The Miami Heat finally looked like a team with a plan Wednesday night, and it showed up in the simplest way possible: they put the ball in pick-and-roll and let the game breathe.
After opening the season 0-4 while grinding through a rough offensive stretch, Miami changed course in Atlanta and rode that adjustment to a 129-117 win over the Hawks. The Heat ran more pick-and-rolls than they had in more than a year, and the payoff was immediate.
Miami scored a season-high 129 points and posted its best offensive rating of the season at 120.6 points per 100 possessions. Through the first four games, that number had been a bleak 105.3.
“We haven’t run pick-and-roll in a long time,” Heat center Bam Adebayo, a former Kentucky star, said after Miami picked up its first victory.
Adebayo was a big reason the change worked. He had been stuck in an early-season rut, averaging 11.8 points on 40% shooting from the field and 3-of-18 shooting from three-point range before Wednesday.
Against Atlanta, the ball found him in more comfortable spots, closer to the rim and away from the perimeter struggle that had bogged him down. He finished with 24 points on 8-of-16 shooting, went 8-of-9 at the line, and added nine rebounds, three assists and three steals.
“I just feel like he’s one of those coaches, he sees how to make adjustments,” Adebayo said of Heat coach Erik Spoelstra. “And he made an adjustment tonight.”
The numbers backed that up. According to Heat.com’s Couper Moorhead, Miami ran 57 pick and rolls Wednesday after using just 94 total through the first four games of the season. That 57 was also 10 more than Miami’s season high in any game last season.
It wasn’t a slowdown, either. The Heat played at a pace of 107 possessions per 100 possessions on Wednesday, a number that would have ranked as the fastest in the NBA last season. Miami also won the fast-break battle 21-13.
“We wanted to be a little bit more intentional when we weren’t in the flow,” Spoelstra said of the shift, with the Heat (1-4) set to host the Indiana Pacers on Friday at Kaseya Center (8 p.m., WPLG Local 10). “So that didn’t take away from our transition.
Our pace was too slow the last, really, three games, way too slow. And so we need both parts of it.
We need to push tempo, push pace. Teams will scout against it, so what?
That’s who we are.
“But then, when the game gets to those neutral times, we have to be more intentional of where the ball is going. And sometimes it may be a pick-and-roll, sometimes it might be our game that we’re getting to, or a post up, or catch and shoots, which is a big part of what we do. So I just think it was much more purposeful.”
Davion Mitchell and Pelle Larsson helped make the tweak work as ball handlers, combining for 18 assists and four turnovers. And the Heat’s offseason addition, Giannis Antetokounmpo, said the setup fit the way Miami wants to play when the action settles down.
“We have offensive principles,” Antetokounmpo said. “Guys have to look for space.
Guys have got to go downhill. Guys have got to move when somebody drives.
But at the end of the day, once the game slows down, you’ve got to set some pick-and-rolls. I think coach trusts us that we’re able to recognize when, the moment in time, within the game that we’re going to do that.”
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