The Heat's Too High on Miami's Big 3

After losing to the Knicks Sunday night, the Heat finally started to show some frustration that the “process” they are going through is not progressing as quickly as they had hoped, or planned.  The loss dropped them to 5-11 in games decided by 5 points or less.  They are winless against Boston and Chicago.  That is not what was expected by a franchise that held a free agent “championship” celebration last summer.  Everyone knew that the burden of winning an actual championship would rest on the shoulders of the “Big 3”, but stats, and history, say they are carrying too much of an offensive load to win a title this season.

Sunday, LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh combined to take 50 of Miami’s 74 field goal attempts.  That works out to 67.57% of the team’s shots.  That is a large chunk of shots for only 3 players, but that was right around their average for the season (65.68%).  Now it is typical to expect that the 3 best players on a team are going to shoulder the majority of the offensive burden on any team, but no championship team in the last 8 years has had a percentage for their “Big 3” higher than 56% (Miami 2006).  Here are Miami’s numbers stacked up against the last 8 NBA champions:

Team	FGA	Top 3 FGA	T3 % FGA
MIA 11	77.5	50.9	65.68%
LAL 10	83.8	45.1	53.82%
LAL 09	85.1	43.8	51.47%
BOS 08	76.7	41.1	53.59%
SAS 07	77.2	39.7	51.42%
MIA 06	77.5	43.4	56.00%
SAS 05	78.7	40.3	51.21%
DET 04	77	40.5	52.60%
SAS 03	76.8	40.1	52.21%

The average for the 8 previous title teams’ top 3 players was 52.77% of the teams’ shots.

Furthermore the offensive expectations of a team’s best players typically rise in the post-season.  Each of the last 8 years the NBA champs saw an increase in the percentage of shots taken by their best players in the playoffs:

Team	FGA	Top 3 FGA	T3 % FGA	Change
LAL 10	81.2	46.5	57.27	3.45
LAL 09	80.5	44	54.66	3.19
BOS 08	75.1	43	57.26	3.67
SAS 07	76.8	46.6	60.68	9.26
MIA 06	72.4	44.2	61.05	5.05
SAS 05	76.5	46.8	61.18	9.97
DET 04	76.3	42.4	55.57	2.97
SAS 03	76.8	42.1	54.82	2.61

The teams saw the percentage of FGA by their top players increase to an average of 57.81% in the playoffs, about a 5% increase over the regular season.  If that trend were to continue for the Heat this season, James, Wade, and Bosh would be taking over 70% of their team’s shots come playoff time.

The expectation for this team was that they would be harder to defend with three marquee players on the floor together.  Instead they have struggled in the half court for much of the season and have had scoring lulls in end of quarter situations.  The latter was highlighted Sunday night when the Knicks ended the first half on a 16-0 run and the game on a 13-2 run.  LeBron, Wade, and Bosh are all excellent individual offensive players, but the way they are dominating the shots for Miami, they are playing 3 on 5 offensively at times because other teams know they don’t have to worry about Joel Anthony, Erick Dampier, Mario Chalmers, or whoever is on the floor with the “Big 3”, especially in crunch time. 

The Heat have suffered these struggles in the regular season when they are seeing different teams every night and game planning is much less in depth.  Things will get much more interesting this spring when teams have the ability to lock in and focus on only them in a 7 game series.  The “Big 3” have embraced the villain role and welcomed the “Heat” that has come along with it, but come playoff time it may prove to be too hot for them.

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