Miami Heat's offense might hold team back in the postseason

The Miami Heat were in the NBA Finals about eight months ago. Just a few weeks ago, the team acquired a highly talented offensive creator in Terry Rozier, who can create dazzling highlights out of thin air. Star forward Jimmy Butler is shooting a career-high 44% from three-point range, looking more confident than ever launching from beyond the arc.

Still, a Heat playoff run feels unlikely, because the Heat's offense as a whole is borderline abysmal. At times, it's physically hard to watch. If you miss when NBA final scores were 83-74, then you'll love this Heat team because it plays each game like it's attempting to bring back that feeling.

Are the Heat tricking us again, sleepwalking through the regular season just to activate hyperdrive in the playoffs? Or are the Heat actually bad, struggling through the regular season before being deposited early in the postseason? It might be impossible to tell because of this team's history.

Miami currently possesses the No. 23 offense in the NBA – or eighth-worst, if you want to count from the bottom. Recently, that mark has been even worse. Almost as bad as possible, actually. Miami ranks No. 29 in offensive rating over its last 15 games, buoyed only by Memphis, which has so many injuries that it's basically rolling with a G League team on a nightly basis.

The problem with the Heat offense isn't immediately clear. Butler's volume is down but he's still a high-level player, Duncan Robinson is shooting like he always does, Bam Adebayo is an All-Star, Tyler Herro is shooting over 40% from 3PT and Jaime Jaquez Jr. is one of the best rookies in the league. Miami's AST% is in the top ten and though it turns the ball over, it doesn't do so at a horrendous clip (16th in TOV%). Without a glaring deficiency on paper, you may be surprised at how futile this team actually looks on the offensive end. The ball gets stuck often, there's very little off-ball movement and there's just not enough players who can create for themself, causing lots of late-clock panicking - Miami ranking 27th in pace doesn't help with that, either.

But no matter how bad things look on that end for Miami right now, it's important to remember that this team was equally bad – perhaps even worse – on the offensive end last season before the playoffs started. Miami ranked No. 25 in offense in 2022-23 and four of the teams behind it were the four worst teams in the NBA. Just like this year, the 2022-23 Heat had a negative net rating. And just like this year, that team was thought of as an early-round exit at best before the postseason actually began. We know what happened next.

If Miami can somehow turn on its offense in the playoffs, it would be monumentally impressive - but not unprecedented for this team. We had these exact same conversations last season, so dismissing them already doesn't feel smart given what we know. Was last year's Finals run a fluke or some kind of bizarre strategy?