Miami's Bi-Polar Play

[SideshowBob]

http://espn.go.com/nba/standings/_/type/expanded

11-2 against winning teams, 16-7 against losing teams.

Make that 16-8 now. This is a rather glaring discrepancy.

Here's a quick advanced look.

Miami vs. Below Average Teams (< 0 SRS)

23 G, +2.23 SRS, +6.3 Offense, +3.7 Defense (!!) (That's god-awful, good for 23rd in the league)

Miami vs. Above Average Teams (> 0 SRS)

14 G, +8.96 SRS, +7.9 Offense, -2.3 Defense

Again, a glaring difference in performance. A little more than 1.5 points better on offense, but a full 6 points better on defense (a negative defensive score is better). That'a a remarkable difference.

I'm wary on splitting up SRS like this. The whole reason it makes sense on a large scale to look at performance against all teams is that we want to know how team execution can hold up against ALL kinds of offensive and defensive strategy, not only the ones successful teams employ. In this case, I'd just point to the split as an indicator, rather than something to make a conclusion upon. There's a undeniable pattern here.

[RexBoyWonder]

We play down to the competition, It's nothing new, every Heat fan knows this by now.

It's a mental thing mixed with a draining system that causes subpar play when not fully engaged.

[narmerguy]

We play down to the competition, It's nothing new, every Heat fan knows this by now.

It's a mental thing mixed with a draining system that causes subpar play when not fully engaged.

And a bit of arrogance mixed with laziness. Nothing we can do about it but just wait and see what happens in the playoffs. It certainly has made me less interested in watching regular season games now. Maybe that's for the best since I get more work done.

[twix2500]

We have a better record than last year at this time and we not trying hard. Treating it like its the end of the regular season with nothing to play for. Nothing to complain about, we better than last year.

[Tony15]

The eye test allows me to find these stats not very surprising. All they've been doing since the beginning is trying to beat the below average to average teams on talent alone, and raise their game a little against the better teams.

[TRG]

Just a fancy, yet accurate statistic that shows that we do indeed play down to our competition.

Remember the 2010-11 season when the Heat were beating up on bad teams but constantly losing to good teams and were labeled as chokers? Now it's the opposite but we're now seen as lazy... I'll take it.

[DefenseWins]

Not only do we play down the competition, but every team is hyped up to play us. It's not a good formula.

I wish this team knew how to put away teams early. Yes teams do fight back, but that's because we allow them to come in. Indiana annoys me, but these days when you know they are going up against a team that sucks, they have blown them out...

People say they would rather have close games these days. Give me a break. I rather this team blow out a team and get some rest in there, than to play 40 minutes against a bad team and almost lose or straight up lose. It's better in the long run.

[Aussie Heat Fan]

We play down to the competition, It's nothing new, every Heat fan knows this by now.

It's a mental thing mixed with a draining system that causes subpar play when not fully engaged.

Exactly. It's frustrating as all hell but we all know it's going to happen by now. Bring on playoffs.

[EscapoTHB]

Worth mentioning too that DWade doesn't play in some of those games against worse teams, but does play in the games that matter against bigger teams. That's the dual impact of the team losing their second best player, and the team telling its players that this game or that game doesn't matter as much as the others.

I'm glad it's that way though. I would rather be beating the good teams all the time. Don't care about the bad teams. The good teams all fear us.

[GreenHat]

Its fairly meaningless at those number of games.

It reminds we of earlier seasons when we only beat bad teams but did terrible against good teams. It didn't mean anything then either. You can slice up the pie in different ways when its creating buckets of less than 20 games. I agree that Wade playing or not is probably a bigger factor.