<iframe width="500" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/U5v7i3B4sbM" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Tonight Miami's offense thrived with ball movement. A lot of people, myself included, has been bashing Spoelstra, but it seems like he knows what he's doing. The problem for Heat is they brought Dragic, who enjoys fast pace, while the best Heat players like half-court offense (Wade, Bosh). Heat's starters looked great on paper - that is, Dragic-Wade-Deng-Bosh-Whiteside - but as we all know (except Morey), fit is as important, if not more. So after Bosh went down with clots again, Deng moved to PF, which meant no more balhogging from PF spot. When Bosh got the ball at 3P line, a lot of times offense stopped just enough for opponents to set their defense. Deng is not as prolific shooter as Bosh, but he is a very willing slasher, decent shooter and surprisingly solid passer. The biggest change though was moving Whiteside to the bench and him maturing just eonugh to matter. STAT is starting the games, but still gets only reserve minutes, while Whiteside thrives against 2nd stringers. He even added a jump shot to his arsenal and now plays pick and pop with Dragic occasionaly. He also takes some sort of jumpshot from free throw line, which helped his FT% a lot and is not a liability in crunch time anymore. So basically Miami is playing two styles now. Starters have slow game (Dragic, Johnson, Wade, Deng, STAT), while bench is lightning fast (Dragic, Richardson, Winslow, Whiteside and someone else from first unit - preferrably Deng). Spoelstra lets Dragic run the 2nd unit, while Wade handles the rock most of the time with first unit - although with every game passing it's obvious Wade deferres to Dragic and lets him handle the ball more. And since fast pace is a bit tiring for Wade's knees, he plays less, but more efficient in those minutes. For now it seems everything runs smooth for Miami even without Bosh. We will see if they can challenge Toronto and Cleveland in playoffs.
It's a pretty amazing change...especially his approach to FT's. He went from being one of the worst FT shooters in the league to a pretty decent one. He shot >70% in the month of February with a pretty good sample size and went 10 for 11 in this game.
