The Heat Can’t Culture Their Way Out of This One

The Miami Heat are in trouble.

There’s no clearer way to state it. At 24–23, the Heat—losers of seven in a row—entered the final day of January in seventh place in the East. Miami is 2½ games behind the Indiana Pacers for sixth, which means for the second season in a row, the Heat are almost assuredly going to have to make the playoffs via the play-in. And with nearly all of its conference rivals making major upgrades in the last few months, Miami may be the furthest it’s been from a championship since Jimmy Butler arrived in the city over four years ago.

But Rohan, you may ask, didn’t the Heat do exactly that last season and make the NBA Finals?

Yes, while Miami did become the first team to make the Finals via the play-in last season, historically it’s not exactly been a viable strategy to enter the playoffs and hope to contend without home-court advantage in a single round. While the Heat’s 2023 run was thrilling and magical, banking on an outlier outcome as a predictor of success is a dangerous game. Instead, Miami needs to take a long, hard look at the current set of data from this season, which suggests this team is incredibly far from where it wants to be.

The Heat entered Wednesday with a minus-1.2 net rating, a worse mark than the 19–27 Brooklyn Nets. Miami doesn’t do anything particularly well at the moment. Its plodding offense is 22nd in the league. And even Erik Spoelstra’s hallmark defense is only 13th, a disappointment relevant to this franchise’s standards.

A Jan. 23 trade for Terry Rozier was supposed to provide a spark for the Heat, but they haven’t won a game with him. To make matters worse, the new starting lineup of Rozier, Tyler Herro, Butler, Haywood Highsmith and Bam Adebayo has a minus-10.3 net rating in 38 minutes together and is getting absolutely torched defensively.

Related: NBA Trade Grades: Heat Swap Kyle Lowry for Terry Rozier

It’s obviously fair to wonder what went wrong here. It was only a few months ago an undermanned Heat team snarled its way to the Finals, taking down significantly higher seeds such as the Milwaukee Bucks and Boston Celtics along the way. It was an incredibly fun run. But both an out-of-body performance from Butler and some timely three-point shooting masked the flaws of a team that was also middling during the last regular season.

This roster has obvious issues that need to be addressed. They can’t score. They are too small at nearly every position. And perhaps the most pressing, their three most important players don’t seem to play that well together.

In 323 minutes, Miami has an unimpressive 2.6 net rating when Butler, Herro and Adebayo share the floor together. Those are the Heat’s three best offensive players. But their offensive efficiency as a trio is only 113.3—which would rank in the bottom third of the league.

Herro remains a massive question mark for this team. He’s improved individually quite a bit, and his professionalism should be commended after he was involved in a bevy of trade rumors last summer. Herro came back from the offseason with an intense focus on his game and has played well despite suffering an ankle injury that derailed the early part of his season.

[NBA Trade Deadline Tracker: Stay on top of the latest moves]

But it’s unclear how much he is impacting the team’s success. And while Butler and Adebayo haven’t been blameless this season, they have the benefit of making two deep playoff runs—largely without Herro—in the last two seasons.

Compounding the Herro problem is the acquisition of Rozier. Though Scary Terry is an upgrade over Kyle Lowry offensively, it leaves the Heat with an incredibly small backcourt. And opponents are feasting on its defensive shortcomings. Miami has a 129.9 defensive rating in 75 minutes with Rozier and Herro on the court together.

Combine that issue with the team’s iffy bench, lack of a backup point guard and trouble defending bigger wings, this is nowhere close to a title contender. Miami can’t hope to simply make the playoffs, slap a “Culture” sticker on a water bottle and run through all the competition. Especially not after the Celtics, Bucks, Philadelphia 76ers, New York Knicks, Cleveland Cavaliers and Pacers—all ahead of the Heat in the standings—made shrewd acquisitions to improve since last season.

The trade deadline may be too soon for an overhaul. But that’s where Miami’s mind needs to be if it continues on this path. This is two regular seasons in a row now—a significant sample size much larger than a playoff run—that this group has underperformed. The feel-good vibes of the ’23 Finals run can’t cloud the decision-making process. Though the Heat came very close to winning it all last season, if they don’t seriously reevaluate essentially every piece outside of Butler and Adebayo, Miami may not come that close again any time soon.