Heat-Cavaliers Series Thoughts & Overall Themes
A quick discussion of some series takeaways & looking at it going forward
The season is now officially over for the Miami Heat, after a very short and quick playoff run that had them get swept by the Cleveland Cavaliers. This really wasn’t a series, though. They lost the games by 21, nine, 37, and 55 points. They had a -13.6 net rating, and without checking, I’d probably think that is one of the worst single series net ratings in a long while.
So, to wrap all of the season up, here are just all thoughts from the series, but looking at it through the lens of general themes for the player and the Heat going forward, and any other questions. It’s looking at some of the takeaways from the series and seeing how that can apply to everything else around the team. Plus, some overall thoughts on anything else that stood out to me.
This team isn’t close
As mentioned, this really wasn’t a series. They were outmatched on both ends of the floor. The Cavaliers did a great job exploiting their weaknesses. They pushed all the right buttons. When they finally leaned forward and took control, it was wraps.
That’s because the team isn’t close. This was a 37 win team for a reason. It wasn’t because of some unfortunate situation. It wasn’t just because Terry Rozier played. It wasn’t because Nikola Jovic was injured. It wasn’t because there was the Jimmy Butler drama. It wasn’t because Spoelstra was bad. This was just a bad team. Good or average teams don’t go 12-20 post deadline and go on 10 game losing streaks.
This also shouldn’t have been a team that could’ve flipped a switch or be one that you wouldn’t want to see in the playoffs. There was no reason to think otherwise. One big red flag that has consistently shown up in the last two years was that they were one of the worst teams against better competition. Both their offense and defense dropped off the cliff when they faced a competent team.
These aren’t signs of a dark horse team. This shouldn’t have looked like they could match up with a team or that they’d have a puncher’s chance. The only reason they were in this position because they could easily beat bad teams when the switch is flipped by Spoelstra and he whips out a game plan. They aren’t a terrible team.
This series just showed how far behind they were, even in areas they looked to be good at, like the defense. They were top 10 in defense in the regular season, and the Cavaliers put up an offense that would rank fifth overall in the regular season, only in the half court — they had a 120.5 half court offense, which is just something that you can only laugh at.
This team isn’t a couple of role players away. Even if you replaced with Rozier, Wiggins, and Highsmith with some semi-realistic options, I don’t see how much different this would be. You could’ve given them Josh Hart, PJ Washington and TJ McConnell instead, and it’s still Cavaliers in four.
This team also isn’t just one star away either. Hell, adding Durant without sending any player away would have the same results.
This team also, also, isn’t a few young players development away.
They just got their asses kicked and as many players have said it, one way or the other, they got humbled. Spoelstra even said they always have that irrational confidence, and having a team absolutely demolish you, especially on your home court in such a fashion, can Litt(IYKYK) stuff up. This team needs as much change as possible. Everything needs an overhaul.
Herro’s Offense
I just wrote about Herro’s offense and the change in his role, where it was primarily being an off-ball player, which you can check it out here:
That did leave me kind of disappointed, confused, and it did raise a whole bunch of questions. Everything to how he was being used and the impact of it raised alarms going forward, especially if they look to retool.
The first thought was that this was the first time in his career that he wasn’t primarily a PNR guy. For the first time, his most-used play type wasn’t PNR, but a spot-up. Even as a rookie, he was still a PNR heavy guy. That changed for this series, and you can immediately see that the impact wasn’t the same from him, where it felt like he was invisible and easily taken out of the game.
But that also got me wondering what was the point of that? What was Spoelstra’s thought process to use him in such a way that also had his touches drop significantly?
He was treated like a role player, which is absolutely wild considering how the last few years have gone, and also where it was needed before. Having him be mostly used as a spacer and off-ball is something you do with role players. He was finally playing the Duncan Robinson role.
The extent that it did and the lack of on-ball responsibilities against this defense for whatever reasons is what made this a bit eye-raising for me, though.
I’m kind of concerned that your all-star guard was able to be taken out like that, nor had any counters for it. This wasn’t being locked by Jrue Holiday or having an insane game plan that schemed against a specific player to perfection. All it was was a simple top lock by Max Strus or Sam Merrill with some more physicality. And a bunch of face guarding in the corner when spacing.
That is the standard for role players being taken out. That defense was played against the actual Duncan Robinson on the team, which also denied his handoffs or prevented him from getting open on screens.
Everyone always says, your first and second things that you want to do on offense are gone. Your main way of getting open or getting into sets? Gone. Your sweet spots? Gone. Everything is schemed against to take away your most effective ways of getting stuff done. That is easier against some players, and it’s also why many role players go to die in the playoffs. And that is because of a lack of counters.
Herro touched on this and talked about the defense being tough to get anything going. But the counter to that should be there for a player like Herro. Top locking, denying, and faceguarding should be something that he should at least attempt to counter. It was easy to do, and it was to handled the ball himself from the start.
For whatever reason, whether it was him or Spoelstra, it didn’t happen.
Looking at it, the alternatives aren’t great either, because if we do say that he brings up the ball, that means more PNRs to actually have him initiate. But with the Cavaliers’ general defense of icing every pick and sending so much help in the paint early and aggressively, that was also a bad option. That is something that Herro has struggled with, too. He wasn’t great scoring in the PNR, opting to go for quick pull-up 3s early
That just kind of raises the question, what do you even do going forward? Even if you bring in Durant, does that mean Herro will suddenly learn to beat Strus off-ball?
Is this something that can continue to happen against elite level defenses where he can be this schemed out and make him have this little of an impact on offense?
I see two alternatives.
Either becoming an actual effective off-ball player, where his value isn’t solely tied to being a PNR guy, as he has been all these years and where he had the most impact through 82 games this year. This means better conditioning, better mentality, attitude, approach to playing off-ball. I feel like that general attitude and willingness plays a big part to being effective. But then it’s also just being more skilled in that area by learning more counters(which is also tied to better conditioning).
Or it’s becoming a better player on-ball, where that is the better option than being off-ball.
Something has to give because he needs to have a much better impact on offense against better defenses. I wasn’t expecting a monster series or make this series to be competitive. But I don’t think he’s shown much to be encouraged about.
Last year, there were at least valid excuses for his poor play. He was overly tasked in a bad role against even better defenders. That wasn’t the case this year, and it was just as bad.
So, I’m just left questioning what is the offense going to look like for him in such a setting even if the team is better around him. This matters a lot because of what we’re gonna talk about below.
Herro being hunted on defense
The Cavaliers made it a mission to pick on Herro and it was bad.
So bad that it genuinely made me question my overall basketball philosophy on how much a guard can hurt your overall defense. It made me feel different about the worst defender on the team. Before, I didn’t think it was that big of a deal as a guard and that it can easily be hid.
Respectfully, the way Herro got targeted flipped that upside down.
I guess there are levels of a defensive liability and in what ways. What made this so bad with Herro was the fact that this wasn’t a mismatch hunt.
This wasn’t Jayson Tatum or Jaylen Brown coming to get Herro on a switch to flow into isolation to pick on him. That is where I think you can scheme against, especially with a good defensive team. I’d also be encouraged to force a team into more stagnant basketball with help showing.
This wasn’t even Garland or Mitchell specifically hunting Herro in any big way. It was involving him in everything by everyone. Even Jerome had a go at him in the PNR.
And that was the main thing. It wasn’t hunting him in isolation or simple blow bys in drives. This was all targeting and hunting in their usual flow of their offense but simply forcing him to defend more.
In game one, they trusted Herro to hold his own and that didn’t work well. They got good looks after good looks. Their double drag screens torched them. Then in the fourth quarter, Jerome happened. All of that was just picking on Herro in ways you’d expect just a competent defender to simply defend.
It’s the simple stuff that they exploited. You shouldn’t have to worry about a player not holding his own on a screen against Ty, freaking, Jerome.
What happened after that in the following games was just picking on him even more, because the Heat didn’t just leave him to hold his own. The amount of changes they made to try not get exploited was something. They tried everything for everyone. He showed, recovered, even dropped on Strus. They tried to limit him on defense as much as possible.
That just put more of a burden on everyone else because he literally was hidden to the max. There were so many plays against the double drag where he stayed dropping off Strus, that forced Mitchell to do more work in screen navigation. It much so much pressure on everyone else because there was only thing that Herro could do and it was to hide.
What’s worse is that it wasn’t just that. It was also exploiting him in off-ball awareness situations. There were so many lapses and mistakes that made things easier for the Cavaliers.
I do think the fact that he was targeted in multiple ways that wasn’t solely mismatch hunting or in isolation that made this a big thing to think about. Mismatch hunting, I felt like came with a potential downside of stagnation and not being as effective if the player hunting is doing his job well. But being attacked on defense in the flow and in a variety of actions, whether in isolation, post up, PNR, or off-ball, I don’t know what you do with that.
All of the double drag screens for either Garland/Mitchell worked to perfection. Any isolation worked. There were sprinkles of size mismatches, too, with Hunter. The shooters got open because he lost track where they were off-ball. Players attacked off cuts because he was out of position. Even a simple PNR that looked to keep things 2v2 was effective. His peers just attacked him and not some elite star wing.
At some point, that kind of defense becomes the biggest detriment.
That’s how I felt about this series. This has genuinely made me value the defense now a lot more across the board. This was something that has been talked in general when it comes to being a weak link sport. That has been a topic, but recently Owen Phillips of The F5 talked about it here!
I think that does change how you should look at roster construction. That’s really been my takeaway from the series.
As far as individually from Herro. He has to be better on defense. It’s one thing to be picked on by a size advantage in isolation. It’s another thing to just be hunted by your peers in every possible action that has them call you out by NAME in an interview.
General thoughts from everyone & everything
Finally, some general thoughts from the series. This is just a ramble here, looking to touch on the whole bunch.
The offense really needs to get better at exploiting this kind of defense. This isn’t made easier with the talent but this has been a recurring issue with all iterations of this whole build in the last few years. Pack the paint and shut everything of.
Players getting doubled or seeing help obviously have to make the reads in the first place, but everyone else isn’t making their life any easier by not doing anything.
The Cavaliers did what they wanted to do, and there was no attempt to even counter that. I’m not saying that they had something up their sleeve to make this a series but I don’t recall them looking to do anything that exploited some of the defense they went against.
There wasn’t much hunting for their players. There wasn’t anything that tried to exploit their weak links.
Ware had his first playoff experience, and it wasn’t great. It was rough. That was to be expected. He is a rookie, and I’m not reading much into this. There’s no sweeping conclusions being made about his ceiling, his floor, or his future development. But just to acknowledge what has happened, he was flat-out bad.
He ended up getting yanked at certain points in the games early. He didn’t even crack 20 minutes in any of the games. The shooting wasn’t there either as he only went for 3/11 from deep. Had 0 free throw attempts. The packed paint didn’t help.
The defense was the most annoying part. The game was too fast for him. The PNR defense let every roll behind him and that’s where you can see him trying to process everything but not being able to do.
A bunch of the same concerns from the regular season showed up when it comes to his rebounding and box outs. That is the one thing I don’t care about that he’s a rookie. He needs to put more of an effort in hustling for boards. Allen, a couple of times didn’t do anything special to get the boards, it just wasn’t hard to do so against Ware.
Still, it was the first playoffs in a role that was facing two elite big men. Nothing happened that probably shouldn’t have been expected.
Now, something that wasn’t expected. Mitchell was used a lot. And I mean a lot. He played over 35 games, became a starter in three games and led the team in touches and time of possessions. He averaged 15 points and 6.3 assists and was one of the top leaders in potential assists.
He was the primary ball handler for the Heat. I was surprised to see such an increase in role and responsibility. This also ties to Herro being more off-ball.
This obviously wasn’t effective for the series, as they didn’t crack 90 in two of the games. But I liked what he gave them. In his previous playoff run, he wasn’t doing any of that. There was progress for him individually. He continued to have the hot shooting on relatively low volume. He had so many good drives in isolations.
Everything that he did well in the regular season, he continued to do so in the playoffs.
As mentioned, he did have a lot of assists. He had a 30.4% AST to 15.4% TOV. That was a bit high. The turnovers were an issue in the PNR, which had the TOV freq in the 30s. That’s an issue. That was one of the problems for the Heat in the series with their turnovers.
The defense was hmm. I felt like that wasn’t hitting as it should’ve been. I found him rather disappointing on many occasions, where he trailed so many screens quite badly. He too often found himself in positions that he shouldn’t have been because how did he wind up being behind the play so bad!
Overall, given the responsibility, he did what was asked of him. There weren’t many issues or concerns there. The turnovers need to be cleaned up, though. But there is a path for him to be a reliable point guard on a contending team off the bench.
Wiggins. Sigh. That was a disappointment. I don’t even know what to say here. This was not what I expected from him, and it was worse than I could’ve imagined. Shot 39.1% from 2pt, 35.0% from 3pt, and had more turnovers than assists.
He was the most disappointing player of the series.
The shot selection. The decision making. It was rough.
Defensively, he had his moments, and there were more good than bad. He did his job better on that end than on offense.
But man, the offense was extra rough.
Bam. I don’t know what to say about him. He had a quiet series, averaging 17/11/4. He was used as a hub a lot, which I do like and underappreciate that he can and has flipped through whatever is necessary from him.
Some will say he can be too passive or whatever. But sometimes, you don’t need guys hunting shots and I do feel like being able to step back is an underrated part.
But the effectiveness wasn’t there. He had a 50.8% TS. Shot 48.8% form 2pt, and 33.3% from 3pt. A lot of that was the defense taking away everything easy. He wasn’t doing any work in the post or in isolation.
Some of the low percentages comes from the inconsistent long shooting. He only shot 2/9 from long mid and that was 14% of his shot diet. He did his thing closer to the paint at 48% with 39% freq. He got what he usually gets in that area.
One thing that stood out the most is the PNR efficiency, which is tied to the 3pt shooting. He scored 1.25 points per roll man poss and shot 46% but had a 61% eFG. He took over 7 3s per 100 poss. That’s a high volume. That reaches players like Al Horford level — for comparison, in the regular season it was around 4, which is in the range of Dyson Daniels and Josh Hart. That’s quite the difference.
I do like that he is becoming more and more willing.
Not gonna lie, though, this has felt like a series from Bam that I can’t tell you what he’s done. That’s how quiet it’s been for me on both ends.