no one wants to hear but he can force on them because he's a billionaire.
Hitting on a top lottery pick is usually treated as a given. If your lottery pick doesn't pan out, that's a loss.
Hitting on a mid-late/1st round/2nd round pick/undrafted FA is a huge win. The later the bigger the win. It's like you've created value out of nothing.
Adebayo was a big win as a #14 overall pick. A mid-first rounder that produced a double/double right from his rookie season, performing like a high lottery pick.
Herro was a #13 overall pick. Another huge win relative to his production.
Even bigger were Nunn and Robinson. These guys are true gold - they came at absolute minimum cost ~$2.8m for the pair in 2019-2020; the Heat didn't expend any draft picks to get them. Ellington and Bullock cost us $12m for the 2019-2020 season.
TripleThreat wrote:
https://www.espn.com/nba/truehoop/miamih...Spoelstra brings Ducks' spread to NBA
Dec 22, 2011
Tom HaberstrohAfter the Heat's Finals loss, Erik Spoelstra wanted to change things up. He found an answer in Oregon. Victor Baldizon/Getty Images
Erik Spoelstra was on the sidelines when he had his moment of clarity.
Only, it came on a football field in Eugene, Ore., and with an Oregon Ducks logo, not a Miami Heat one, on his collared shirt.
On a sunny August morning, two months removed from watching his Heat team collapse against the Dallas Mavericks in the NBA Finals, Spoelstra stood on the sidelines at the Ducks' training camp, trying to absorb any insight into the contrarian mind of famed Ducks football coach Chip Kelly.
This was the first stop on what Spoelstra refers to as his lockout-induced sabbatical, a trip born of summer boredom. After six weeks of cathartic film marathons in his Miami office, Spoelstra finally had enough, so he mapped out a tour around the country to pick the brains of the collegiate coaching ranks.
"The No. 1 thing I was trying to do was learn," said Spoelstra, who is beginning his fourth season as the Heat's head coach. "I had a lot of time on my hands and I didn't just want to sit there."
As he saw it, the NBA's labor stalemate offered a rare opportunity to become a student again -- on a college campus, no less.
It's fitting that Spoelstra, an Oregon native, kicked off his tour in Eugene. For two coaches who shared similar success so early in their coaching careers, the meeting between Spoelstra and Kelly was long overdue. Not to mention that each has recently come excruciatingly close to winning his first championship.
Over the course of a two-hour conversation on the sidelines, Kelly explained in detail the thinking behind his wildly successful up-tempo spread offense. Spoelstra hung on Kelly's every word. Not just because he is a Ducks fan. But because it was all coming together. Finally.
As Kelly spoke, Spoelstra's mind was consumed with one idea:
"Could a no-huddle spread offense work in the NBA?"
These are the words that Kelly used to describe the principles behind his signature spread offense that he rode to the BCS National Championship Game in 2011. They're also the same ones often used to describe a Heat team led by LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh.
At least, that's what the team is supposed to be. By most accounts, the Heat underachieved both competitively and aesthetically in the Big Three's debut season. Miami didn't smash the record books and played at one of the slowest paces in the NBA in 2010-11. As the one calling the shots, Spoelstra received much of the blame. But rather than deflect the responsibility, the Heat coach went back to the drawing board to find a better model. So he bought a plane ticket to go see Kelly and ask him a simple, yet vexing question:
How exactly do you turn a collection of world-class athletes into a merciless scoring machine?
Kelly's answer made all the sense in the world to Spoelstra. To leverage the team's blinding athleticism, Kelly told him, one must spread the floor, turn up the pace and let it fly. Pace and space are essential.
And so the mantra for the new Heat was born. Under the watch of Pat Riley, the steward of the "Showtime" Lakers in the 1980s, Spoelstra set out to design his very own attack built on speed, versatility and athleticism. But there was only one small problem:
Spoelstra didn't have any players to mold.
After leaving Eugene inspired, Spoelstra continued his summer tour, visiting college luminaries such as Mike Krzyzewski, Billy Donovan, John Calipari, Tom Crean and even talking shop over dinner with Urban Meyer. He also paid a follow-up visit to Kelly in Oregon. This time, Spoelstra brought his own coaching staff along for the ride while constantly keeping Riley in the loop with his ideas.
But upon returning from the trip around the country, Spoelstra realized he was in a bit of a bind. He had all these compelling ideas about how to deploy his players on the court, except he had no players to deploy thanks to the lockout. So Spoelstra walked into the Heat arena and told his coaching staff to lace up and get out on the practice court.
Spoelstra and his assistants decided to play a game of pretend: Be the Miami Heat.
Their coach? That would be Riley. For the first time in years, Riley assembled his own (pretend) staff, too: Heat CEO Nick Arison and assistant general manager Andy Elisburg.
"Once or twice a week," Riley recalled, "Erik would take all of his eight or nine coaches and they'd be out there running through offense, experimenting on things, and I'd come out with Andy and Nick and we'd watch it. Then I started to go out on the court and say, 'Why don't you do this? Why don't you do that?' I loved it, and I loved what [Erik] was doing."
For Spoelstra, the exercise allowed him to see what they were missing all last season.
What exactly does LeBron see in the pick-and-roll with Bosh at the top of the key? Which lanes open up for Wade when LeBron sets a screen at the elbow? What happens when they switch spots? What will the defense decide to do when Bosh goes to the perimeter while LeBron flies down the lane in transition?
Spoelstra's discoveries from his conversations with Kelly were reinforced during the role-playing exercise. Everything needed to be fast, instinctual and responsibly impulsive. That includes forgoing play calls every time down the court.
Spoelstra realized that the Heat's playing style and roster didn't need to be confined by convention. No, the traditional principles of coaching become obsolete when three superstars, two of whom are perennial MVP candidates, decide to play together. And the Heat's trio is largely interchangeable, especially with Bosh adding a 3-point shot and LeBron polishing his post game.
"The more that we've tried to think conventionally in terms of guys playing just a specific position, it restricted us a little bit," Spoelstra said. "We can put pressure on teams to adjust to us."
Spoelstra and Riley understood that a change of philosophy was in order. So they drew up a game plan. They'd sell the players and potential free agents on an offense built on a foundation similar to Riley's "Showtime." Once the lockout ended, the Heat added to their fleet of versatile wings by signing free agent Shane Battier as part of the team's vision to load up on players who could render positional lines obsolete.
With an up-tempo vision in place and a roster filled with players who could fill any of the positions from 1 to 4, the Heat want to be unconventional and deploy lineups that may not have a traditional center. Everything began to come into place. The elderly, lumbering centers of last season were gone. Bosh bulked up with a goal of averaging double-digit rebounds. The Heat's speedy draft pick Norris Cole took training camp by storm. LeBron and Dwyane stayed in sensational shape in the offseason.
"We don't have Dwight Howard," Riley said. "We don't have an 18-rebound guy. We don't have a 7-foot-2-inch guy who's going to take care of that stuff. Playing bigger and thinking bigger is trying something new."
LeBron has carved out a fine career victimizing smaller opponents from the perimeter. This is his comfort zone. He has won two MVPs this way. But sliding to the power forward spot -- even if it's just a nominal title -- means more bruises and more physical exertion underneath for the 6-foot-8, 265-pounder with 5.2 percent body fat. When asked if he derives any enjoyment playing as a big man, LeBron maintains that he'll do whatever it takes to win, even if it means stepping out of that comfort zone from time to time.
"I was a perimeter guy my whole life," LeBron said with a hint of nostalgia.
LeBron may be the size of Karl Malone, but that doesn't mean he wants to play like him.
"I wouldn't say it's fun," he said. "It's never fun banging with big men. Nothing fun about it."
You can tell that LeBron doesn't like to be pigeonholed into one position. Be careful labeling him as a point guard. Be wary of calling him a power forward. While he may be the first to say that he could play any position if it truly came down to it, he doesn't want a single position to define him.
Wade sympathizes with him. As someone who plays taller than his listed height of 6-foot-4, Wade understands LeBron's reluctance to fully embrace being the Heat's second-largest guy on the court. But Wade also noted that LeBron has warmed up to the idea more since last season.
"He's a lot more comfortable now," Wade said. "But a guy like LeBron, he came in playing the 1, and to have him at the 4 is kind of like moving him down. You don't want to move that far down. You feel cool with the 1, 2, 3, but when you get to the 4, it's a different kind of ... look."
It may just be a matter of ease. When LeBron guards the Joakim Noahs and Amare Stoudemires of the league, the size advantage suddenly disappears and his job becomes a little tougher and a little more taxing. Picking on someone your own size is never the most convenient option.
But the Heat aren't looking for James to be a post-up machine on the low block. Far from it. While some might see LeBron's post game as a litmus test for all-time greatness, the Heat organization isn't concerned about LeBron's ranking next to Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant. What some people might overlook is that Jordan and Kobe infused a post game into their attacks once they lost their quickness. At 26 years old, LeBron is entering his physical prime. And if all goes to plan, LeBron won't often be stationary on the low block this season. Any offseason tutelage with Hakeem Olajuwon is just icing on the cake.
Still, Miami does want to take advantage of his unique size. The Heat ran teams out of the gym when LeBron played the 4. Consider that the five most frequent Heat lineups with LeBron at power forward led to the their outscoring opponents by 39 points in about 100 minutes of action last season, which is the equivalent of winning by about 20 points in regulation. And some of those lineups included Joel Anthony at center, not Bosh.
Spoelstra inevitably came across these astounding numbers while doing his homework. Checking lineup data is something he routinely does during the season, but he decided to put his small-ball lineups under the microscope this offseason.
His takeaway? Small ball worked.
"Sometimes you think that if you're smaller, you don't rebound as well, or you might not defend as well," Spoelstra said. "But those were not true in our case."
However, as stunning as the results were, the implication is that success was achieved before LeBron became fully comfortable with his new role. In order to achieve that, Spoelstra had to switch hats from coach to salesman.
When the Heat's training camp finally opened after the five-month lockout, Spoelstra explained his new philosophy to his players by appealing to its offensive freedom. Inspired by Kelly's gridiron principles, Spoelstra laid out a simple offensive blueprint: spread the floor, maintain spacing and create controlled chaos.
By doing this, Spoelstra was essentially burning his playbook and relying on his players' basketball IQ to make decisions. The Heat coach had to think long and hard about taking his hands off the wheel. Ultimately, he decided that easing off might be a good thing with players of this basketball acumen.
There is, however, a fluid framework in place, with infused elements of Rick Adelman's elbow offense and a motion dribble-drive offense, something Spoelstra picked up from his trip to Lexington, Ky., to see Calipari. Spoelstra's pitch to his team involved a very simple transaction of trust:
Do what I want, then you can do what you want.
The concept isn't an entirely new one for the Heat. In the middle of last season, as something of a motivating technique, Spoelstra told his players that if they locked down the defensive end and created turnovers, they could run all they pleased. But that didn't seem to change much of anything. After all, it was midseason and habits are difficult to adjust on the fly.
But after a crushing Finals loss to Dallas, the Heat were ready for a fresh start. Now, the team seems fully on board with what they call "the triangle on steroids," and players have even adopted Spoelstra's "pace and space" terminology in their press conferences.
You could see it in action early in the first quarter of the team's first preseason game against Orlando. LeBron quickly dribbled up the court with Hedo Turkoglu defending and immediately fed the ball to Wade on the right block. Turkoglu turned his back for a moment and that was it -- James made the read, darted to the baseline off Wade's left shoulder, and by the time Turkoglu knew what was going on, Wade had already given the ball to LeBron on a handoff. LeBron soared to the basket and finished a reverse layup on the other side of the rim.
That wasn't a play call. It was a read.
"And that's the way we like to keep it," Spoelstra said, recalling the possession. "We want to continue to develop more actions where the two of them are involved and it's not necessarily scripted."
Spoelstra made a grand total of three play calls during the entire game. Yes, it was preseason, but the Heat won by 33 points.
What happens when the Heat lose three games in a row this winter? What happens when the Chicago Bulls go on an 8-0 run down the stretch of a crucial game? What happens when Spoelstra needs to take advantage of a hole in the opposing defense with sharp X's and O's?
It remains to be seen, but the potential benefits are hard to ignore, and the players seem happy with the tweaks. LeBron says he loves where the Heat's offense is right now. Wade believes Spoelstra has done "a great job."
And Bosh? He's gushing about Spoelstra's new groove for a different reason: You can't really scout it.
This is perhaps the greatest potential benefit of all. Opponents knew where LeBron, Wade and Bosh would be last season because they memorized Spoelstra's playbook. The Heat were predictable, and that's what made them beatable at times, especially in the playoffs.
Armed with a unique roster, Spoelstra is thinking outside the box and the plan seems to be working for now. With his own spin on "Showtime" in place, Spoelstra is hoping his moment of clarity in Oregon will lead to a moment of triumph for Miami.
This narrative has quite a bit of spin to it, but it's from a guy who wants to keep his job writing for a team and for professional sports.
Spolestra told LeBron James that the Heat could take the East easily every year. But to win in the Finals, against a team that would be talented enough to exploit any fundamental flaws, the Heat needed a more egalitarian type offense. Iso ball has a place and time but it can't be the format of an entire offense. LBJ wanted Spolestra fired because of the outrageous concept of taking what the defense gives you. And because LBJ is a coach killer, narcissist and an idiot. Riley forced a compromise, since he couldn't completely ignore LBJ. Do what Spo wants everywhere else but you and Wade can run the offense as you please, but don't complain if it doesn't work in the Finals. And if it doesn't work then never complain about the head coach again.
The key takeaway is do you see a guy like Fizdale beating the bushes all over the road to look for some incremental advantage? To learn? To be a better leader? To be more creative?
There are guys willing to work this hard all over the league at lower levels. Dolan has the cash to hire any number of them. But he'd rather play in a band no one wants to hear but he can force on them because he's a billionaire.
To be fair, you don’t know Fizdales work ethic. You just know the result. He got fired twice.
So has Thibs. But Thibs has a documented history of insane work ethic. So today he sits as our head coach.
Spo’s story looks great because they won two titles and earned Lebrons respect. LeGM wanted him fired and Spo responded and upped his game. Good for both of them. Need there really be a villain to this story? Lebron was then as likely still an massive ego driven player that is odds on favorite in the final four to win a tenth trip to the finals and his 4th title with his third team.
16 years all NBA. Nobody said you have to like the dude but this narrative of not respecting the accomplishments over his indiscretions gets old. You sound like a bitter ex pro athlete.
Can’t say I ever read anything bad about. Bill Russell but for the most part the icons NBA have some personalities that are not labeled “good guys”. They are sociopathy inclined to win and not aware of the wake they leave to get there. Jordan is the “Goat” but along the way left an an attractive wake to get there.
Lebron is a coach killer because he is a narcissist. I bet you have some similar tendencies I gatherfrom your writings but isn’t that part of what drove you to be a pro athlete and achieve a level few have gone? Top 1% stuff?
stanleybostitch wrote:TripleThreat wrote:https://www.theringer.com/nba/2020/9/17/...How Did the NBA Overlook One of the Best Shooters in Basketball?Every team needs 3-point shooting, yet few even gave Duncan Robinson an honest look. But the Heat believed in his potential, and got him to believe in it too.
By Rob Mahoney Sep 17, 2020, 6:30am EDT...
“At that point, he was shot-faking to death,” says Eric Glass, who coached the Heat in summer league. After imploring Robinson to shoot and getting nowhere, Glass moved to what is now a time-honored tradition for the fitness-obsessed Heat: punishing a shooter’s hesitation with calisthenics. Spoelstra would make Wayne Ellington, the Heat’s designated shooter from 2016 to 2019, run sprints after every pump fake until the coach broke him of the habit. If Robinson so much as blinked on the catch, the summer Heat coaches would stop practice and have him do push-ups. At one point, Adebayo stopped a drill himself to exact the toll from his new teammate.
This was all part of Miami’s design. The first step for Robinson wasn’t to shed his defender, put the ball on the floor, and make The Right Play™. “No,” Glass says. “You get in there, and when you’re open, you shoot it every single time. That was an evolution that he had to learn.”
We should do this with Frank. Hopefully the new leadership actually develops our talent.
Possibly. Feel that has been the push from coaches the last 2 years.
Do think Robinson effect on the Heat's success is a bit overblown though. Yes he is a good shooter but Butler, Bam and Dragic have been the main difference. Out of 11 play off games Duncan had 2 games over 20pts. But also had 2,6,5,4,6,6 point games. Think he is still in the "good three point shooter but can't create his own shot category". Will be interesting to see how he progresses. Speaking of draft surprises, think Herro has been a bigger one. Has hit several big shots in the play offs, can create and drive and is a good defender. Surprised with his athletic ability.
technomaster wrote:The Heat made some brilliant late picks/UDFA pick ups and that really has changed the complexion of this team.Hitting on a top lottery pick is usually treated as a given. If your lottery pick doesn't pan out, that's a loss.
Hitting on a mid-late/1st round/2nd round pick/undrafted FA is a huge win. The later the bigger the win. It's like you've created value out of nothing.
Adebayo was a big win as a #14 overall pick. A mid-first rounder that produced a double/double right from his rookie season, performing like a high lottery pick.
Herro was a #13 overall pick. Another huge win relative to his production.
Even bigger were Nunn and Robinson. These guys are true gold - they came at absolute minimum cost ~$2.8m for the pair in 2019-2020; the Heat didn't expend any draft picks to get them. Ellington and Bullock cost us $12m for the 2019-2020 season.
This only with a culture in place. Miami has had their shares of misses. Two years ago they finished they finishes second half of season 30-11 but still missed players because they started 11-30!
This is a team that that has success. They are one player away from being dominant.
Miami Heat Find Yet Another Hidden Gem with Josh Richardson
Zach Buckley
March 23, 2016
It was an off day in December, and Richardson was finishing up his workout with 100 three-point attempts. He made 64 of those shots and started gathering his things to go. Then, Heat coach Erik Spoelstra walked in."J-Rich, how many did you make?" the skipper asked.
"Uh, 64," Richardson said.
"No, no. We're shooting again," Spoelstra said. "You've got to make 70."
After another 100 shots, Richardson had 65 makes. The next time it was 69.
"Are we going to get this, or are you going to make me waste my whole day in here?" Spoelstra asked.
"Jesus, you're right," Richardson said. "I gotta get it together."
Now shirtless, frustrated and sweaty from the shooting and sprints he ran in between, the rookie could feel his fingers wrapping around his ticket out of the gym. He was 69-of-99, one shot away from getting on with his day or starting all over. He aimed and fired.
Videos you might like"I thought it was short," Richardson said.
It wasn't.
"I held my follow-through even after it hit the ground through the net," he said. "I was like, 'Thank God, it's over. I finally made 70.'"
As relieving as that was for Richardson, it was perhaps more validating for the Heat. It was evidence that they'd guessed right on a prospect's growth—again.
Last season, they took a deeply discounted flier on former second-round pick Hassan Whiteside and promptly witnessed his remarkable rise to stardom. They also grabbed undrafted guard Tyler Johnson, ran him through their NBA D-League program and watched him emerge as an energetic, three-point-sniping reserve.
Miami's gamble on Richardson was twofold. For starters, it wagered that a 31.8 percent three-point shooter during four years of collegiate hoops could have a promising future as an NBA sniper.
"We saw a shot that was mechanically pretty solid," Spoelstra explained. "He didn't shoot a real high three-point percentage in our shooting drills, but you saw it was mechanically something you could work with. I remember in a coaching meeting we said, 'J-Rich will improve dramatically with our program just with a ton of reps.'"
Therein lies the second part of the Heat's bet. Even if they could see Richardson's potential, they still needed him to invest the sweat equity required to realize it. They planned on working him hard, but there's never a guarantee a prospect will respond to those demands the right way.
"Our program's not for everybody," Spoelstra said. "It's just not. You have to be the right individual and embrace the work, embrace the sweat, embrace the every-single-day grind. Some people get chewed up by it."
Richardson isn't one of those people.
He's been a gym rat since the Heat selected him 40th overall, 16 spots behind where they had him graded. Perimeter shooting is one of his main focuses; he says he takes at least 200 triples a day. It has been since the start of the year, when he struggled to see major minutes unless he was suiting up for the Sioux Falls Skyforce, Miami's D-League affiliate.
He entered the All-Star break averaging just 11.5 minutes over 23 games. Trades (Mario Chalmers) and injuries (Johnson and Beno Udrih) thinned the backcourt barriers in front of Richardson. He's been a lineup fixture ever since, logging 26.5 minutes a night in all of Miami's 17 post-intermission games.
"I remember when Beno went down, I texted him and told him we need him to step up," fellow freshman Justise Winslow said. "Ever since then, he has been."
That's the least dramatic way to put it.
Since the All-Star break, Richardson has been on a statistical tear. He leads all rookies in plus/minus (plus-77) and ranks ninth in scoring (10.5 points per game) over that stretch.
Oh, and those countless shooting sessions have paid off in the form of a league-best 60.4 percent three-point conversion rate (minimum 20 attempts).
"I feel like the goal is really big right now," he said. "I feel like if I shoot...it's most likely gonna go in."
His long-distance development is the most striking part of this story, given the amount of work it required. But that's not the only thing Richardson has provided. At 6'6" with a 6'10" wingspan, Richardson combines length, athleticism, quickness and effort to form a disruptive defensive package.
His defense is tenacious—or "scrappy," as Stephen Curry called it after being harassed by Richardson during Miami's late-February loss to the defending champs.
While he has room to grow as a playmaker, he has helped fill Miami's void at backup point guard. He hits the open court like he's been shot out of a cannon, and that aggressiveness fits perfectly with the Heat's new uptempo scheme.
"He is shooting really well from three, attacking the rim, defending," Goran Dragic said. "He is an all-around player."
Richardson said he doesn't know if his name shows up on opposing scouting reports yet, but that time is coming. Not that he'll mind the extra attention. If teams want to chase him off the arc, he can pull something else from his bag of tricks.
Richardson's confidence, like his production, is at an all-time high. That's not a coincidence.
What's happened the last month is, by his own words, "a product of hard work." It's helped having an opportunity, holding a stable rotation spot and stringing together good performances, but the trust in his abilities stems mostly from his behind-the-scenes effort.
"Every level, I've always had to work for everything," he said. "I never really came into a program and had it like, 'OK, you're starting,' or, 'OK, you're our best player.' It's never been like that, so it's just kind of ingrained in my brain to just work every day."
That determination not only led Richardson to the NBA; it also drew the Heat to him. While this franchise has seemingly made a habit of uncovering incredibly fortunate finds, this isn't blind luck.
The Heat know what they'll require of their youngsters, so they target guys they think will respond the right way. By the time their hidden gems start to surface, they've already seen the foundation laid to support these climbs.
"You have to have the right kind of player," Spoelstra said. "A lot of players just really aren't willing to put in that kind of work."
http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_...
To this day, Johnson's coaches from Fresno State rave about the time he shattered two (other) teeth diving for a loose ball in a drill ... then picked up the scattered shards of enamel ... and kept practicing.Such restlessness translated into a souped-up version of what scouts euphemistically call motor. "Sometimes Tyler will bristle when I tell him, 'Hey, you've got grit,'" Heat coach Erik Spoelstra says. "He may take that as, 'You don't have talent.' But his toughness is absolutely talent."
Last summer, for instance, he had two metal plates inserted into his jaw after he sprinted into Magic forward Branden Dawson during summer league. ("Good screen," Johnson recalls.) And this past February, at long last, the left-hander underwent surgery to address a soreness in his left shoulder that he'd first ignored as a college senior. Not until Johnson's rotator cuff gave out against Brooklyn in January -- he airballed a floater -- did he finally let up.
By March, weeks into recovery, Spoelstra had to summon Johnson into his quarters at AmericanAirlines Arena. When healthy, the guard had always insisted on doing an extra regimen of pre-practice workouts and post-practice drills. Spoelstra just wanted to ensure that Johnson, in rehab, was following doctor's orders and not rushing back for the playoffs that spring. "No, no, no, don't worry about me," Johnson assured.
"So who's this?" Spoelstra replied, before hitting play on an office monitor. Arena security footage, taken shortly before midnight, unmistakably showed Johnson sneaking in to do drills on the court. The punishment: $500 for an "unsupervised workout without clearance from a team physician" -- an infraction, Spoelstra admits, that he had to invent on the spot.
“He makes you watch him,” Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra said recently in a video on the team’s website. “He makes you play him. He makes you re-sign him. He’s a force of nature out there. He doesn’t do everything perfectly by the script, and that’s what I love about Tyler. He’s an ultimate competitor. He finds a way.”Johnson rose through the ranks of the D-League and eventually earned a spot in Spoelstra’s rotation by impressing the coach with his work ethic and play on the court. In a video posted on the team’s website, Spoelstra reaffirmed his belief that Johnson is one of the hardest working members on the Heat roster. Even though he probably won’t make the starting lineup, Johnson is sure to be key rotation player, just like he was before he injured his shoulder last season.
“He’s got an incredible work ethic. I think that’s why the Heat fan base loves Tyler so much, and they should,” said Spoelstra. “He’s reflective of the work ethic of this community. He puts in the time. And he’s tireless with his work ethic. He’s coachable. He has a great desire to get better. And he’s turned himself into a heck of a pro.”
Johnson is the latest proof that it's possible to go from undrafted training-camp invite to NBA D-Leaguer to big league rotation regular in a little more than a year. He's just 51 games into his NBA career, and the first 32 came with the injury-riddled Heat squad that limped to a 37-45 finish last season—their worst mark since 2007-08.
But those closest to the situation have seen enough to recognize real potential.
"It's one of those situations where people are like, 'Who is this guy?' We know who he is," Bosh said. "You better bring your lunch pail, because you're going to have to work [against him]."
"[Defense is] a non-negotiable with Spo," Johnson said.
Johnson hounds opponents like a parasite clinging to its life source. On the whole, he's knocked 2.8 percentage points off his matchup's regular field-goal conversion rate (from 43.0 to 40.1). More impressively, he's made his biggest impact on the game's most efficient shots—opponents have lost 10.8 percentage points on both threes and shots within six feet against him.
"Anything that he does now doesn't really surprise me," Bosh said. "He's knocking down shots, he's getting guys involved and he's playing great defense."
On the rare nights his shot isn't falling, he can find buckets off the bounce. When his scoring isn't there, he can power the offense by dishing. He's always a disruptive defender no matter what's happening at the opposite end, and he regularly punishes teams who don't respect his presence on the offensive glass (4.5 offensive rebound percentage, second among all guards who have logged 100-plus minutes).
Link to MediaJohnson has embraced his role as Miami's backcourt chameleon.
He's been both a sprinter alongside the speedy Goran Dragic and a half-court tactician when sharing the floor with Wade. To Johnson's credit, he's been effective regardless of the assignment. He ranks inside the 90th percentile as both a pick-and-roll ball-handler (1.08 points per possession, 94.7th percentile) and a spot-up sniper (1.23, 92.4).
technomaster wrote:The Heat made some brilliant late picks/UDFA pick ups and that really has changed the complexion of this team.Hitting on a top lottery pick is usually treated as a given. If your lottery pick doesn't pan out, that's a loss.
Hitting on a mid-late/1st round/2nd round pick/undrafted FA is a huge win. The later the bigger the win. It's like you've created value out of nothing.
Adebayo was a big win as a #14 overall pick. A mid-first rounder that produced a double/double right from his rookie season, performing like a high lottery pick.
Herro was a #13 overall pick. Another huge win relative to his production.
Even bigger were Nunn and Robinson. These guys are true gold - they came at absolute minimum cost ~$2.8m for the pair in 2019-2020; the Heat didn't expend any draft picks to get them. Ellington and Bullock cost us $12m for the 2019-2020 season.
Giving the players all due credit, how much to scouting, development, coaching?
KnickDanger wrote:technomaster wrote:The Heat made some brilliant late picks/UDFA pick ups and that really has changed the complexion of this team.Hitting on a top lottery pick is usually treated as a given. If your lottery pick doesn't pan out, that's a loss.
Hitting on a mid-late/1st round/2nd round pick/undrafted FA is a huge win. The later the bigger the win. It's like you've created value out of nothing.
Adebayo was a big win as a #14 overall pick. A mid-first rounder that produced a double/double right from his rookie season, performing like a high lottery pick.
Herro was a #13 overall pick. Another huge win relative to his production.
Even bigger were Nunn and Robinson. These guys are true gold - they came at absolute minimum cost ~$2.8m for the pair in 2019-2020; the Heat didn't expend any draft picks to get them. Ellington and Bullock cost us $12m for the 2019-2020 season.
Giving the players all due credit, how much to scouting, development, coaching?
Everything.
If Dolan somehow keeps Pat Riley in 1995 the past 20 years is totally different
C Defensive Big (Bam, Theis)
PF Big Wing (Crowder, Tatum)
SF Do it Wing (Butler, Brown)
SG Wing or combo guard (Robinson, Smart)
PG Scoring PG (Dragic, Walker)
6th Do it all shooter/wing (Herro, Hayward)
So with the exception of some shooters/playmakers the teams are made up of largely multi-position defenders. They both employ the idea of really only having 3 positions on the floor; PG, 3 wings, and a defensive big. Their top 6 players are essentially a Big, a PG, and 4 wings of varying skill-sets.
So who fits from our team:
Barrett: Fits as a do-it-all, playmaking wing similar to Butler and Brown
Robinson: He's a anchor defensive big so his game makes sense if the PF next to him is a big wing (not a true big man)
Knox: He can still fit. He can shoot and plays multiple positions. He's a big wing via Tatum and Crowder but obviously has a lot of work to do on both end.
Ntilikina: defensive combo guard ala Smart. He fits fine with his ability to guard multiple positions. But he needs to learn how to shoot at 36% + from 3pt.
Harkless: He sort of fits that Crowder role, but can he shoot it well enough?
Other good fits are Bullock and Dotson: 3&D multi-position defensive players
Players who don't fit:
Randle: I don't see a path for him unless it's in a backup center role where he can fill it up for 20 mpg. As we see over the years, similar players like Al Jefferson, Greg Monroe, etc eventually settle into that backup center role.
Dennis Smith: Upside is there and no harm keeping him as a backup, but there is no real path for him as a starting PG on a championship team with his inability to play off the ball. If you look at Walker and Dragic, both of them can play well on or off the ball. A PG must be able to play off the ball as great teams generate much of their playmaking from the wings.
What we need:
PG who can play on and off the ball: VanVleet, Chris Paul, and Mike Conley being the most obvious targets
Wings who can shoot: Plus if they can defend that's a bonus: Vassell is a top pick for me. Obviously Joe Harris is a FA option. A trade option is Luke Kennard.
Oversized wing for Stretch 4- If Knox really develops he fits. Bertans, Grant, and Gallinari are all FA options who fit. Crowder is a free agent but his stock is sky high. Someone like Robert Woodard shows a lot of Grant/Crowder traits as a late 1st round prospect.
So adding VanVleet or Paul and drafting Vassell is a start. As for stretch-4 the question is do we want to commit to a muli-year player like Gallinari, Bertans, or Grant, or wait it out and use Knox/Harkless or another stopgap
C Robinson
Big Wing Harkless/Knox
Wing Barrett
Wing Vassell
PG VanVleet or Paul
6th Frank
This is what we might be looking at early in the process. We won't be able to address all the needs at once.
TripleThreat wrote:Look at the balls on that Herro kid. Right now he's showing shades of Chris Mullin with athleticism, which is terrifying. Look at how fast he's getting his shot off with good mechanics. Zero hesitation. Killer mentality.
Tyler Fucking Herrorgasm
Screw trades. Fuck the mirror test. Let's just flat out steal this kid. Triple, put some sort of "insurance policy/kidnapping/misogynistic unemployed dance squad conspiracy" scheme together for Leon that ends up with Pat Riley in a nursing home and Herro starting at SG for your New York Knicks. Move RJ to SF.
jrodmc wrote:TripleThreat wrote:Look at the balls on that Herro kid. Right now he's showing shades of Chris Mullin with athleticism, which is terrifying. Look at how fast he's getting his shot off with good mechanics. Zero hesitation. Killer mentality.
Tyler Fucking HerrorgasmScrew trades. Fuck the mirror test. Let's just flat out steal this kid. Triple, put some sort of "insurance policy/kidnapping/misogynistic unemployed dance squad conspiracy" scheme together for Leon that ends up with Pat Riley in a nursing home and Herro starting at SG for your New York Knicks. Move RJ to SF.
Barrett/Herro really would be my dream wing combo. We have to remember Herro is doing what he's doing because he's in the perfect situation but he is still very good. In a redraft he goes 4, or in some cases 3.
IMO, if your not in the top 5 spots, you have to draft by fit, not most talented, Miami drafts by fit, so they dont spend years developing a player to play in their system, they draft players that fit the system/culture.
I thought fizdale would bring that mind set to the knicks, instead he advised the FO to draft Knox, a guy who avg .06 assist