Heat is starting to figure it out on offense

When the Heat coaching staff decided to make tweaks to the offense last summer, the hope was that those changes would produce a style built for playoff success.

After all, the Heat’s offense fizzled in last season’s playoffs despite closing the regular season with the NBA’s 12th-best offensive rating at 113 points scored per 100 possessions. Miami scored just 105.1 points per 100 possessions against the Boston Celtics in last season’s Eastern Conference finals that it lost in seven games.

So Erik Spoelstra and his staff went to work last offseason to revamp the offense around the strengths of the Heat’s best players, especially in the halfcourt when the game slows down. Those alterations have led to more pick-and-rolls involving the duo of Bam Adebayo and Tyler Herro, more isolations for Jimmy Butler and Adebayo, more post-ups for Butler and less handoffs for the team’s top three-point shooters.

The changes to the Heat’s offense have worked in the sense that Adebayo, Butler and Herro are each having arguably the best season of their careers on the offensive end. The team-wide production has been extremely underwhelming, though, as the Heat entered Friday with the NBA’s fifthworst offensive rating (scoring 111.6 points per 100 possessions) this season.

But with just about three weeks left in the regular season, the Heat’s offense is finally generating positive results over a sustained stretch for the first time this season. Although that sustained stretch only spans the past eight games, the unit has been able to post the NBA’s third-best offensive rating (scoring 119.9 points per 100 possessions) during that span.

“Boy, it’s taken a long time. It really has,” Spoelstra said of the offense’s recent surge, with the Heat set to begin a quick but

important two-game trip on Saturday against the Chicago Bulls at United Center (8 p.m., Bally Sports Sun). “Sometimes things that you hope or think might happen don’t and you just have to figure it out and you have to grind. It ultimately is about winning.”

While the Heat’s defense has taken a step back lately after entering the All-Star break as the NBA’s fifthmost efficient unit, there have still been more wins than losses because of the offense. Miami is 5-3 during that eight-game stretch despite posting the league’s 24th-ranked defensive rating in that time.

“The first 45 games of the year, we knew how we could win games and that’s defending at an incredibly high level and keeping games close and have our closers finish it off,” Spoelstra said. “But we’ve been diligently working on our offensive efficiency, getting the ball where it needs to go, making sure we have the right shot profile and get to our strength zones way more often, particularly in those moments of truth and skirmishes that we can continue to do that. We’ve finally shown some progress now that we’ve gotten a lot of healthier bodies out there for the last eight or nine games.”

More healthy bodies have definitely helped, as the Heat is has healthy as it has been all season. Miami entered Friday with the most missed games in the NBA (268 games) this season because of injury, according to Spotrac, but center Cody Zeller is currently the Heat’s only injured player and he’s expected back in the coming days after undergoing a procedure on his broken nose on Friday.

But the two biggest reasons for the Heat’s recent offensive uptick are shotmaking and the excellence of Jimmy Butler.

Miami holds the NBA’s fourth-worst team threepoint percentage this season at 33.9 percent. Over the last eight games, the Heat has the league’s second-best team three-point percentage at 40.9 percent.

Miami has also been much more efficient on what’s considered the least efficient shot in basketball, the long two-pointer. The Heat has shot 38.4 percent on 9.9 non-paint two-point attempts per game this season compared to 48.4 percent on 7.8 such shots per game during the last eight games.

The Heat’s shot chart has not changed drastically and the shot quality metrics have improved just slightly during these eight games, but more shots are simply going in. It’s the positive regression to the mean the Heat has been hoping for after closing last regular season as the

NBA’s most efficient threepoint shooting team and bringing back nearly that same exact roster this season.

“We know what we’re capable of and that’s what has made this year so frustrating,” Herro said. “We know what we’re capable of and we have the talent in this locker room to compete with anybody. It’s just about the efforts and things like that.”

Butler’s recent assertiveness is the catalyst behind it all, as he has played some of the best basketball of his career since the All-Star break. He has averaged 27.5 points, 7.5 rebounds, 5.1 assists and 1.6 steals per game while shooting 55.6 percent from the field, 6 of 14 (42.9 percent) from three-point range and 88.4 percent on 11.9 free-throw attempts per game over the last eight games.

Prior to those eight games, Butler was averaging 21.8 points per game on 52 percent shooting from the field, 25-of-78 (32.1 percent) on threes and 84.5 percent on 8.1 free-throw attempts per game in his first 48 appearances of the season.

The extra attempts at the foul line that Butler has drawn recently have led the Heat to the secondhighest free-throw rate in the NBA during this eight game stretch at 31.5 freethrow makes per 100 fieldgoal attempts, which is up significantly from its season-long free-throw rate of 22.8 free-throw makes per 100 field-goal attempts. Those extra points have helped lift Miami’s offensive numbers in the past two weeks.

“He’s been doing this since All-Star break, and we need every bit of it,” Spoelstra said of Butler’s recent play. “He’s not going to take his foot off the pedal and none of us want him to at all defer. He’s got to go, go, go.”

The Heat has shot 40 percent or better from behind the three-point line in six of the past 10 games after doing it just seven times in the first 61 games of the season.

The Heat’s two best single-game offensive ratings of the season (135.3 points scored per 100 possessions in Wednesday’s win over the Memphis Grizzlies and 132.7 points scored per 100 possessions in a March 6 win over the Atlanta Hawks) have come in the past six games.

“Just way more intentional, way more to our strength zones, being consistent to that and to our shot profile,” Spoelstra said when asked what has been different about the Heat’s offense recently.

The Heat’s offensive resurgence has led to optimism that the unit has finally discovered a formula for success just in time for the postseason with only 11 regular-season games left to play. Whether this recent stretch is an outlier or real improvement will be determined in the coming weeks.

“We’re scoring a lot more points,” Adebayo said. “There were some games, man, it felt like 90s basketball. It would be like 86-89 at the end of the fourth. But now we’re putting points on the board, so you just want to keep that going. I feel like everybody is in a great rhythm right now and we’re starting to be fluid and I feel like we’re starting to really connect.”

INJURY REPORT

Along with missing Zeller,

the Heat will remain without Jamal Cain, Nikola Jovic and Orlando Robinson on Saturday against the Bulls. Cain, Jovic and Robinson are all currently playing with the Heat’s G League affiliate, the Sioux Falls Skyforce.

Heat point guard Kyle Lowry, who traveled with the team to Chicago, is listed as questionable for Saturday’s game with left knee soreness. He has been listed as questionable for each of the past three games since returning from left knee pain and has managed to play in each one.