On November 3, 2021, the Miami Heat were 6-1 and clearly the best team in the league. Just ten days later, the Heat have lost three in a row and four of their last five. What in the world is going on?
Taking a look at the stats, we can see that the offense is scoring eight points fewer per 100 possessions (from 115.4 points to 107.0), and the defense is allowing a whopping 17 points more per 100 possessions (from 98.6 to 115.2). They went from the best offense AND the best defense to the 20th ranked offense and 27th ranked defense. That’s… not great.
So what’s going on? Is this just small-sample variance, the kind of run that happens multiple times to every team in the league throughout a season? Or are there some underlying root causes that could prove to be problematic down the road? Let’s find out.
Diagnosing the recent struggles of the Miami Heat: Stopped hitting threes
Interestingly, the Miami Heat do not have the en-vogue threes-and-layups shot profile you might expect for a team that was an early adopter of analytics. The Heat are getting the same shots they’ve gotten all season – lots of corner threes and mid-range shots, few above-the-break threes, and a healthy diet of foul shots.
They are shooting it about as accurately from everywhere inside the arc as before. The major difference is that the Heat’s three-point percentage has cratered, dropping from 37 percent before November 3, to 29% after, per Cleaning The Glass. The Heat shoot about 33 threes a game on average, so that decline in three-point percentage explains much of the offensive scoring decline.
Duncan Robinson and Kyle Lowry have gotten off to slow starts to the season, and they are shooting a combined 28% on 18 attempts per game. That is half the Heat’s team total, during this five-game stretch.
If they creep back up to where they should be, this problem shouldn’t linger for long. Outside of Herro, other players are also shooting at or below their career averages.
Other offensive indicators, such as turnover and free throw rates, have only gotten slightly worse. The Heat’s offensive woes as of late should resolve themselves as soon as their shooting percentages improve a bit.