Miami Heat Weekly Round-Up: 1st November — 7th November

Have you ever missed a game or two? Maybe you were too busy to keep with everything that was going on with the Miami Heat? Being a fan of the NBA from the UK, I find myself in that situation regularly and I just wish there was some summary of what has happened, some stats, and some key highlights of each game. Well, this Miami Heat Weekly Round-up is exactly what you need.

Weekly Discussion

Two impressive wins and one game that didn’t matter.

Anyone that overreacted to the Celtics' loss by thinking that the Heat aren’t that good or that this was a flukey start just needs to be quiet.

Games like that will happen — there will be games where you can’t make a shot and that is what happened. It’s an 82 game season, there will be games where either a team can’t score or they can’t miss.

Even with that loss, this was a great week for the Heat.

Per Cleaning the Glass, the Heat are still fourth on offense and defense and have the second-best net rating.

A win against two top-3 teams in the Western conference is impressive. A team should beat worse teams, that’s why it’s a good sign when the team beats other solid teams — The Heat have beaten four teams that are currently above .500.

Last week the main topic was their league-best defense, but this is not the case in these two wins.

It feels weird how in those two wins, it was the offense that won the game — the Heat’s offensive rating was 135.2 against Dallas and 129.7 against Utah. It feels weird because that is not the Heat I have been watching the past two seasons.

Last season, the Heat had only six games with higher offensive ratings than 128.

And a big reason why the offense is much better is because of these two.

Lowry is Back

Kyle Lowry had a rough start to the season, averaging 6.8 points, 3.8 rebounds, and 7.0 assists on 34.8% true shooting — he couldn’t score at all.

Yet, now it seems like he flipped the switch. In the next four games, he’s averaging 15.8 points, 7.3 rebounds, and 8.0 assists on 78.4% true shooting — including a game where he had a 101.1% true shooting against the Mavericks.

I’ve talked about how over his career, he has been one of the best pull-up jumpers from deep.

And over the last four games, that Lowry is back. In those games, he is 9–16 on pull-up 3s.

Early 6MOTY Favorite

At what point do we decide whether a player’s hot start to the season is, in fact, just a hot start?

What’s more interesting to see than simply the raw stats is how much confidence the team and his teammates have in him.

How many players are technically their fourth-best player, yet are the number one scoring option and have that kind of offensive load and are doing it on solid efficiency?

I think that is the most impressive takeaway from this. You got Jimmy Butler, Bam Adebayo, and Lowry and you’re letting a third-year player after coming off a rough sophomore year be your primary scorer?

Fun fact, Herro leads the team in points and field goal attempts in the fourth.

Other Interesting Tidbits

Everyone always talks about how he doesn’t have to score a lot or have great box score stats to be effective. That’s all true — he does have a significant impact even when he doesn’t put up those stats, but he is also putting up those stats now.

I never view Butler as a scorer, yet he’s averaging 26.3 points, 6.5 rebounds, 5.6 assists, and 2.5 steals on 61.7% true shooting. Not a lot of players can say they are averaging those numbers and are one of the best wing defenders in the game.

This season alone, Butler has been a top-10 player, but is he on that level in general? With everyone healthy, is he that guy?

• Still waiting on Duncan Robinson to get out of his slump — it’s surprising to see he didn’t play at all in the fourth
• Would love to see more plays with Butler and Herro — those empty side PnR or a dribble hand-off with Butler
• The Heat are still top-3 in OReb% and opponent OReb% — last year the Heat had eight games with a 30% or higher OReb%. This year they already have five games

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Originally published at https://www.simplyballin.com.