Not wanting it right down the middle

Minus Whiteside, Heat will adopt perimeter pester plan

MIAMI — “No middle! No middle!” It stood as the Miami Heat’s defensive anthem during Erik Spoelstra’s coaching initiation.

Such was the reality of arriving after Alonzo Mourning: Funnel everything away from the lane, toward the baseline, and make the paint a no-fly zone.

And then came the arrival of Hassan Whiteside in November 2014, and the start of the “ain’t nobody doing it with blocks” era.

Now, with Whiteside dealt in the offseason to the Portland Trail Blazers, Spoelstra finds himself returning to his middle ground or, more to the point, his no-middle ground.

“We have some speed, quickness [and] versatility, where we ideally can be a little more disruptive and take advantage of some of that,” Spoelstra said of the old-is-new-again approach.

As a matter of perspective, Whiteside led the Heat with 136 blocked shots last season. Nextclosest to that total was replacement center Bam Adebayo’s 65 rejections.

So instead of attempting to stop opponents at the rim, it’s back to preventing them from getting to the rim.

“It’s going back to our no-middle approach,” Adebayo said, with the Heat now in a four-day break before returning for a Monday exhibition against the Atlanta Hawks at AmericanAirlines Arena.

“We’re in more of a switching-type approach now, one through four, and switching on the fours. So I feel we’re going back to the no-middle situation and really getting after it instead of funneling it to a shot-blocker.”

The Heat had utilized a combination of approaches during the

“We’re in more of a switching-type approach now, one through four, and switching on the fours.”

— Bam Adebayo

Whiteside era. Generally, Whiteside was allowed to lay back on pick-and-rolls through the first three quarters. Then in the fourth quarter, at the end of close games, he either was asked to step up or was replaced.

The approach this season, based on exhibition rotations, apparently will cast Adebayo defensively at power forward alongside another big body, likely Kelly Olynyk or Meyers Leonard.

“We take advantage to not only make timely switches but also be a little more aggressive on the ball on pick-and-rolls,” Spoelstra said.

Such an approach was not Whiteside’s forte, but Spoelstra said there should be enough familiarity for the returning players.

“We’ve had this before in the last three years,” he said of when it went Whiteside-less. “It’ll be in large part very similar. But by the nature of our speed and quickness, yeah, we’d like to take advantage of that a little more.”

Forward Udonis Haslem, who has been alongside for all of Spoelstra’s coaching tenure, said the basic tenets remain the same.

“I think our mentality is always to not give anything easy,” Haslem said. “We’ve changed a few technicalities and a few things in the scheme. But, ultimately, we want to make everything tough for people, and I think we’re still making it tough for people, just in a different way.”

Mostly through greater work on the perimeter.

“As a guard, it can give you a security blanket where you can become a little bit complacent,” Haslem said of having a designated shot blocker.

But he added that there is a flip side to the way it was with Mourning and then Whiteside.

“And then as a shot blocker, they get a little selfish and say, ‘Send them to me. I want to get those blocks,’ ” Haslem said. “So it’s two sides of it. But as a guard, you have to understand that you have to do your job.”

As part of his open-toanything mantra, Spoelstra said adjustments likely will be part of the preseason process, perhaps even beyond.

“We’ll find out,” he said. “If you have the speed and quickness, we’ll find out if that’s going to be a challenge or an issue or not.” 5 Princess Latina (E.Zayas) 1 Papa’s Little Girl (L.Reyes) 3 Samoa (M.Vasquez)

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