South Beach Case Study: Miami Before the Stretch Run

Despite receiving less media attention this season, the Miami Heat get more and more intriguing from a historical perspective.  

Last year, I wrote a series of posts on the South Beach Case Study (SBCS), aka, the first-of-its-kind experiment that is the Miami Heat, led by LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh.  Never have three stars come together in the middle of their primes in hopes of winning a title.  Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen, and Paul Pierce were grizzled vets with playoff scars.  Elgin Baylor, Jerry West, and Wilt Chamberlain were the same way nearly 40 years before Boston's trio connected.

Dwyane Wade and LeBron James.  

What, if any, transformation has Miami undergone since last season?   

Last year, Miami won 58 regular season games and led the league in SRS (6.58), then blasted through the Eastern Conference before falling to Dallas in the NBA Finals.  Their success was mainly tied to James, Wade and Bosh doing incredible amounts of heavy lifting on both ends of the floor.  Considering the team had no depth, no point guard or center, and injuries to their best peripheral players, Mike Miller and Udonis Haslem, the fact that the three amigos were able to lift Miami to rank third in offensive rating and fifth in defensive rating is a testament to their high-end talent.

Currently, Miami sits at 34-11 (Second in SRS at 8), which would be good for a 62-win pace in a traditional, non-screwed up regular season.  Rookie Norris Cole, an improved Mario Chalmers, veteran Shane Battier, and healthy Miller and Haslem have contributed to the improvement, as has a more open offense that isn't predicated on star monopolization of the ball.  The team ranks second in offensive rating and sixth in defensive rating, although they haven't been defending the 3-point shot quite as well this year (36.5 percent this year vs. 34.5 percent last year).

What's scary for the rest of the NBA is how Dwyane Wade has seen a significant decrease in his minutes and raw box score production.  In 2011, Wade averaged 25.5 points, 6.4 rebounds, and 4.6 assists in 37.2 minutes per game.  In 2012, he has averaged 22.9 points, 4.8 rebounds, and 4.8 assists in 32.9 minutes per game.  On a per-minute basis, Wade is actually more productive in most categories this season.

That Miami has been able to deliver an even stronger regular season than last year despite Wade doing less heavy lifting indicates the team is now much more than just a talented group of individuals- they are gelling as a team.  Being able to reserve energy stores for the playoffs is good for the 30-year-old Wade, and it should be able to extend his career longer, too.

What happens when Wade starts playing 38-40 minutes per game in the playoffs?  How does it change Miami?  Perhaps they are concealing an even higher gear?  

Miami is still a donut team- no, that's not a nod to Eddy Curry.  But the most dangerous current contenders are led by perimeter-oriented players, and that bodes well for a perimeter corps that shut down Jeremy Lin a few weeks ago and Derrick Rose in the Eastern Conference Finals last year.

The Heat are in the stretch run now.  Come this postseason, we'll be able to observe the full potential of this core, and more SBCS questions should be answered.  

The South Beach Case Study: Year One Complete

The first year of the South Beach Case Study concluded with a compelling NBA Finals that saw the Dallas Mavericks defeat the Miami Heat in six games.  Although Miami- specifically LeBron James- mightily disappointed in the Finals, don't be quick to call the experiment a failure.   

1. This team was designed by Pat Riley, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, James, and according to the media, Satan himself, to be a contender for many years.  The case study is in its infancy. 
2. If James plays half as well in the Finals as he had all season, the first year of this experiment would have concluded with a championship.     

Calling the 2011 season a rough start to the experiment in terms of variables understates how flawed Miami's team was constructed around the Big Three.  Udonis Haslem and Mike Miller, the team's fourth and fifth best players, were injured throughout the year and missed the habit-forming process that is the NBA regular season.  The Three Kings were flanked by limited one-way players, rusting veterans, and zero-way piles of rust (I'm looking at you, Mike Bibby).  Yet, even with their heavy lifters needing time to gel and redundancy getting in the way of a good time, Miami won 58 games and vanquished every Eastern Conference foe in the playoffs.

From left:  Chris Bosh, LeBron James and Dwyane Wade. 

What have we learned?  I'll posit questions from the beginning of the year and briefly give conclusions.

Can two ball-dominant slashers, James and Wade, work together?  Yes, but not perfectly.  An inside/outside combination always works better because it's more balanced.  James and Wade tweaked their off-ball games this year to feature more cutting, spot-up shooting and reading of offensive rebounding lanes.  However, old habits crept through at times, displaying themselves in the form of the two augmenting the playbook to feature "isolation and hold the ball for 18 seconds before acting" sets.  Not very effective basketball.

 Will the egos of the three amigos collide or will they remember the sacrifices they promised to make in order to play with each other?  To put it simply, they remembered.  James and Wade appeared to share the ball in crunch time, too.   

What about substitution patterns and minutes distributions? Will their careers be extended because they don't have to lift their teams alone anymore?  Well, they carried a heavy burden this year.  Spoelstra couldn't afford to really rest his prime players, and without a true post defender, the three stars expended a lot of energy making the defense elite (fifth in defensive rating).  

What happens to a superstar's stats when he isn't playing in a single superstar-centric offense anymore?  The offensive stats went down a bit for Wade and James and a lot for Bosh.  This is related to the first question.  When the ball-handlers go to iso-ball, they waste the help they signed up to play with.

The team would be best served obtaining a point guard able and willing to take command of the offense from James and Wade.  If Miami runs some actual plays that turn James and Wade into finishers, Miami's offense could get to an all-time level.   

The SBCS gets the summer off.  Year two will begin...well, with the lockout looming, that's as unpredictable as South Beach itself.       

Thoughts on the South Beach Experiment Thus Far

Many moons, months, and possibly eons ago, I wrote about an experiment- the South Beach Case Study.  The SBCS is based on the unusual alignment of stars (I don't get the fixation with astronomy either; please bear with me) that occurred last summer.  LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh- the "Three Kings"- came together to give us NBA fanatics a real life case study that could give answers to our astronomically divine inquiring minds- give yourselves a round of applause for having both a divine inquiring basketball mind and the patience to keep reading after my unfortunate attempt at rhyming.

The kingly test subjects. 

"Three superstars of this caliber have never played together at their absolute peak…The big questions are: can two ball-dominant slashers, James and Wade, work together? Will the egos of the three amigos collide or will they remember the sacrifices they promised to make in order to play with each other? What happens to a superstar's stats when he isn't playing in a single superstar-centric offense anymore? Who takes the last shot, Wade or James? What about substitution patterns and minutes distributions? Will their careers be extended because they don't have to lift their teams alone anymore?"

What has been answered through 58 wins, 24 losses, and a first round series victory over a solid Philadelphia team that wrecked my prediction of the matchup being "Boston vs. Atlanta in '08" all over again?  For one- no, Philly didn't match up to their top-end talent-centric opponent like Atlanta did.  But beyond that, we've secured our answers to a few of the pertinent questions listed above.  Or at least, this season gave us some indications.

All three players saw more losses than gains in both raw numbers and advanced numbers when compared to last year's production.  Bosh took the biggest hit; he went from 24 points and 10.8 rebounds per game to 18.7 and 8.3 rebounds per game.  His rebound rate, PER, WS/48, and TS% all dropped.  He played .2 minutes per game more than last year.

Wade's points and assists went from 26.6 and 6.5 per game to 25.5 and 4.6 per game.  His rebounding went up significantly, while his TS% went up to 58.1 percent.  He played .9 minutes more per game.  James saw his scoring average drop three points per game and his assists average drop 1.6 assists per game.  He saw a dip in just about every other stat except rebounding.  He played .2 minutes per game less this year.      

 Bosh's offensive numbers going down should have been easy to guess.  He played on a middling-at-best team that needed his production to compete.  Going from the first option to the third option is a drastic drop, too.

James and Wade were the guys who shouldered some massive loads.  Each was Atlas last year, carrying the world on his shoulders (That's it, I'm playing "Intergalactic" by Beastie Boys before I go to bed). 

Suddenly, they could share.  Sparingly, they let old habits get in the way (though it surely happened, especially at the start). Sullenly, opposing wing defenders prepared to take the duo on.

The minutes didn't decrease, but it does seem like the workload may have.  By all accounts, all three players played the best defense of their respective careers this year, which helped Miami rank fifth in team defensive rating.  Bosh needn't create as much by himself, - sounds like a hopeless and draining task if we're having a dirty mind- instead being used as a finisher.  Wade's scoring efficiency increased, and he was able to play more consistent defense in more minutes per game.  To me, James saw the greatest benefits from the decreased workload.  He was more aggressive on the offensive glass, set picks, used different parts of the floor better, and successfully played off another primary ball-handling attacker after admirably handing him the reins sometimes. 

We can now see how stats, roles and workloads are affected.  Their egos seem to have remained in check for the most part.  Questions regarding last shots, longer careers and true chemistry won't be fully answered until the team is healthy, the season ends, Pay Riley constructs the team with fewer holes and, ultimately, the players decide to retire.

As the SBCS enters phase/round two, I'll be previewing Miami vs. Boston.