Miami Heat: Five lessons from NBA season | Five on the Floor

Miami Heat: Five lessons from NBA season | Five on the Floor

welcome to the latest episode of Five on the Floor on the Five Reason Sports Network thanks for joining us on your favorite podcast app on Android Spotify or the Five Reasons YouTube channel on Apple Apple Podcast or the Five Reasons YouTube channel or Spotify we recommend that because it gets up there quicker lately also check out Off the Floor that’s our Discord server speaking of quick something happens we post it there you comment on it this is the place for the most heat anywhere separated into 10 different channels we do that for you and you get access to our stage shows so during the draft you’re going to want to excuse me want to be on the draft channel for sure also going to want to be checking out Playback we’ll be on there playback.tv RSN but just click on the link in the description you bypass the Apple Upcharge and get in on Off the Floor also check out Prize Pix we know no NBA NFL but Prize Pix is still going WNBA MLB and of course getting ready for the fall we’ll have plenty of football coverage as well so check out prizepix.com use the code fibbe and now today’s episode [Music] [Applause] heat nation yeah mercy [Applause] down the [ __ ] five on the floor ride for my dogs where is the thing you can check the score hustle hard couple stars wearing bubble frog [Music] plan got all y’all seen the block stop one hand and pap y’all can hang it up welcome to five on the floor a daily insider show on the Miami Heat and the NBA featuring Ethan Skolnick Greg Sander Alex Toledo Brady Hawk and others from the Five Reason Sports Network also make sure to subscribe to Off the Floor for the most heat anywhere all right welcome back to Five on the Floor here’s today’s floor plan i’m Ethan Skull you can follow me at Ethan Joling at Fiverr in sports i got Brady Hawk you follow me at Brady Hawk 305 plenty of draft coverage coming up as we mentioned but today we’re going to talk about what just happened so the NBA season we’ve not prepped for this one well we do our best work when we don’t prep i shouldn’t really tell my daughter that or anybody else but it’s true just on the spot here five things that we learned from this NBA season and because it’ll give me more time to think about it I’m going to let Brady start i think these should be things that are somewhat instructive to the Heat going forward so let’s frame it in that way brady what’s what’s one of the five things that we learned yeah so as you said we there’s no prep work here we’re just going on the fly like we usually do but I I’ll say I mean a lot of these are honestly podcasts that we’ve done in the past you know couple of weeks but I’ll say one of them uh off the top of my head is teams improving off taking you know milder swings like not having to go for the big fish swing at all times as we’re kind of you know constantly doing these podcasts on different guys that pop up over the last few seasons you know going after Dane going after KD going after Donovan Mitchell etc etc uh and obviously it not working out I we see teams like you know OKC take us you know the the Paul George into the Shay thing or Hallebertton landing in Indiana or just down the line or you know even Anthony Simons ending up in Boston for a year like it it not it not always happening to be the big name the big guy the number one guy even though it feels like Miami needs that on this roster uh maybe that’s not the avenue to doing it maybe it’s the trade before the trade maybe it’s like there’s a bridge here uh that I feel like the thing to learn about this season is that the the East I mean this might be its own you know takeaway itself is but the East is wide open and that’s why what we keep saying and when it with it being wide open there’s there’s also the fact of uh teams that are not that great in the Eastern Conference as well that you don’t you’re kind of stuck in this middle ground as we keep saying that you’re not going to be too low but you have the opportunity of being decently high if you make certain moves so my kind of big you know number one takeaway from this season is that you know it’s not the way things were like even 8 to 10 years ago or maybe even sooner like right now it feels like teams can make decent jumps off smaller moves than the big name you know throwing the farm at a big name so maybe there’s a smaller you know smaller swing to be made yeah I’m with you on that and how it applies to the Heat because that’s kind of how I’ll try to frame some of these as we go forward you know you mentioned you know do do they have the players on the roster right now that can improve enough to kind of be that small swing so to speak or do you need to find them elsewhere and you know so far you know you know they’ve taken a swing at Kevin Durant which would be a much bigger piece and I’ll do another episode on what exactly happened there at the end because I think there’s been some misreporting on it but then the question becomes okay how do you reshape the roster and add players who will who you can count on who you can count on in your eight to nineman rotation and I think that’s the other thing and I’ll get to number two on this because I think it it pivots to it depth matters now a lot and that plays into the take the small swing and add other pieces but it’s going to be very very very difficult for teams to put three really highly paid guys together it is unless they’re willing to pay for it give up the vehicles that come with being over the aprons the league is designed now to create parody it’s designed basically to break up so-called super teams and the only way to really build a super team is the way OKC is doing it which is to get guys on rookie contracts and then when you have guys on rookie contracts then you’ll have decisions to make but if you have other draft picks like for instance conversation even in the past 12 hours that after winning a championship OKC may package two or three picks to move up into the top six of this draft and ask add another premium young player then it starts to feel like they just got an endless cycle here that they’re it’s going to be very hard to knock them out of it but we saw what they did with their depth you had a guy in Aaron Wiggins uh who sometimes he wouldn’t even play very much and at other times could give you 17 and Indiana for that matter okay look at what their bench did tj McConnell changed a lot of games obie Toppin changed a lot of games they got a lot of production out of those guys it’s not just about the starting lineup that you put together and again applying it back to the Heat then Brady you know it was a struggle to find a sevenman core last year and some of that was the Jimmy stuff and then bringing other guys in but they had a couple of players that they were forcing minutes to in Rosier and Hakez who were really negative production players for the majority of the season it was difficult and then Yovic’s injury um and so and you know we saw Larson get time at times but there just wasn’t like a core of like eight nine you know and or even 10 guys and so when Spolster says our depth is a strength just having players is not enough you have to be able to count on the players to give you some consistency it doesn’t have to be greatness every night but give you consistency you knew what T.J mcconnell was going to give the Pacers night to night and with the Heat you just didn’t know what some of these players were going to give you 100% uh I mean look the a few years ago when the Heat were making playoff runs their depth was what they relied on that was kind of always what what pushed them over the edge and what we s saw last year was that uh they just didn’t have a lot of help in in many other areas with their role players and some of it was injury i mean they had you know role player injuries as well and they had to mix things up but still it was not at the level that it’s been over the last few years but I’ll segue this to the third one uh because I mean this is just an obvious one but I have to mention it of things you learn is because it’s always preached defense wins championships defense first the Heat are always going to be defense first they have a defensive minded coach they have defensive uh you know their best players a you know defensive player of the year finalist uh like they that’s always going to be their motto but this league is changing and they have to form with the offense and it we’ve done podcasts on it the offense just I I’m looking at like even offensive rating like the the one through 30 in offensive rating in the regular season this year and it almost looks like you’re looking at a ranking of teams like from best to worst because the offense is kind of the tell right now of how good your team is going to be uh the Heat were 21st and they’re kind of with the teams that they’re with at the bottom of the league it’s just not a great look it’s not the teams that you want to be bundled up with and if you’re going to be bundled up with those teams that’s kind of the the thing we talked about about picking a direction you’d hope that they would be you know in a position where they’re getting higher picks consistently if that’s where your offense is you know sitting but they’re overachievers with the defense and making those late pushes uh but I just say the offense in general you know they’ve they relied so heavily I feel like these earlier Jimmy years on like you mentioned the role players but like their role players were big scorers for them they relied on them as the Gabe Vincent Max Shrew Caleb Martin these guys were like big-time scorers for them that were getting up to double digits points per game uh they don’t have that now so now you’re leaning on your two best players even more so and that’s not that’s not like a good formula for this team that that you need Tyler and Bam putting up that many points per game and it goes back I think also to your third best player and that’s going to be kind of the question mark with Andrew Wiggins heading into the season if he’s going to be on the roster or not uh you’re going to need that third piece to be somebody that can be consistently putting up points uh to just push this team in another direction so my just main takeaway from this season is that the teams that were scoring the teams when when last year I remember everybody was talking about Indiana like well they they can’t compete because they can’t defend like they they they can’t get a stop yeah they put up a bunch of points but that’s not ultimately going to matter well that wasn’t the case this year i mean they put up points they played their style and I think the the piece that feeds into this as well is like we talked about this on another podcast as well indiana played us their style they played fast all the way through uh the Thunder they like all the data shows not to shoot mid-ranges their best players they shot mid-ranges all the way through and they won a championship doing it i think this league is transcending offense wise that like I know a few years ago was like “Okay well everybody’s shooting threes we all have to do it and play this style but if your roster isn’t built to do that you can’t be the Celtics you can’t just play that style because it’s it’s what’s best for the league like no you have to play your style so I do think there’s going to be an overlook this off seasonason as well is like teams like have to look at their rosters their play style and just play their game because this this idea of playing other teams’ games is I think we’re beyond that now no I’m with you on that and that was one of the other things we we came up with the Heat is they had no identity this year we didn’t know what it was uh it was supposed to be you know threes and layups that was what came out of training camp again Jimmy wasn’t thrilled with it and then we kind of got to a point where we don’t really know what they were trying to do on a night and yet and yet and yet a lot of games they had 20 point leads i mean they did enough to get to a certain point but I I believe that what happened a lot of the end of those games is then they had they didn’t know where to go go to they didn’t know what to get to there was no like okay this is our game when things start to get away let’s go to it their game for years had been let Jimmy get to the line and then when they didn’t have that anymore and they didn’t have the disruption in the passing lanes that they’ve had previous and the ability we know that they’re not great in transition even if the numbers say they’re better than they may look on the eye test that there was nowhere for them to go to and that’s something that needs to be fixed this year is what are we trying to do and then build off of that and again Sper put in something that was different in training camp but ultimately I don’t think it was as the philosophy was wrong but the players couldn’t really execute it the Jimmy thing blew everything up and and there we are i will get to two more on the other side of this uh before we do should you know what your identity is when you’re sending money it’s got to be Cash App all of the hosts of the Five Reason Sports Network have Cash App why it’s the easiest way to send money and the safest okay make sure that when you’re sending money you know where it’s going to that happens sometimes in the wrong way and so avoid that making money moves should be easy and that’s why there that’s Cash App it’s fast safe and honestly way more personalized than other apps out there no extra hoops to jump through no extra stress all the tools are right there to help you cash in you can even spice up your payments with custom text backs backgrounds and stamps because why should paying your friend for brunch be so boring if for whatever insane reason you don’t already have Cash App just download it for your phone’s app store sign up enter our code on the floor in your profile send four bucks five bucks excuse me $5 make sure you send five of course five on the floor and you get $10 just for getting started so there you go download Cash App and sign up use our exclusive referral code on the floor in your profile send $5 to a friend within 14 days you get $10 dropped right into your account terms apply that’s money that’s cash app okay here’s number four and then we should have known this already but this is kind of a philosophy that the Heat are playing by a little bit now and it makes some sense let’s take the Western Conference out of it right now because we know that’s a bloodbath but OKC still won 68 games okay so even with players like Joic Luca LeBron um you know right up and down the line Kawhai Harden everybody that’s in the Western Conference uh that provided competition this year Curry obviously and then ultimately Jimmy and Anthony Edwards that team won 68 games okay so they are an anomaly team uh they deserve enormous respect and all that okay and maybe they are immune to one injury sinking their season although SGA would probably hurt a lot but what we saw in the Eastern Conference was everybody just dropping like flies and so one of the lessons of this NBA season and it kind of was the lesson of the previous season because it’s kind of how Indiana made it to the conference finals the year before is just you know be present essentially you know be available when other things go wrong for other teams now I mean look at what’s going on in the East now you’ve got Dame out for next season you’ve got Tatum out for next season embiid will be out for next season we just don’t know when it’s going to happen officially hallebertton out for next season i mean you’re talking about four guys there that probably would be four of the top eight players in the entire conference if they were healthy and they’re not there right now and I I guess that does feed into the philosophy that the Heat have which is we’re always going to push forward now the frustration that Heat fans have we’re always going to push forward okay well we’re not getting the player we need to help us get over the top or make ourselves a serious factor but I I think that’s one of the lessons here is that in the modern NBA okay even with all the better medicine and everything like that players are still getting hurt the load managing has not helped i think in some ways it’s hurt them because they don’t practice as much as they used to um and then we have we’re having all these kind of significant either soft tissue injuries or or real the real severe stuff like we’ve seen at times and so I I think the the idea is you know taking the step back i get it i understand why people talk about that but then it’s hard to really say that’s the way to go when you can get to a finals because you draw the right matchup and somebody goes out for the season i mean I hate to say it but that’s the case yeah most of the injury stuff you obviously can’t control but I do think a little bit feeds into the depth thing you brought up just because like a team like Indiana like they there’s less taxing on their best players because they have so many options throughout the regular season to kind of get them through it’s what happened i keep bringing up these you know teams from Miami a couple years ago but it’s what happened with Miami i mean they allowed Jimmy not to have to go you know full-fledged however you felt about that you know as as we got to the end of it uh but he saved himself for later in the season and the reason I bring that up is with it’s a little bit tougher for Miami because I kind of felt like especially this past season like I thought Tyler was kind of bogging down later into the season because there was so much on him throughout the regular season same thing with Bam uh it h a lot of times where Bam would be really highlevel numbers pre-allar break and then post all-star break he would be so taxed out and Jimmy would have to take the baton from him at that point and go you know play off Jimmy mode but Bam wasn’t getting a lot of the credit later in the season because he was just so had so much pressure on him early in the season to do all the work the reason I say that is just because uh it puts more pressure on you later into the season in the playoffs with all these injury things coming up that like they have to have the depth they have to have the bodies they have to have the players to help out their main guys that’s why I say about the smaller swings that you can take like it’s not like okay we you know you shook out on the main guy okay well you’re just going to you know continue with this roster and see where it goes and see where the next guy comes available it’s tough it’s tougher on your main players so if they could find a way to help out those guys like that that that has to be the goal right now because you mentioned about picking a path and honestly I’ll segue into the fifth one because this while we’re at this I know there was a clip going around Ethan with with Tobin like going on that like rant on on the radio station about and there was a lot of things he was saying that that was true obviously but the one thing that stuck out to me and I want to say this because this was something we’ve talked about a lot and and me and to have talked about this at games is the young player thing and I look around the league and I look about let’s say one through four in the Eastern Conference I think had 50 wins those the guys that are going for it in the Eastern Conference then you have kind of the five to eight range that are making pushes they’re playing their main guys they’re playing their young guys and then you have the teams that are about 9 to 15 who are all just playing their young guys they’re seeing what they have they’re seeing the potential they’re seeing what they can have moving forward and I see Miami that’s a team that doesn’t really know what tier they’re in right now right and either way if you’re in that bridge gap you play your young guys like they’re in a position right now where as much as yes they’re an injury away from they’re an injury away from an injury away from an injury away from getting to the Eastern Conference Finals as you kind of put it but either way from that like you have to play if if you are content with not throwing your guys into trades that you don’t want to use your assets because you like the potential of these certain guys and it’s not worth it to go for that guy that’s fine but you have to lean into these guys it cannot be Kell Wear is not closing because he didn’t get an offensive rebound or defensive re or box out on this possession throw that out the window nicole Yoic is 0 for four from three you you’re not going to play you know play him in this certain role because he doesn’t fit the starting lineup because oh you already have two bigs in the front court no if you’re keeping around you have to find a role for this guy like you have to find somewhere to utilize him because he is your core piece if you’re calling him a core piece on this roster you have to use him like one so we talk about kind of the the front office always being aligned and everything but they have to kind of be aligned I guess across the board with Spo and everybody to kind of figure out who are their core pieces and how they’re going to use them and I I really do believe that’s kind of what the offseason is going to be for them is figuring out where to put a lot of these young pieces that they are going to keep around uh so that’s kind of my fifth piece is just because I look around the league and I’m watching the playoffs and I see a lot of these young guys popping and playing and playing through all you know playing through mistakes and all this stuff they have to kind of prop these guys up and I do think they are preparing for it i think where is kind of what we’ve seen from him last year i think going into his second season he will be utilized with kind of a larger role than I think we saw were here uh but just in general with their young pieces I want to see more of a lean into that just with the way the roster is well I I mean it makes sense for all the reasons you’re talking about we’ve made this direction point before but it also makes sense that if you’re if you’re not willing to include these guys in trades and maybe you’re you’re willing but you’re not in willing to include all of them in trades right uh and at the same time you’re planning on maybe extending one of them like Yoic then yeah you need a maximized player like and here’s the other part the more that they play even if other teams see their flaws the more that they play the more they make command in a trade if you ultimately move them it’s hard for teams to want to trade for a player that the Heat are not playing a lot and that’s uh you know that’s something to look at here and I know it goes counter to the philosophy sometimes i’m making them earn it i understand that philosophy sometimes they’re better for waiting i I would didn’t have a problem with the way that they handled Yoic in the first year in the second year I I think it was tough again because of the injury and and he didn’t really get this the clean start that we wanted him to get then and then his m minutes were stapled to Rosier at the beginning of the year as a starter and I think that that really hurt too and then he was the end that guy who ended up getting sacrificed out of the starting lineup at the beginning but you’re going to have to lean into it right now you can’t you know you can’t say we’re holding on to these guys because I mean I I don’t know that their young core is better than other young cores right now uh you know they I think they’ve drafted better than their draft position in the majority of these cases they haven’t had a lot of misses i I know people are going to mention Maxi and Bane but again everybody 20 20 plus teams passed on those guys they they’ve done better than most in those spots but again if you’re force-feeding minutes to Rosier right um when he’s playing as poorly as he is that’s not helping you and for that matter I want them to bring Alec Burks back as insurance okay but even if they need shooting I’m not sure I want Burks playing ahead of Larson because Burks isn’t gonna be with you in two years and he’s not going to be a trade piece and I think that is the thinking that has to change here is just playing a guy because he you trust him a little bit more right now is not always the way to go this team is not winning a championship next year I hate to say it because we’re going to do a whole bunch of podcasts they have to get growth out of the players that they keep they have to um we can’t come out another season not knowing what these guys are now where I think we found out more than we thought we were going to find out that’s positive but two years into Yovic and now Hakez not really their fault but he took a step back i don’t I don’t really know what they are right now um and Hakez I’m not sure that if we found out it would be great because we started to find out last year at the very least with Yoic they this has to be if they’re keeping him and they’re considering giving him an extension Nico Yoic has to be prioritized this training camp i’m I’m going to bang the drum on that because it’s just you can’t have him come out of a third season i understand he’s young i get it but a lot of guys in the NBA are young and they’re contributing and and they they got to figure out a way to get him to contribute consistently in a role that suits him um this season and lean into some of his skill set in some ways because it’s a skill set that they’re sorely lacking in other areas all right Brady appreciate it those are things that we’ve learned from this NBA season cash App use the code on the floor and then prize picks use the code FIVE check our draft coverage we will both with Alex you’ll be getting all the tough questions with Alex we will be at the arena on Wednesday night have a good one

Now that the OKC Thunder are champions, and every team is back to square one, Ethan Skolnick and Brady Hawk list their lessons from a strange NBA season. And what the Miami Heat can apply.

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