Coup’s Notebook Vol. 79: Dwyane Wade Becomes Immortal, Jimmy Butler And Bam Adebayo Find Their Spots And Miami Picks Up The Hammer
The Miami HEAT are 1-1 with a loss to the Orlando Magic and a road win over the Charlotte Hornets. This week they play the Detroit Pistons, New York Knicks and Washington Wizards. Until then here’s what we’ve been noting and noticing.
Etched in Bronze
There’s nothing quite like a statue in the NBA.
As of this year 238 players have been inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Before Sunday, just 12 players had full size statues outside of an arena, six of which belong to the Los Angeles Lakers, in addition to Bill Russell’s statue at Boston City Hall and the various smaller likenesses which sit outside of the Philadelphia 76ers practice facility. One of those statues, Michael Jordan’s, Wade visited with his family as a child not knowing it was something that could even happen, an athlete elevated to a statue. Of the teams with at least one statue the Dallas Mavericks, who unveiled Dirk Nowitzki’s statue in 2022, was the only one founded after 1979.
Now, of the seven teams which have joined the league since 1988 only the HEAT have a statue outside of their arena not counting George Mikan’s in Minnesota which was added for his tenure with the Minneapolis Lakers from 1948-1956.
The HEAT have had plenty of All-Stars. They have Hall of Famers. They have Gold Medalists. They’ve enjoyed seven appearances in the NBA Finals and three championships. In their relatively short history they’ve accomplished a great deal, but now they have actual physical history sitting outside of the Kaseya Center, a figure linking them with the traditions of civilizations thousands and thousands of years in the past. A statue is a piece of the thread of humanity. Dwyane Wade, now more than ever, is a part of history.
“I know it’s bigger than me,” Wade said after Sunday’s unveiling. “I’m here right now, I’m present right now, but I know this moment goes way beyond just now and way beyond the years that I will exist in life.”
As Wade took multiple trips to Chicago to visit artists Omri Amrany (the designer of Jordan’s statue and many others) and Oscar Leon and offer his input – more on that in a moment – he says he noticed that the late Kobe Bryant’s statue was being worked on at the exact same time.
“It put everything in perspective for me, when you talk about being immortal, when you talk about the life after. Going through this process gave me the opportunity to see it, my brother is not here to have this moment that I have. I know how important this is.
“This is going to live on way beyond me.”
Wade’s input included several different details, some you would never notice without someone pointing them out to you. On the heels of the left and right shoes are the names of Wade’s parents, Jolinda and Dwyane Wade Sr. On the sole of the right shoe are the words Rest In Peace, Hank in memory of Wade’s late agent Henry Thomas. Wade’s signature kneepads are there, as are his elbow band and the tape on his right fingers. Wade made sure to include the gum he was chewing the night the This Is My house moment happened against Chicago, and on his left wristband there are two numbers – the addresses of his childhood homes to remind Wade of his roots.
“Those are thing that if you don’t spend a lot of time going up close they’re easy to miss,” Leon said. “Especially on the shoes we did not particularly highlight them. It’s more something discreet that he can point out to his friends and family.”
Plenty of digital ink will be spilled describing what Wade’s statue means, to him, to his family, to his team and to the city. Most of it will ring true because we all have a connection to statues in some way, a feeling we get when you see one at a museum and you take the time to read the story about it. We know what they mean because they mean something to all of us whether they were made in the time of the Greeks or of Dr. James Naismith. We know the story this statue tells. Time will tell what it means, what the monument Wade inspired will come to represent as his story crystalizes into legend and myth. The symbol means something, but it’s for those who come next to decide exactly what that is.
“It’s not just a statue,” Amrani says. “It’s a message for community. It’s a message for the kids to say you can do it, too. That’s when it becomes lovable forever, for generations.”
The Hunters
It was understandable if you watched Miami’s home opener against Orlando last week and found yourself a little confused at the structure of the HEAT’s offense. A 105.9 Offensive Rating in the first half was low but things looked mostly in line with the approach the team had taken during preseason, more pace, multiple actions strung together and a shot profile which featured very little in the mid-range. Then things fell apart in the third quarter and that was that, most of the starters not even playing in the fourth quarter. By the end, Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo each had just a 16.7 percent usage rate as they combined for 13 field-goal attempts and 12 free-throws.
Such is the early season in the NBA, when small sample sizes make issues of non-issues.
For the last three seasons, in an attempt to build an offense that would be more sustainable for slower postseason action after the first two years of Butler’s tenure in Miami featured more of a movement and motion offense. With Kyle Lowry in particular on hand to run the show and setup everyone in their ideal spots, isolations and post-ups gradually rose with Buter and Adebayo, the team’s designated mismatch hunters as Adebayo grew into that role, leading the way.
Miami Isolations+Post-Ups Per 100 Possessions
20-21: 18.5
21-22: 23.4
22-23: 24.8
23-24: 28.6
Against Orlando that number was as low as 10 per 100 possessions, hence both Butler and Adebayo’s low field-goal attempts. The explanation was rather simple in that Orlando, with all their flexible size, is not a team which presents many mismatches to attack. Were it a game that happened in the middle of the season, far less would be made of it. Since it was the first game, questions naturally arose about the direction of Miami’s offense in search of better overall efficiency.
“We’re not reinventing ourselves, we’ve not developed a new offense,” Erik Spoelstra said. “We’re making it hopefully more layered with more sophistication, making reads that are tougher for the defense. Getting the ball to Jimmy and allowing him to manipulate the defense or manipulate the matchup or manipulate the bonus, and when I say the word manipulate it’s in every bit of the attacking sense. All of that is good for our team. We didn’t get to it enough [against Orlando], clearly, didn’t get to it enough with Bam, these are some of the things that we’ll work out. That has nothing to do with the new things that we’re emphasizing. It was just one of those nights, I hate to say it.”
Sometimes for all the film and data and tools for analysis we have at our disposal, Just One Of Those Nights is the best explanation. But it’s also about not losing the forest for the trees, not losing yourself in one dimension of an offense intended to have many.
“You fall short of that sometimes, you get lost track of the game when you’re trying to do the right thing all the time, that’s where me and Jimmy have to come together and be aggressive in the new offense,” Adebayo said.
A few nights later against a Charlotte team lighter on wings and missing Brandon Miller on top of that – other words, far more viable mismatch opportunities were available – Miami’s isolation and post-up usage jumped up above 22 per 100 possessions, Butler and Adebayo combining for five post-ups and 13 isolations. Still plenty of touches for Herro and Rozier, 27 shots combined as all four of Miami’s primary shot creators ended with a usage rate over 20. True balance, all around, as the HEAT finished with an Offensive Rating of 116.3.
There will be plenty of time to allow Miami’s offense to take shape. We need more than a few different opponents and a few different schemes to truly get a grasp of the approach and how different it is, particularly in the halfcourt. For now what Spoelstra appears to be aiming for is a balance between the motion of Adebayo’s first couple seasons as a starter and the more deliberate mismatch approach they’ve featured recently – which all adds up to what you might expect from a group that had an offseason and training camp to truly incorporate Terry Rozier. Ideally you reach a point where you can toggle between each layer from night to night depending on the nature of your opponent and that’s what decides who leads the team in usage.
Drop the Hammer
While Spoelstra has long been a proponent of the corner three, possibly the most efficient shot available on average other than a dunk, but when the team signed P.J. Tucker for the 2021-22 season their usage in that specific zone skyrocketed. Not only was Tucker was one of the most prolific corner-three shooters in recent league history, he also doubled as possibly the best setter of hammer screens, where one player sets up in the corner to screen a defender out of a possible closeout on a corner shooter.
With Tucker in town that year, Miami led the league in both the percent of their attempts which came from the corner (12.4 percent) and off-ball screens set along the baseline and in the corner (6.8 per 100), topping even the Golden State Warriors. Tucker set 170 of those screens. The next highest in the NBA was Golden State’s Kevon Looney at 95. Nobody wielded the hammer screen like Miami and Tucker.
Without Tucker – he signed with Philadelphia that following summer – the two seasons after that Miami still emphasized those same actions but they were closer to Top 10 than the top of the leaderboard. Now it seems the hammer screen might be back with a vengeance.
Only the Warriors set more of those baseline and corner off-ball screens in the preseason (47 in six games to Miami’s 33 in five) and through two regular season games Miami leads the league with 19 total and 9.8 per 100 possessions. Against Charlotte on Saturday one of those hammer screens freed Alec Burks for a key fourth quarter look:
If you’re interested in such things stay frosty throughout the game. These aren’t difficult to notice when one of Miami’s shooters gets a free catch in the corner as a defender tries to work around the hammer, but try to look away from the ball a bit, see the setup before the catch, and you’ll just how many of these actions Miami has built in to their natural flow. Even when Butler takes a mid-range jumper, there’s Jaime Jaquez Jr. in the opposite corner preparing to free another shooter.
We’ll dive more into this action as the season wears on but there’s little doubt to this point that the hammer screen has both been reemphasized and revitalized in Spoelstra’s refocusing of the offensive system.
Tidbits
Through two games Miami has taken 25 percent of its shots in either the upper paint area or the mid-range. Last year they led the league with a 35.6 percent rate.
Adebayo has yet to allow a point in isolation but what’s interesting is that he’s only defended four of them with Anthony Davis leading the league at 18 isolations defended. This has been a three-year progression of sorts as Miami asks Adebayo to switch less – having less to do with him than the supporting defenders on the roster – and drop more at the same time he’s built such a reputation that teams know to avoid him as much as possible.
Through the first 36 games of the season league average for threes attempted per 100 possessions is at 36.8, up from 35.4. The current record came in 2021-22 at 35.6. Pace is also the highest it’s been since the mid 80’s but that should settle down a bit as we go. The threes could very well remain right where they are.