The 36 Chambers Of Spoelstra: The Key To Miami’s Offense Lies In Mastering The Details
When it comes to stopping the other side from scoring, the Miami HEAT are almost always going to figure it out.
Sure, there are going to be seasons where certain lineups drag their defensive numbers down. There are going to be years where opponent shooting percentages turn a Top 5 ranking into a Top 10 one. Even last year when there was some slippage, Erik Spoelstra dialed up record-setting amounts of zone, had Bam Adebayo – the HEAT always have a Top 5 level defense with Adebayo on the floor, even with bad luck, and in the playoffs Adebayo is almost always on the floor – play more coverages than ever and the team finished No. 9.
Care to guess how many times the team has been outside the Top 15, and thus below average, in Defensive Rating since Spoelstra took over in 2008? It’s fewer than two.
Offense is a different story, which tracks on a league level. Reaching Tier 1 on that side requires a combination of elite scoring talent, players that fit next to each other and good-to-great shooting. As great as Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo are, they’re still two high-usage players who don’t shoot threes until Butler snaps his fingers in the playoffs. Even when Miami led the league in three-point percentage two years ago, they only finished No. 12 in Offensive Rating – the first team since the 2012-13 Golden State Warriors to lead the league in three-point percentage and finish outside the Top 10. When the HEAT’s shooting dropped to No. 27 last season, their offense finished No. 25. There was a change after the All-Star break, though, as Miami’s Offensive Rating jumped up to 115.6 – which would have been Top 10 for the full season – from 111.1. In the playoffs the shooting exploded as the team tied the league record with seven games of 45 percent on at least 25 attempts from three, including four games over 50 percent. During that time, when Spoelstra was asked about the improving attack he would use one word that you have to hear a handful of times, in different contexts, to really start to decode. Intention.
Months later, that word is still lingering around the HEAT.
“We’re going to approach this regular season with intent,” Spoelstra said on Media Day. “We really want to have everybody to approach this the right way.” “I’ve used this word a lot,” Spoelstra says a couple days later. “We are going to be a lot more intentional. From Day 1, yesterday, today, that’s what we’ve been talking about, drilling about. We were so much more intentional after the All-Star Break. It was costly to us before that.”
“Intention, and lack of intention, were just as impactful in both of those segments of the year.”
What does that really mean? Here’s one way to look at it if you’ll excuse a longer metaphor. In 1978’s The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, one of the most iconic kung-fu films ever made, Gordon Liu’s character San Te arrives at a Shaolin temple after some particularly tragic life events and asks to train in martial arts. San Te quickly finds out what that really means, working his way up from the very beginning, starting at the 1st Chamber which focuses on being light of foot – no shortcuts, no skipped steps. You don’t move on until you master the current chamber. Six years later, he reaches the end and is offered his pick of the chambers to teach. Instead, San Te opens the 36th Chamber, where he can teach the Shaolin style to new disciples. That’s how Miami’s offense succeeds. That’s what intention means. With Spoelstra and his staff teaching from the final chamber, the HEAT have to master every aspect of their offense to be among the best. Just as San Te had to master both arm strength and spatial awareness, Miami’s handoffs have to be crisp, their screens have to be forceful, their spacing has to be pinpoint and their shot diet has to be consistent in order to allow for natural variance. Sure, Spoelstra will rely on a common refrain or two in order to avoid breaking down too much of his own systems, but there’s always a core truth behind his messaging. “Be Intentional,” isn’t a detail, it’s all the details. “It’s all encompassing,” Spoelstra says. “We want to have a specific style that we’re trying to get to, which we know what that is. We want to get certain guys involved, get them to their strength zones. That’s Jimmy, Bam, Tyler for sure. Our spacing. And then making sure we’re disciplined to that every single possession. That takes time and it’s a habit that you have to build.”
“To do anything with intent you have to be detailed so that you’re doing it the right way,” Caleb Martin says. “That’s just the process to get to execution. I think that’s what he means by being intentional because it leads to execution, especially in crucial parts of the game.”
If there’s a single difference between Spoelstra’s offense today and what it was five years ago, before Butler arrived, Josh Richardson says it’s that while the offense is still democratic – with Butler being the only truly elite isolation player, half-court possessions thrive and shrivel on Miami’s pace and movement – there are now three set-in-stone players who power the entire operation.
“There’s guys you really have to get it to,” he says. Butler is a paragon of consistency. Four regular seasons in, we know how he’s going to handle things. He’s going to pick his spots, picking up the offense whenever it starts to drag by driving shoulders-first towards the paint, and he’ll end up posting a highly efficient 25 percent usage rate. In the playoffs, he’ll take on even more of a burden and he’ll outright win games that would otherwise go in the other column. Adebayo seemed to find himself offensively last year, upping his isolation opportunities while taking more upper paint jumpers than anyone in the league, with only he and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander topping 150 attempts. Always efficient before, Adebayo found his style. It was a style that worked in the playoffs as Adebayo found success against both drop coverage and switches. The counter he and team can now attack – the chamber they’re currently in, if you will – is how to approach teams crowding Adebayo in the middle of the floor.
Herro had his season cut short after breaking his hand in the first game against the Milwaukee Bucks. He never got to test the skill gains he made against the best of the best, and the most detailed scouting reports. He’ll have to wait another full season for his board exams, but until then the path forward for him is clear. He doesn’t have to be something he’s not – a high-volume isolation player, like most aren’t – he simply must be a better version of who he is. “Being more efficient, that’s my main thing,” Herro said. “Getting to the free-throw line more, creating contact. More drives, more free-throws, more threes.” It would be easy to say that the offense will go as far as those three take them, but if you’ve been paying attention so far you know that isn’t the point, nor is it what Spoelstra believes. He doesn’t just roll the ball out, call for 65 pick-and-rolls and call it a day, no matter how efficient the Herro-Adebayo combination often is. Butler, Adebayo and Herro can be the core of a very good offense, especially if the open shots are falling – the HEAT were league-average shooting away from above-average offense even before All-Star last year – but they aren’t going to bail out a bad one, at least not over the course of 82 games. The question, then, is what pieces are going to fit around them.
Kyle Lowry stated on Tuesday that he’s coming into camp expecting to be the starting point guard, which is probably a little less dramatic than it sounds when you consider Lowry’s career. There’s a very good chance that Lowry’s pick-and-roll creation, especially his consistent pocket-passes for Adebayo and his ability to create mismatches for Butler, is the best offensive fit for the opening group, especially with Lowry healthy. But if Spoelstra wants to watch Lowry’s minutes to get him to the postseason, that can be easier with him off the bench.
Richardson is a good enough shooter, and a reliable enough defender, to slot into any lineup. Starting him would mean Herro, Butler and Adebayo all shouldering more playmaking duties. That’s something they’ve all done before, but there’s a difference between having a guard to set you up and having to set other people up. Butler running point, for example, makes it tougher for him to burrow into a mismatch on the block, and likewise Herro running point keeps him from running off screens and distorting the defense with his gravity. Martin fits anywhere, though a little role consistency may help him in the long run. His shooting, however unconventional, is reliable, his rim aggression is necessary and as he proved in the postseason he can create shots in a pinch wherever and whenever he’s being played.
Love is the easy pick as a floor spacer next to Adebayo for now, based on his usage after arriving last March, but Spoelstra has the good problem of having options behind him. Haywood Highsmith, who has intentions on being much more than just a corner three-point shooter, is a strong defensive option. Nikola Jovic could pop as a do-it-all offensive player in his second year, and his open-court playmaking and secondary ballhandling could, in theory, balance out a lineup that doesn’t have Lowry starting.
Behind Adebayo, there are two stretch-fives ready to go in Thomas Bryant and Orlando Robinson (assuming the volume shooting is real). That’s a camp battle that has yet to play out, but five-out looks have always boosted Miami’s looks with only one or two of their core scorers.
“We’re going to push each other,” Bryant said of Robinson. “It’s always competitive spirit out there. At the end of the day everybody wants to win, it doesn’t matter who is out there as long as we build the right traits and relationships to win on the court.” There’s also the losses of Gabe Vincent and Max Strus that are worth discussing, where we should avoid the trap of talking about how to replace their exact skillsets as opposed to their overall impact. You don’t find another Jason Giambi, you find players who can impact the game the same in the aggregate. Neither was a perfect player, nor would they claim to be, but they were crucial parts of Spoelstra’s intentionality. If Vincent and Strus were on the floor, they were going to run the right things at the right times and take the shots the team needed them to take. Most crucially, they were trusted.
Up and down Miami’s roster there are young players looking for standard contracts or two-way spots. Maybe Cole Swider makes an impression and the next movement shooter to come through Miami’s system. Maybe Jamal Cain’s shooting gets his defense on the floor more consistently. Many at camp have commented on rookie Jaime Jaquez Jr.’s poise and veteran mentality, and he has the same Swiss Army knife toolkit to slot in to a variety of lineups just like Martin and Richardson. Like Martin before him, R.J. Hampton has the pedigree of a player on a standard, not a two-way, deal. Jovic could be many things, and Robinson could be playing 15 minutes a game in short order. All these players could theoretically replace the production, offense and defense combined, of Vincent and Strus, but being a 16-game player is another thing entirely.
“They’ve just got to prove themselves,” Love said. “With Max and Gabe you knew from their temperament, what they were capable of. That trust level comes from how they handle themselves in tough situations and being able to put them out there and trust them.
“Just stack good days,” Martin said of how to earn trust. “Stack good days as much as possible. Gabe, Max and myself, that stuff doesn’t happen overnight. You’re not going to come in here and earn trust in one practice, one game, one preseason game, you have to continue to stack good days and even through the bad days you learn and find other ways to be productive. You can earn trust other than just putting the ball in the basket.”
It’s a good mix to have. You don’t want your entire team trying to earn their first shots, because then guys start stepping on each other. Nor do you want your entire team playing with an eye on the postseason, because then you might lose your day-to-day edge. Today’s roster has players to hold the line and others to push their way forward. No matter how well things go in the regular season, trust is going to have to be earned in the most important moments.
For now, you don’t want to take the defense for granted but you know there’s a reasonably high floor on that end – and perhaps even a higher ceiling than last year depending on how the rotation shakes out. For the offense, there’s no panacea You can’t rely on shooting historic on the three-point road, no matter who you are. It’s the process that will matter, the details in every handoff, every screen and every set. At their best, the HEAT win playoff series playing mistake-free basketball – often going up early by taking Game 1 – while, with those well-timed details, forcing other teams into blown coverages and bad matchups. They aren’t going to win a title skipping chambers.
With this roster, the road to a great offense is paved with intention.