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Contrary to popular belief on this forum, the Heat do have an offense beyond "do whatever you want". Spoelstra and the staff developed it over the summer by conferring with a number of elite college coaches both in basketball and football, and in fact was inspired by the Oregon Ducks' football team. Full article here

Pat Riley played a significant role in the offense's development:

But upon returning from the trip around the country, Spoelstra realized he was in a bit of a bind. He had all these compelling ideas about how to deploy his players on the court, except he had no players to deploy thanks to the lockout. So Spoelstra walked into the Heat arena and told his coaching staff to lace up and get out on the practice court.

Spoelstra and his assistants decided to play a game of pretend: be the Miami Heat.

Their coach? That would be Riley. For the first time in years, Riley assembled his own (pretend) staff, too: Heat CEO Nick Arison and assistant general manager Andy Ellisburg.

"Once or twice a week," Riley recalled. "Erik would take all of his eight or nine coaches and they'd be out there running through offense, experimenting on things and I'd come out with Andy and Nick and we'd watch it. Then I started to go out on the court and say, 'Why don't you do this? Why don't you do that?' I loved it and I loved what [Erik] was doing."

How do you have an offense without play calling? Simple, the same way classic motion offense works, the same way the triangle works: by establishing principles of spacing and movement, and letting players freelance within that framework:

There is, however, a fluid framework in place, with infused elements of Rick Adelman's elbow offense and a motion dribble-drive offense, something he picked up from his trip to Lexington, Ky., to see Calipari.
[snip]

And Bosh? He's gushing about Spoelstra's new groove for a different reason: You can't really scout it.
But after a crushing Finals loss to Dallas, the Heat were ready for a fresh start. Now, the team seems fully on board with what they call "the triangle on steroids," and have even adopted Spoelstra's "pace and space" terminology in their press conferences.

I don't think anyone seriously thought the Heat players were really doing whatever they wanted.


They were just saying that there wasn't really any strict playcalling or actual sets of plays.

And I figured the triangle would work with this team. Don't really need a point guard for a triangle style offense.


Spo and Co did everything I wanted, I am content.

Two things to me that stands out about Spo: He's stubborn and he's a hardworker.


I just think the stubbornness translate on the court and off the court. He's too stubborn to change, but he's also too stubborn to just lose without changing.

It just seems to take a bunch of others to change his mind. We all seen that offense was slow and wasn't fitting. And I think the Big 3 didn't really have too much faith in it. And most of us on this board didn't have faith in Spo's offense.

But if someone shows Spo there is a better way and they have the credentials and success rate. I think he will always adapt.

The problem is, can Spo get over himself and change without someone showing him the way.

This was a good read mopper, thanks for sharing.

risky

Triangle on steroids eh?

We'll see. Not convinced of anything until they win a title lmao.

Really good read if nothing else. The potential is there for sure. I like the direction Spo and Riley are thinking. With this team we SHOULD be able to play in a way that no other team has ever played.

I think the keys are everything needs to be done at pace, we need to be in a constant state of attack, and we need to be like sharks the minute we see a weakness or mismatch we exploit it.

Everytime down the floor there is going to be at least one mismatch to exploit with Bosh, Lebron, Wade--even Battier. We just have to find it and attack.

My main worry right now is that we might be a little too into ourselves offensively, and lapsing on the defensive end.

Defense is our identity. And is what will allow us to attack on offense. If we're not defending, we're not attacking--and some of the rotations this preseason have been really slow. Though some of that is the team we are playing, and it being so early.

I'm interested to see how this works. If it does, Spo is going to be regarded like Phil Jackson.

It showed last night...LeBron ball hogging, Wade ball hogging, Bosh playing like crap, Joel sucking...

Brazilian wrote:It showed last night...LeBron ball hogging, Wade ball hogging, Bosh playing like crap, Joel sucking...

Are you serious?


Lebron had 27 points in 30 minutes... all fluid going down the court and his game was ridiculous when he wasn't visibly just goofing off.

Lebron only took one garbage 3.

They weren't standing at the 3 point line, taking turns, everything was with in 10 to 20 feet.

Nobody was just standing around, they were all moving. Bosh had 4 assists even though he really just freaking sucked.

Wade had 21 points in 30 minutes.

Joel actually had some points even though nobody should pass to him, unless he's wide open, by himself.

And there is actual floor spacing without having to put in a bunch of shooters who can't defend.


It was visible improvement, because honestly the Heat last season had one of the worst offenses just on a pure eyeball test, it looked choppy, it looked uncoordinated, it wasn't fluid, it resorted in chucking and stepback 30 foot 3 pointers.

And if Wade and Lebron getting 48 points in 30 minutes on over 50 percent shooting is ballhogging and they only took 28 shots, then by God let them ballhog.

The defense was terrible because the Heat like to swarm on the perimeter to prevent layups, if they just stuck on their man, then 3 point shooting teams wouldn't stay in the game when the Heat are up by 20.

In the beginning they were good offensively, but it's the droughts that worry me and giving up big leads lol. I know this is a game of runs, but games like giving up 20+ point leads are disturbing.

I don't care if LBJ and Wade get 50 points each, but giving up huge leads has to stop.

We'll see how the season progresses. They will build more chemistry out there with Cole, Pittman, Battier, Miller coming back. The offense is going to explode when the bench gets healthy.

During all the "we're going to wing it offensively" hooplah, that just sounded more like a triangle type offense, not a complete lack of structured offense.

The triangle is great when you've got really good basketball players like the Heat do. The potential problem at this point would still be a lack of time in the offense. The triangle relies on extreme familiarity with each other and everyone having a really good grasp on the principles of spacing within the offense. Without that, it's worse than having a really structured offense.

If Spoelstra wants to implement that type of offense this year, he couldn't get a much worse year to do it. Very little training camp time, fewer games and the compressed schedule meaning less practice time will make it harder to pick up and master for the players.

It'll be interesting to see how it plays out.

Cole was a steal
I thought the offense looked more balanced too. And Wade putting up left-handers? He's going to be unguardable

DefenseWins wrote:In the beginning they were good offensively, but it's the droughts that worry me and giving up big leads lol. I know this is a game of runs, but games like giving up 20+ point leads are disturbing.

I don't care if LBJ and Wade get 50 points each, but giving up huge leads has to stop.

We'll see how the season progresses. They will build more chemistry out there with Cole, Pittman, Battier, Miller coming back. The offense is going to explode when the bench gets healthy.

Stop swarming around on 3 point shooting teams.

That has nothing to do with the offense. Heat can't play halfcourt offense when a team is on their run because teams just get in their defense and block clog up lanes.

Swarming works on teams with bad perimeter shooters. Swarm defense is also lack of interior defensive presence, since Spo seems to be so worried about easy layups.

Heat always gonna overplay on the perimeter, I am used to it by now. I don't even worry about it, opposing team go on their run, opposing 3 point shooting team misses shots, Heat responds and most likely wins by 6 points.

Also, it's preseason. I am pretty sure after a while, they just wanted to get off the court.

Does anyone really doubt if that were a regular season game that we would have won it by 8-10 points? Was pretty clear after we got up 20 all of the starters took the rest of the night off.

Right Now on PTI - they are talking about Eric using "Oregons Football Offense" - what type offense is this, I don't follow Oregon football

DefenseWins wrote:Triangle on steroids eh?

We'll see. Not convinced of anything until they win a title lmao.

It doesn't take a title to prove if an offensive philosophy works or not.

Dezmondballins3 wrote:

DefenseWins wrote:Triangle on steroids eh?

We'll see. Not convinced of anything until they win a title lmao.

It doesn't take a title to prove if an offensive philosophy works or not.

Phil Jackson and Tex Winter would probably disagree with that....

DefenseWins wrote:

Dezmondballins3 wrote:

DefenseWins wrote:Triangle on steroids eh?

We'll see. Not convinced of anything until they win a title lmao.

It doesn't take a title to prove if an offensive philosophy works or not.

Phil Jackson and Tex Winter would probably disagree with that....

so if we loose in the finals by 1 free throw in game 7 that will mean the philosophy doesn't work?

DefenseWins wrote:In the beginning they were good offensively, but it's the droughts that worry me and giving up big leads lol. I know this is a game of runs, but games like giving up 20+ point leads are disturbing.

I don't care if LBJ and Wade get 50 points each, but giving up huge leads has to stop.

We'll see how the season progresses. They will build more chemistry out there with Cole, Pittman, Battier, Miller coming back. The offense is going to explode when the bench gets healthy.

We're a defensive team. When we fail to get defensive stops we can't get out in transition, which is when the Heat are the most dangerous. Once another team gets off it forces us to resort to a slower half court offense that isn't our strong point at all.

Defense is literally the best offense on this Heat team.

I have expressed my disaggreements with Spos philosophy. Offensively i disagree how to maximize the big three offensively, I think offensively they should be used more as scorers, not one as a facilitator, one as penetrator and the other as a jump shooter.

Cliff Levingston wrote:During all the "we're going to wing it offensively" hooplah, that just sounded more like a triangle type offense, not a complete lack of structured offense.

The triangle is great when you've got really good basketball players like the Heat do. The potential problem at this point would still be a lack of time in the offense. The triangle relies on extreme familiarity with each other and everyone having a really good grasp on the principles of spacing within the offense. Without that, it's worse than having a really structured offense.

If Spoelstra wants to implement that type of offense this year, he couldn't get a much worse year to do it. Very little training camp time, fewer games and the compressed schedule meaning less practice time will make it harder to pick up and master for the players.

It'll be interesting to see how it plays out.

Our roster barely changed from last season, the core is still the same as last year and I'd say our chemistry is pretty good, as the stars have developed an understanding for each other. Thus, implementing a new offense during the regular season shouldn't be a problem. It definitely won't work right away but from what I saw in the Orlando games, it was a large improvement to everything we did last season. Our spacing was much better, we created better shots and the players appeared to be more comfortable, as they could simply be themselves instead of being forced into spots or positions on the court.
I thought our main issue last year was that once a certain pass or cut didn't work, our offense basically broke down and we ran an isolation or a pick and roll with one of the Big Three. Now the ball and the players appear to constantly be on the move, which is why, in another thread, I stressed how LeBron can't be the ballstopper he was last season anymore. I like the concept and believe the idea fits this team well. As the article states though, it'll be interesting to see how we'll perform down the stretch in close games.