Miami Heat: 2017-18 player grades for Wayne Ellington
By Simon Smith
Strengths
In the new-age era of 3-point shooting, Ellington’s ability to excel in this area simply made the Heat a more potent team on the floor.
The following are the most effective lineups for the Heat over the course of this past regular season:
- 5-man lineup (minimum 100 minutes): Bam Adebayo-Ellington-Kelly Olynyk-Josh Richardson–Justise Winslow (+19.0 net rating)
- 4-man lineup (minimum 300 minutes): Ellington-Olynyk-Richardson-Winslow (+7.7 net rating)
- 3-man lineup (minimum 600 minutes): Ellington-Olynyk-Richardson (+9.2 net rating)
- 2-man lineup (minimum 1100 minutes): Ellington-Olynyk (+6.2 net rating)
You might notice Ellington appears in each listed lineup.
Wayne Ellington finishes the regular season with 12 games hitting at least 6 threes, good for 9th All-Time for a single season.
— Couper Moorhead (@CoupNBA) April 12, 2018
Over his 77 regular season games, the Heat posted a 29-13 record when Ellington hit three or more triples, and more impressively were 20-8 when he nailed at least four triples. In other words, the Heat performed like a 59-win team over the 28 games in which Ellington excelled from behind the 3-point line.
Wayne Ellington has passed Tim Hardaway on the team's all-time list for 3-pointers made in a single season.
— Anthony Chiang (@Anthony_Chiang) March 24, 2018
During the course of the season, head coach Erik Spoelstra explained Ellington’s importance to the Heat:
"“I don’t get caught up on whether the ball is going in or not. I absolutely love watching Wayne work at his craft every single day, he hasn’t changed one bit….The most important thing is he creates actions for us….it adds to the diversity of our offense….You have to play him all the way out to 25 feet, that helps your offense.”"
Considering the size of several contracts around the league, Ellington’s $6 million salary this past season was clearly money well spent.