NBA Playbook: Miami Heat After Time Out Sets in the 2023 Playoffs
The Miami Heat are knocking the door of the NBA Finals, thanks in part to Erik Spoelstra's genius. PLUS WNBA videos to celebrate the start of the season.
Welcome to Ball and Order, where we talk about basketball strategy and tactics like normal humans. In that pursuit, I collected my favorite ATOs from the Miami Heat during the 2023 Playoffs in a playbook that you can download and a YouTube video that you can watch! Enjoy!
I’ll be honest with you. Despite all of my bluster on Twitter, I didn’t see this Miami Heat playoff run coming. Before their last-ditch play-in effort against Chicago, part of me (and a sizeable chunk of the fanbase) would not have minded losing the game and getting into the draft lottery. Of course, I came back around once the Heat started to compete with playoff intensity to put the Bulls away. I was reminded that the Jimmy Butler-era Miami Heat are capable of anything once the games really start to matter. Everyone has stepped up for Miami, but the person who may have turned up their performance the most is the man on the bench: Erik Spoelstra.
Spo is turning in his best coaching performance ever in these playoffs, in my humble opinion. Jimmy Butler becoming Himmy Butler, Kyle Lowry getting healthy, and the rest of the team catching fire from three has allowed Spo to implement whatever he wants. His lineup decisions including bringing Kyle Lowry off the bench and picking spots for Duncan Robinson have hit the mark every time. Clearly, Spo and the coaching staff have done a phenomenal job of preparing his team as well. Offensively, they find the most advantageous mismatches and attack them correctly. The defense is forcing opponents into shots they want.
One area where Spo has undoubtedly turned up the heat is in his after-timeout plays. The regular season Heat ranked 29th in points per possession on ATOs, which more or less tracked with the team’s paltry offense. In the playoffs, the Heat have increased their points per possession (PPP) on ATOs by almost 50% and rank 4th in the NBA. Before game 5 of the Knicks series, the Heat were steamrolling teams after time-outs to the tune of 1.01 PPP, which was first in the NBA by a wide margin. The difference per game is about 2-3 points, which can be the margin in a playoff game as Spo’s masterpiece in Game 5 against Milwaukee proved.
Spoelstra’s sets are a big driver of this trend as he has done a great job on pressing on the other team’s pressure point at the time. Most of Spo’s sets are simple and incorporate only a couple of actions in each play. The team either immediately gets what it wants like this lob to Bam Adebayo or they work it around flawlessly like they did using a blind pig action.1 The sets often serve to merely get the team to a good starting point before letting the ball find energy as Spo is fond of saying.
The additional points per game are nice, but the biggest effect of Spo’s time-out excellence may be the calmness they inject into the team. It seems like the players have supreme confidence in what Spoelstra is saying and drawing up, which in turn makes them more patient in the offense. The X and Os are fascinating, but a lot of great coaches can draw up effective sets. Spo is separating himself by getting his players ready to figure it out on their own during those breaks.
The WNBA is back!
The W is back, baby! My plan was to write about what happened opening weekend, but then I realized how much hyperbole would have to tamped down by disclaimers that I will wait until next week. If you want to hear my opionos on Brittney Griner, Breanna Stewart, the Mystics, and the Sun, check out this week’s Courtside with Christy and Gabe!
I made a couple of videos about the opening weekend. Go watch them and subscribe. I want to do a lot more videos than I have in the past, so expect more!
Go Heat!
The blind pig action is when the ballhandler passes to a big, who passes to a guard running by him. It’s a great action and also the best action name in all of basketball in my opinion because Phil Jackson named it after a term that jazz musicians used for marijuana cigarettes. That hippy won 11 championships, wild.