Piece By Nicholas Cosmai
Twitter: @CozzyNick
The NBA bubble of 2020 showed us some teams who shrunk in a closed environment and some who took advantage of it. The Miami Heat proved to the eastern conference that they were a legitimate playoff team by going on an incredible run and making the NBA Finals. This post season they came across the Bucks who they comfortably beat last season in 5 games. This time around though, it was a complete 180-degree turnaround. So, this begs the question, were the Heat helped by overachieving in the bubble? Or did they just flat out underachieve this season?
Along their travel to being Eastern Conference Champions, the Heat first met the Indiana Pacers who they swept comfortably. Many people thought their next matchup would be there stopping point but as previously mentioned, they took down the number one seeded Milwaukee Bucks in five games. A masterclass defensive performance in particular limiting Giannis Antetokounmpo to less then 22 points per game. They then advanced to the final 4 meeting the Boston Celtics in the Eastern Conference Finals. Of the three teams they met in the east this was certainly their biggest challenge. The only series they had in the east, that went six games. This was a team that got to the NBA finals on their excellent team defensive system led by Erik Spoelstra and anchored by Jimmy Butler. What helped them along with there stellar defence was the improvement offensively by the team. Butler, Adebayo, Herro and Dragic all had better averages in points comparing their post season numbers with their regular seasons.
After their harsh exit in the playoffs, the Heat did not drastically change their roster. Some of the notable changes they made throughout the season were bringing in, Ariza, Bjelica, Oladipo and drafting Achiuwa all replacing Crowder, Olynyk, Soloman Hill, and Derrick Jones Junior. On top of this, both the Lakers and Miami were coming off the shortest off season in the history of American Sports coming into this current season.
This took its toll coming into the 2020/21 season. The four conference finalists from last season have all regressed and/or have had players go down with serious injuries. The Lakers are not the same offensive team they were last season, along with this, LeBron had his longest stint on the sidelines with an ankle injury and Anthony Davis was sidelined for approximately 3 months also. The Denver Nuggets started the season slow and lost Jamal Murray who did his ACL. The only reason they have not regressed as much as the other three teams is Nikola Jokic most likely being the league MVP. The Boston Celtics also are not the same team overall, they were hit hard with covid but have had injuries for lengthy periods too, including Jaylen Brown who was also sidelined for the season. For the Miami Heat they had Herro, Herro, Butler and Dragic miss 2 months each for the season. Despite all of this, the Heat only won four less games compared to the 2019/20 season. There offensive rating from last season was 113.22 compared to 112.09 this season, which did not rank in the top half of the league. There defensive rating sat at 110.65 which also regressed to 112.06.
So around came the playoffs and the Heat were expected to at least put the pressure on Milwaukee. This was not the case as the series was over in four games and the Heat being eliminated. Team wise, the most concerning stat was that on average they were being beaten by 20 points per game for the series. There offensive rating compared to the series last season, went down by 11.3 which is massive. Individually only Robinson and Dunn improved with their points production. The biggest area of concern for the Heat was no one being able to step up when Butler could not provide. He dropped from 23 points per game to 14 between the two series.
This is the biggest area of focus the Heat should have going into this off season, finding a legitimate second star to help Butler carry the load. Doing this will help the Heat not only jump into the top four in the east, but also maybe creating some damage to the big three teams in that conference also.
Are the Miami Heat bubble frauds? This question will not be answered until next season when they have a proper off season and time to fix themselves up to make another title run. This post season they were met by a far superior bucks team who improved all around. The pass mark they will have to avoid this tag will be to be a proper title contender which should be at least a Conference Finals appearance.