Miami Heat Given Mediocre Grade For Offensive Potential

In school, a "C" is a passing grade but it won't get you much further than that.

And, that according to Bleacher Report, is where the Miami Heat are headed with their offense this season, even after adding another scoring option.

Miami Heat: C
Reasons to Thrive:

The trade for Norman Powell gave the Miami Heat starting lineup a 21.8 point-per-game scorer who made 41.8 percent of his threes for the Los Angeles Clippers last season. The cost of just Kyle Anderson and Kevin Love was a no-brainer.

Tyler Herro, Bam Adebayo and Andrew Wiggins all return, and we could see a second-year jump from Kel'el Ware, who showed some floor-spacing ability at 7' tall.

Reasons to Struggle:

The Miami Heat ranked 20th in offensive rating following the Jimmy Butler trade and were 15th out of 16 playoff teams in scoring.

There's a lot of complementary scorers on this roster in Herro, Powell, Adebayo and Wiggins, yet no true alpha to rally around. This should be yet another middle-of-the-pack offense (and team in general) as currently constructed.Greg Swartz, Bleacher Report

Start there: this is entirely fair based on recent results. The Heat, even under elite coach Erik Spoelstra, have typically finished in the bottom half of the NBA's offensive rankings since the Big Three era ended, and even from 2010-2014 they relied on their defense more.... to ignite their offense in transition. Plus, they're without Jimmy Butler, who finished in the top two in Heat scoring in every one of his Heat seasons, even those he wasn't that enthused about.

But there are some signs of hope, some that Bleacher Report may not see. First thing, the Heat were better in transition after Butler was traded, something we discussed on the Five on the Floor podcast. Also, Spoelstra has had a full offseason to experiment with ideas related to players who arrived midseason, specifically Wiggins. Also, Bleacher Report doesn't mention Nikola Jovic, who missed time last season but has starred in EuroBasket warmups and play so far, and has an offensive skill set that could lift the Heat at least half a level.