NBA 2013-14 Season - Page 113

On December 11 2013 02:17 jmbthirteen wrote:

Because its just not that special. All it is, is playing to your players strengths. The only reason its "evolved" at all is because how horrendous Miami's offense was early on, because the big 3 were just doing ISO all the time, rather than playing as a team.

There is nothing that makes the Heat's offense more evolved than the Triangle offense or Princeton offense. Its not even that the offense is highly evolved, its the players that evolved and learn how to play with each other. They have great ball movement. As they should with one of the best play creators of all time in LBJ. Chris Bosh hitting elbow jumpers, Wade cutting to the basket, and Chalmers camping at the three point line while LBJ directs the offense isn't special. Its just basketball.

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The Heat have almost totally reinvented their offense over those three seasons, and in the process they've done something very rare: taken a good offense and transformed it into something almost historically great. The Heat ranked eighth in points per 100 possessions last season, sporting a mark about two points above the league's overall average, per Basketball-Reference.com.2 They're no. 1 this season, a full seven points over the league's overall average — a huge five-point year-over-year jump in comparison to the NBA's general scoring output.

How rare is that? Only 51 teams since 1953-54 have made such a large jump, relative to league average, from one season to the next, per research Basketball-Reference's Neil Paine performed for Grantland. Not surprisingly, most of the teams on this list were very bad in Year 1 and made some sort of massive (and positive) offseason change before Year 2.3 Only four teams have ever improved this much on offense in Year 2 after having merely an above-average offense in Year 1; the Heat will be the fifth such team.

The other four:

• 1971-72 Los Angeles Lakers: an all-time great team, owner of the 33-game streak Miami is chasing.

• 1995-96 Chicago Bulls (Michael Jordan's first full season back from retirement).

• 1997-98 Los Angeles Lakers: Shaquille O'Neal plays nine more games than prior season, Kobe Bryant no longer a rookie.

• 2003-04 Sacramento Kings.

And now the Heat, a super-team that for two years was prone to puzzling and inexcusable bouts of stagnancy on offense.4 No more. Miami is a pass-happy team that whips the ball around the floor, shifts bodies all over the place in carefully coordinated motion sets, gobbles up the most efficient shots available, and generally destroys opposing defenses in a way that is both visually pleasing and nothing like how they played in the past. League observers used to talk about Orlando's four-out/one-in system, with four shooters surrounding Dwight Howard in the post or on the pick-and-roll. Miami and Erik Spoelstra have one-upped that by often playing a five-out system, with all five guys moving around the 3-point arc as the Heat run through a series of rehearsed actions while hunting for gaps in the defense. It's a system Miami settled upon through organic internal growth, free-agent signings, injury-related improvisation, and the study of everything from college football to NCAA basketball to high-profile international hoops teams.
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Source

On December 11 2013 02:17 jmbthirteen wrote:

Because its just not that special. All it is, is playing to your players strengths. The only reason its "evolved" at all is because how horrendous Miami's offense was early on, because the big 3 were just doing ISO all the time, rather than playing as a team.

There is nothing that makes the Heat's offense more evolved than the Triangle offense or Princeton offense. Its not even that the offense is highly evolved, its the players that evolved and learn how to play with each other. They have great ball movement. As they should with one of the best play creators of all time in LBJ. Chris Bosh hitting elbow jumpers, Wade cutting to the basket, and Chalmers camping at the three point line while LBJ directs the offense isn't special. Its just basketball.