* Miami's transformation without Chris Bosh is one of the fascinating storylines of the season. They didn't really add any shooting swapping Bosh for Joe Johnson; Johnson simply replaced Bosh as the best shooter in the starting lineup, and sometimes the only reliable one.
But they did add another wing who can make plays off the dribble from the 3-point arc, and reduce their number of pick-and-roll screeners from two to just one -- Hassan Whiteside.
The Heat are still a bad shooting team, but they make up for it with speed, passing and constant motion. One wrinkle I loved: Miami knew Charlotte would send a third defender into the paint early to shove Whiteside on the pick-and-roll, and they had the guy that helper was guarding -- Dwyane Wade here on a Joe Johnson/Whiteside play -- cut across the baseline, and toward the ball:
NBA
That's a cut big man make now and then to confuse help defense assignments. You don't see perimeter players make it much, because the whole point of playing four perimeter guys is to station them around the 3-point arc -- and out of the damn way.
But Wade is almost like a big man on offense, and these little cuts flummoxed the Hornets. They triggered a kind of second rotation: Marvin Williams, guarding Luol Deng in the right corner, sees how far away Wade gets from Courtney Lee, and makes a panic-slide into the paint to cover for Lee -- leaving Deng wide open.
The irony? The Heat learned this from the Spurs; Danny Green killed them in the 2013 Finals with this same cut, to the point that the Heat, befuddled about a thing they hadn't seen or expected, nicknamed it "The Danny Green Cut."
Behold, the playoffs: Every wrinkle matters.
http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/15228918/the-raptors-need-shake-first-round-jinx
