This year has been going well for Miami but they are starting to hit the typical roadblocks that most teams find in the December block of the season. That makes sense. This is the point in the season where we start to see what most teams are going to be. For most, the real season starts on Christmas Day. This is when most teams have found their rotations, are comfortable enough with their schemes, and are ready to get into the meat of the season.
Also, almost conversely, this is when teams need to start being honest and self-critical. They need to figure out what isn’t working and what requires more attention. This is why the regular season matters; teams need to use the reps now to figure out how to better handle their opponents and themselves come playoff time.
For the Miami Heat, there are several issues but one main one as we go forward: health.
This team is struggling with injuries lately. Some think health is mainly luck but it can be a little more than that. The best indicator for future injury is past injury. Players out now may also need to sit out in six months. As a contender, the Heat need to be careful. Almost every championship has some degree of good or bad injury fortune attached to it. This is why depth is important, and a major concern for teams that don’t have malleability once a star is out for major time. You can’t tell exactly when an injury will happen but you can do your best to be prepared.
Right now the focus should be on Butler’s injuries. While Bam Adebayo might be the focal point for much of this team, Jimmy is its motor; he makes it go on multiple levels. So far this year, Butler’s missed seven games (about 1/3 of the season) and didn’t travel with the team on their current road trip. It’s a little worrying, even with these being less than major injuries.
Injuries aren’t a new concept to Butler. He’s only played 82 games in one season and more than 70 games twice. This, of course, is not surprising. Butler plays with a certain level of physicality that can be prone to injury. Pair that with playing long and heavy minutes most of his career and it makes sense to be precautionary if you’re the Heat.
Diving Deeper
Dealing with injury management and depth starts with managing everyone’s minutes and workload, something they are actually historically great at. If you look back at their 2020 playoff run, Miami had nine players average over 15 minutes a game. Compare that to a team like Boston, who only had seven. This, of course, helps game to game, avoiding over exhaustion and having fresh guys on the floor. It also helps long-term, e.g. avoiding injuries and managing those that do occur. It’s all about using the depth and making the best of the roster spots you are given. If a coach legitimately trusts more than six or seven guys, he is already doing better than most.
That depth in itself comes from development and coaching. As we know, Spoelstra does things a little differently than most. He develops his bench and rotations to the point where he can trust more guys and have a bigger rotation. This, hopefully, will put less strain on the stars as the season progresses. Basically, it’s a way to load manage without sitting healthy players. This will need to be the tactic as the season carries on.
Despite this tactic making sense, very few coaches tend to do it. It’s pretty much Spoelstra and his old rival Popovich in San Antonio. It’s literally a coach’s job to teach guys to be better basketball players; why not do so so they can play more basketball.