The Miami HEAT have the talent to be a great team, but talent alone doesn’t make teams great. You can have as many All-Stars and All-NBA accolades on your roster as you’d like, you still need guys willing to make the fringe plays that can turn good into really good, and really good into great.
Because every so often, you need those players making fringe plays to take center stage. And how they perform can mean the difference in a handful of wins each season.
Miami earned one of those this-could-have-been-a-loss wins in improbable fashion against the Houston Rockets Sunday evening, coming back from a 21-point deficit in the third quarter to win by 20. They hit big shots en route to doing so, catching fire from three after failing to make one in the first half, but it wasn’t assists or drive-and-kicks or alley oops or fast-break points that conquered the night. It was defense killed the beast.
More specifically, the defense of Messieurs Winslow, Johnson and Chalmers.
When those three players were on the court Sunday, for all of 16 minutes, Miami outscored the Rockets by 31 points and posted a defensive rating of 42.6. Mind you, a good defensive rating in the NBA is anything below 100. What Miami’s perimeter trio accomplished in a good chunk of time was, statistically, nothing short of a defensive supernova.
“Much credit to Justise coming in and playing big,” Dwyane Wade said. “To Tyler for coming in and playing big. Mario played great in his minutes as well.”
Miami’s rotations in the first half, or lack thereof, were regularly breaking down. Houston got one open three after another, hitting 9-of-20 before the break. The Rockets were surely due for a bit of positive regression after a tough start to the year, but the HEAT were doing little to dissuade them from doing so. Down big, the home team could have easily rolled it out for one more half and hoped for the best.
Those fringe players had other ideas. For lack of a better phrase, Winslow, Johnson and Chalmers got all up in the Rockets, suffocating every action they could latch themselves onto.
Open looks just stopped existing.
Those passing and driving lanes that were so easy before? No more.
“Split the game ball like four or five ways,” Chris Bosh said.
“[They were] just getting into them, making it difficult. If they’re coming off a pin down, try not to get picked. Step up instead of backing up. Coach has always said since the beginning of training camp that we have big, physical guards and we need to be able to utilize that talent.”
Those pin-downs that were freeing shooters seemingly with the press of a controller button attached to some divine game console in the stars? Red rings.
And James Harden, Houston’s Most Valuable Player candidate and one of the game’s elite scorers? Reduced to taking contested shots off the dribble.
Great defense, surely, but it also doesn’t quite resemble the blitz-happy, Omega Swarm great defense of past Miami teams. This is a different scheme built to the strengths of a different roster, adhering to different league-wide trends. But the core philosophy remains the same. Even a more conservative style is enhanced exponentially by furious energy.
“It has to be that way for a Miami HEAT team. Period,” Erik Spoelstra said. “We have to absolutely buy in and embrace that type of mentality. That disposition. The effort, the toughness, the physicality that’s required to do that every single night.”
Credit Spoelstra for sticking with what was working, and having it continue to work. One of the toughest decisions any coach has to make is whether to leave in the group making a huge run or sub in the more established players. Many opt for the veterans. Spoelstra stuck with a pair of players in Winslow and Johnson still trying to prove they belong.
“You kind of just get caught up in the moment,” Johnson said. “You look up and there’s four minutes left and you think, ‘Oh, I guess I’m staying in’. Not really surprised either way.”
Hassan Whiteside, also, played a big part in the run. He finished powerfully with the ball, but his containment on pick-and-rolls and mere presence on the floor allowed Miami’s perimeter players – there were often four guards/wings on the court at once against a shorthanded Houston lineup – to be aggressive. There’s a certain peace of mind that comes with having a massive shotblocking spectre looming over every action on the court.
“We locked in,” Whiteside said. “Everybody pressed up on their shooters, and I said make them beat us in the paint. Make them score over us in the paint.”
Incredible as the proceedings were, all of Miami’s questions weren’t suddenly answered overnight. There is still problem-solving to do, and the team’s upcoming home-heavy schedule should be able to help in that regard. But Spoelstra showed on Sunday that he’s willing to try things until he finds what works, and in leaving in a trio of relatively unheralded players he clearly is willing to run with his findings.
So, no, the team didn’t achieve a new level of enlightenment with one early season win, but they found something that worked and worked really well. That’s progress. In the bigger picture, that’s all you can ask for.
