Operation Improve Heat

[KingNith]

So I've created this thread to focus on the good, bad and ugly of the Miami Heat roster. So clearly there are tons of posts/threads with similar content but I thought maybe it would be a good idea to centralize all these points into one thread.

Okay, so clearly the Miami Heat roster has major flaws. Obviously Pat Riley is trying to make the Miami Heat franchise into a major organization such as the LA Lakers. When the three Kings came to south beach, Pat Riley stated that he was in the process of building a dynasty.

Head Coach: Erik Spoelstra
He is young and learning from Pat Riley. I am sure Riley is still mentoring him to become a great Head Coach. To be honest I do not see coach Spo going anywhere in the foreseeable future, considering how they just won a championship in the past season.


Three Kings:

LeBron James (6)
Chris Bosh (1)
Dwayne Wade (3)

I highly doubt any of these three would be broken up anytime soon. These three Kings came 2 years ago and sacrificed stats, money, fame among other things to win multiple championships. However something people need to consider with the 2014 season and the new luxury taxes the Miami Heat organization are looking at almost $50 million in luxary taxes alone. South beach is not (at the moment) a city that draws in many basketball fans (new city, new team (only 25 years old) and other factors are reasons why Heat cannot really afford to pay approximately 50 million in taxes. So defiantly unless Bosh or Wade are willing to take a pay cut, one of these two will be gone. LeBron is a superstar that should be getting a max contract (in comparison to the other 2) and that is the only thing I can see why he would leave. Lets not forget all three of these guys have an early team option in 2014.

Now to the rest of the roster:

Ray Allen: I think he can fit the Heat's system and the way Coach Spo runs his plays. However on defense he is a liability as many of us on the forums have stated.
Mike Miller: He was a great player and in game 5 he had an MVP like performance. He can defiantly light it from downtown. However in recent games Mike Miller hasn't really impressed me and I wish he would have retired. I really do not want to see him retire/get traded because he really did help us get a ring.
Mario Chalmers: Decent point guard, defensively he needs work. However I can see him improving
Joel Anthony: Waste of cap space. He doesn't even seem like he wants to be a player of the bench, but he cannot perform in the starting line up. Sure the defense is a bit better but honestly hes not worth the amount (and years) we have him signed in.
Noris Cole: Sometimes hes hot, but he should be traded away
James Jones: garbage
Dexter Pitman: Garbage
House: garbage
Rashard Lewis: All hype, even in Orlando. Has not impresed me in Heat uniform
Shane Battier: He is a good player, takes charges and I like his shooting ability, especially from downtown.
UD: I guess keep him since hes taking low money
Josh Harrelson: garbage


I think someone like Howard would love to come to Miami, but he can't shoot free throws and I do not think he will be the same Howard back in Orlando.
Chris Paul is an unrestricted free agent this year and if possible I do not mind giving up a few guys to make room for him
DeMarcus Cousins: trade some of our bench guys and Joel

Some problems with the heat, after reading a few threads and noticing after watching heat's performance.
[*]We need a dominate center.
[*]We need a better point guard
[*]We need a better bench
[*]We need a consistent shooter from downtown

Heat still have an amnesty avaible, for heat to think about.

What do you all think?

[Beasley]

If you think the Heat have enough trade pieces to acquire DeMarcus Cousins, much less Chris Paul or Dwight Howard you're on some serious drugs.......

P.S. Eddie House does not play for Miami!

[RexBoyWonder]

[TRG]

So we're currently #1 in the East and have the 3rd best overall record in the league and you say this team has "major flaws?"

Not sure if serious.

[KingNith]

Every team has there flaws. You think OKC does not have any flaws? -If you don't your living in a world where OKC are the champions.

Anyways, I guess flaws is not the right word. But something to improve the team to be more dominate like OKC and NY.

[BIRDMAN BIRDMAN]

Eddie House...........lmao

[Chosen01]

Kings aren't aren't going to trade Cousins for scrubs, no way that happens.

[tsherkin]

Miami's clearest issue is defense, where they've dropped off pretty much across the board compared to last season. Given that the team has many of the same pieces (and all of the pieces have essentially proven capable of functioning as neutral or better value in strong defensive systems), it's quite likely that they'll sort it out moving forward towards the All-Star break and after.

The idea that a team with Lebron and Wade needs a better point guard is asinine, because they don't operate a conventional offense. Minding that Chalmers is filling his role quite capably by pressure-releasing at the timeline and shooting almost 37% from 3, one need look little farther than the fact that Miami is the 3rd-best offense in the league to know that they aren't really struggling there in a meaningful way. They were 8th-ranked last year at 106.6 ORTG and are 3rd-ranked this year at 111.7. Miami has managed 111+ ORTG in exactly one other season in franchise history, the 10-11 season... when they also made the Finals.

More particularly, back to the PG notion, the Heat run a great deal of their offense through Lebron in the post, which requires little of their guards beyond the ability to throw an entry pass, make the correct swing post, post/re-post and hit open jumpers. Which they do with as much consistency and effectiveness as you can reasonably expect of them. Add that and a dash of PnR from Chalmers (and, of course, Wade's perimeter play) and what else do you want? This isn't the 72-win Bulls in the RS, no, but they're dominating offensively. The second-ranked Knicks are also technically at 111.7 offensively, it's a rounding-sensitive difference that ranks New York higher, so essentially only the Thunder are producing superior offense to the Heat.

So yeah, everything you said pertaining to offense is incorrect.

They're the best 3pt shooting team in the league, so the idea that they need more consistent shooting from downtown is absurd. Between Lebron, Ray Allen, Chalmers, Battier, Lewis, Mike Miller and James Jones (who you disregard), the Heat have a HOST of 3pt threats studding their entire lineup to the point that even with expected regression, they're going to be a nasty perimeter shooting team over the whole season. I can't fathom how, watching this team, you thought that they had any further need of 3pt shooting, save that you've not watched them at all this season or caught one or two off-nights from downtown with total blithe unawareness of their team statistics.

[*]We need a better point guard
[*]We need a consistent shooter from downtown

So those are taken care of.

[*]We need a better bench

Battier, Haslem, Lewis, Miller and Ray Allen are all coming off of the bench. Some are mixing in some starts as dictated by injuries, matchups and the like, but that's still a pretty significant bench. Add in Jones and Cole plus a little Joel Anthony to round things out, and they're doing just fine. It isn't epic in general, but they have heavy-minute starters and phenomenal 3pt shooting, which means they can capably in-out Lebron or Wade as required, then juggle the lineups so they're both in for the critical stretches of games.

[*]We need a dominate center.

Why? They were a titanic defensive squad without one last year, there aren't really any good centers legitimately available to the Heat and they won a title without any such player. Post offense? Both Lebron and Wade are capable post scorers or better (and, more importantly, capable offensive posts, mixing scoring and playmaking) and even Bosh can get down there now and again, though he's best-served on the elbow. Defense? Well, again, Miami was the 4th-best defense in the league without any kind of dominant center on their squad last year, so they clearly don't actually need such a player for any purpose, and unless they happened to be Kevin Love + defense... which doesn't actually exist in the league (or really in league history). Maybe if they took a pot-shot at Ryan Anderson to add some serious stretch big value, but he's not a great defender (might look better in Miami's system and rebounds well on the offensive glass, though), plus he's not likely available to the Heat for anything they're willing to give up and they have Rashard Lewis for stretch frontcourt offense anyhow. Plus, Bosh can stick a three every now and again, even though I hate it when he takes them.

So that's 0/4. It's like you struck out and then refused to leave the batter's box until you got another pitch, to borrow from the baseball parlance...

[TRG]

tsherkin's gonna tsherk

[KingNith]

Eh what ever dude. I thought the Heat could be a bit more dominate. Before you think I am a new fan or someone that just got into the NBA. Realize I've watched ball since Jordan's second peat. Im young and I got an extensive knowledge about basketball. I done my research to guys like Wilt, Larry Bird, Karrem, Jerry West, etc.

Yes we have guys who can light it up from downtown but they are not consistent unless they have a hot night. Of course Wade, LeBron and Bosh are solid. The rest are kinda iffy.

James Jones is complete waste. The most entertaining thing I saw from him is his face lol . I saw the play offs last year and hes he hit like 1 crucial 3 pointer but I saw him miss a lot more than he should have been taken. This year the small minutes he did play he was absolute trash.

For the record, Bosh is amazing, I would know since I saw him mature from a young Toronto Raptor into a dominate Miami Heat player.

Anyways yeah.

[TRG]

Eh what ever dude. I thought the Heat could be a bit more dominate. Before you think I am a new fan or someone that just got into the NBA. Realize I've watched ball since Jordan's second peat. Im young and I got an extensive knowledge about basketball. I done my research to guys like Wilt, Larry Bird, Karrem, Jerry West, etc.

Your credibility just show through the roof with this post.

Lol but really though this team will be fine. We need some tweaks here and there but there's no need for any major adjustments as of now.

[tsherkin]

Eh what ever dude. I thought the Heat could be a bit more dominate. Before you think I am a new fan or someone that just got into the NBA. Realize I've watched ball since Jordan's second peat. Im young and I got an extensive knowledge about basketball. I done my research to guys like Wilt, Larry Bird, Karrem, Jerry West, etc.

You definitively do not have an extensive knowledge of how the game actually functions, however, it would seem.

Yes we have guys who can light it up from downtown but they are not consistent unless they have a hot night. Of course Wade, LeBron and Bosh are solid. The rest are kinda iffy.

... Neither Wade nor Bosh are solid from three, both of them are shooting mediocre to poor percentages from downtown. If you try to say you're talking about overall play, you're shifting your goalposts away from the obvious intent of your comment, which very clearly referenced 3pt shooting. Wade is shooting 31.8% from three, which is bad for a guard (not his game, of course) and Bosh is shooting 25% (and takes less than 1 per game, mostly end-of-clock heaves but the occasional honest 3). Ray Allen is the leading shooter on the team at 44.7%, which is as good as you're going to ever find on that shot without it being a specialist like Steve Novak or Jason Kapono or something (and only lower volume than Ray's 4 3PA/g), followed quickly by Shane Battier at 43.5% on 4.8 3PA/g.

That's as consistent and as valuable as three-point shooting ever gets, especially at the kind of volume those two are managing, so once again I point out that you're blatantly incorrect.

James Jones is complete waste. The most entertaining thing I saw from him is his face lol . I saw the play offs last year and hes he hit like 1 crucial 3 pointer but I saw him miss a lot more than he should have been taken. This year the small minutes he did play he was absolute trash.

He's played in 11 games this year, but he's shot 37.5% from 3, which is good. He was never brought aboard to do anything else; failing to understand this is failing to understand the basic premise behind deep bench players and the notion of a specialist. You think Steve Kerr was heavily versatile for the Bulls or the Spurs? Obviously, Kerr was a better spot-up artist for those teams, but he was also the size of a PG and for several years enjoyed a pulled-in 3pt line (plus in San Antonio, was often taking corner 3s).

Ultimately, all you've said here is that you've been watching ball for about 15 years and still don't know how it works, then tried to name-drop, as if that was meaningful. I'd counter with this: you know West and Wilt and so forth, but do you know who the third scorer was on the Bucks in their title season? What was Paul Silas' NBA career like? What was Bison Dele's birth name? Who was the first player drafted by the Miami Heat? You don't want to start playing NBA trivia, because it's e-penis measuring, not effective debate, and it ends up being an exercise in Google-fu more than anything else.

The point is, almost everything you have said in your OP is wrong, point by point, so you should probably at least consider that fact instead of casually responding with "eh whatever, I've been watching the NBA since Jordan was old and I knows of uber-famous old NBA stars, I know what I'm talking about." If you think Bosh is amazing, holy crap, you should have seen Bill Cartwright on the Knicks, or Brad Daugherty.

You might, gasp, learn something instead of sassing people pointing out where you made your errors.

Or hell, just talk to the other Miami posters here about their own team, they seem to occasionally know what they're talking about...

[TheKiteDesigner]

The roster has a collection of small forwards lol. I will say this though, the roster needs at least 1 I 2 upgrades per season. You always need those guys who can contribute and keep the minutes down for the starters. Or else you look up and your core has aged and the rest f the league will catch up to you talent wise. Look at what happened to the Lakers. They stayed stagnant with their roster up until this season and the West gave them back to back playoff ass whooping in 2011 and 2012. There's always room for improvement. Even as a defending champion.

[ricochet]

Miami's clearest issue is defense, where they've dropped off pretty much across the board compared to last season. Given that the team has many of the same pieces (and all of the pieces have essentially proven capable of functioning as neutral or better value in strong defensive systems), it's quite likely that they'll sort it out moving forward towards the All-Star break and after.

The idea that a team with Lebron and Wade needs a better point guard is asinine, because they don't operate a conventional offense. Minding that Chalmers is filling his role quite capably by pressure-releasing at the timeline and shooting almost 37% from 3, one need look little farther than the fact that Miami is the 3rd-best offense in the league to know that they aren't really struggling there in a meaningful way. They were 8th-ranked last year at 106.6 ORTG and are 3rd-ranked this year at 111.7. Miami has managed 111+ ORTG in exactly one other season in franchise history, the 10-11 season... when they also made the Finals.

More particularly, back to the PG notion, the Heat run a great deal of their offense through Lebron in the post, which requires little of their guards beyond the ability to throw an entry pass, make the correct swing post, post/re-post and hit open jumpers. Which they do with as much consistency and effectiveness as you can reasonably expect of them. Add that and a dash of PnR from Chalmers (and, of course, Wade's perimeter play) and what else do you want? This isn't the 72-win Bulls in the RS, no, but they're dominating offensively. The second-ranked Knicks are also technically at 111.7 offensively, it's a rounding-sensitive difference that ranks New York higher, so essentially only the Thunder are producing superior offense to the Heat.

So yeah, everything you said pertaining to offense is incorrect.

They're the best 3pt shooting team in the league, so the idea that they need more consistent shooting from downtown is absurd. Between Lebron, Ray Allen, Chalmers, Battier, Lewis, Mike Miller and James Jones (who you disregard), the Heat have a HOST of 3pt threats studding their entire lineup to the point that even with expected regression, they're going to be a nasty perimeter shooting team over the whole season. I can't fathom how, watching this team, you thought that they had any further need of 3pt shooting, save that you've not watched them at all this season or caught one or two off-nights from downtown with total blithe unawareness of their team statistics.

[*]We need a better point guard
[*]We need a consistent shooter from downtown

So those are taken care of.

[*]We need a better bench

Battier, Haslem, Lewis, Miller and Ray Allen are all coming off of the bench. Some are mixing in some starts as dictated by injuries, matchups and the like, but that's still a pretty significant bench. Add in Jones and Cole plus a little Joel Anthony to round things out, and they're doing just fine. It isn't epic in general, but they have heavy-minute starters and phenomenal 3pt shooting, which means they can capably in-out Lebron or Wade as required, then juggle the lineups so they're both in for the critical stretches of games.

[*]We need a dominate center.

Why? They were a titanic defensive squad without one last year, there aren't really any good centers legitimately available to the Heat and they won a title without any such player. Post offense? Both Lebron and Wade are capable post scorers or better (and, more importantly, capable offensive posts, mixing scoring and playmaking) and even Bosh can get down there now and again, though he's best-served on the elbow. Defense? Well, again, Miami was the 4th-best defense in the league without any kind of dominant center on their squad last year, so they clearly don't actually need such a player for any purpose, and unless they happened to be Kevin Love + defense... which doesn't actually exist in the league (or really in league history). Maybe if they took a pot-shot at Ryan Anderson to add some serious stretch big value, but he's not a great defender (might look better in Miami's system and rebounds well on the offensive glass, though), plus he's not likely available to the Heat for anything they're willing to give up and they have Rashard Lewis for stretch frontcourt offense anyhow. Plus, Bosh can stick a three every now and again, even though I hate it when he takes them.

So that's 0/4. It's like you struck out and then refused to leave the batter's box until you got another pitch, to borrow from the baseball parlance...

Tsherkin man.. I think he was trolling.. Did you read the part we were supposed to go for Cousins...

[tsherkin]

Tsherkin man.. I think he was trolling.. Did you read the part we were supposed to go for Cousins...

He's not trolling.

But actually, Cousins wouldn't be a bad choice. His attitude issues aren't any different than Sheed's back in his Portland days and he wised up and figured things out over time (at least to a manageable extent). Randoza got himself out of an ugly situation in Portland where he had all kinds of troubles himself and found a niche in Memphis. Veteran leadership, ownership/management support and a good coach should prove to be a major game-changer for him, because the talent is obviously there.

I feel he's more Z-bo than J.R. Rider, you know what I'm saying? I don't think Miami has the pieces to get Cousins without giving up an untenable package, but the notion isn't wrong. That kind of size, rebounding, ability to get to the rim and draw fouls... it wouldn't be lost on this team, especially with the kind of spacing and passing Miami has with the current roster.

EDIT: Granted, I think they might be better of going for the usual suspects as far as stretch bigs, Ryan Anderson and Channing Frye, or others like them... but again, they seems to be doing generally fine the way they are and just need to get themselves going defensively. They might catch a rough matchup in the playoffs, so upgrading their front court couldn't hurt, but only if it makes sense.