It's been a while since the Miami Heat have had any resemblance of a decent offense. Per Cleaning The Glass, Miami has had the 21st, 21st, and 25th-ranked offense over the last three seasons. A top-10 defense in each season accompanied those stale offenses. Talk about anchoring something to the bottom of the ocean.
Erik Spoelstra had enough of watching his offense dry out every year and implemented new principles. Miami was such a heavy pick-and-roll/hand-off team that there was a dribble-hand-off action named after them. They've thrown that in the trash this season.
Miami is running PnRs (4.8 percent) and hand-offs (1.3 percent) less than any squad in the league. The Heat have emphasized spacing the floor for their rumble-tumble drivers to have lanes to the rim. Isolations and beeline drives to the cups have powered the 13th-ranked Heat offense.
Norman Powell, Davion Mitchell, and Jaime Jaquez Jr are the ring leaders getting to the rim. Jaquez Jr. is the Heat's leading driver at 14.1 drives per game, and he's already coming off the bench. Mitchell and Powell both have histories as the first one off the pine, but so does Tyler Herro, who's set to make his season debut soon. How does he fit into the new offense and the lineup overall?
Tyler Herro will start, but he needs to adjust
If you follow the Heat closely, you know how fond the organization is of Herro. The Heat conveyed that Herro would only be traded for a Hall of Fame-level talent through his agent, when the rest of the NBA world didn't view Herro in that light.
After Herro stepped up and took his game to a new level during the Jimmy Butler debacle, Herro was stamped as the Heat's guy. At least on the offensive end. Part of Herro's growth in his All-Star season was the improvement he made as a lead ball handler. His growth in that department isn't meaningless, but he'll need to shift away from that play style to fit this improved Heat offense.
Herro was a pick-and-roll junkie last year. His pick-and-roll possessions per game (7.3) were right there with Jayson Tatum and Jalen Williams. For reference, no Heat player is getting more than three pick-and-roll reps per game this year. The other aspects of Herro's game can illuminate in this new offense.
Catch-and-shoot 3s and attacking closeouts are on the menu for Herro. His newfound ball-handling skills are paramount in attacking wild closeouts. Herro will attract those, being a career 38 percent 3-point shooter. His finishing at the cup last year indicates he should be comfortable with this attack space style of play. He shot 66 percent at the rim, which ranked in the 69th percentile among combo guards. That'll work for a legit volume shooter.
Who comes off the bench when Herro returns?
Miami has been a top 10 defense every season since 2015, with garbage time filtered out. They haven't always had the best personnel, but Spo always seems to make it work on the ugly end. Spo leading the charge should allow the Heat to start to suspect defenders in Tyler Herro and Norman Powell. Davion Mitchell is the Heat's point of attack defender. The tone he sets on the perimeter can't be understated, but now he'll get to terrorize backups with Jaquez Jr. Good luck with that.
Powell and Herro should complement each other in this new offense. Both players utilize their gravity to get easy basket attempts, and you can't leave either of them open. Teams will be gorilla-glued to Herro and Powell while either of them attacks the hoop. That provides great spacing.
Neither is known as a pesky defender, but Spo is there, and so is Bam Adebayo. Victor Wembanyama might've stolen Bam's thunder as the best defensive player in the league (no DPOYs for Bam is a crime), but Bam is still arguably the most versatile. He doesn't protect the rim like a traditional big, but Bam operates as a roaming blow-up-your-offense tank with Kel'el Ware on the backside.
Ware is still growing as a rim deterrent, but Bam also helps him by shutting off teams' water before they even get to the paint. Bam has never been on a team that wasn't a top 10 defense, and that includes a season where Herro and Terry Rozier were his starting backcourt. That won't change now, and the firepower of a Herro & Powell backcourt makes the defensive trade-off worth it.
The Heat are only 13th in offense now. A major improvement for them, but not an elite number by any measure. It would be silly to bring their All-Star off the bench with the juice he can add if he buys in. He'll buy in. Last year, he stopped bailing teams out with contested mid-range shots and had more of a Steph Curry shot profile. Herro has a history of doing what's best for the team, and that trend will continue when he returns.