Miami's post-LeBron plan
For years, Erik Spoelstra has maintained thatChris Bosh is the most important player to theMiami Heat's championship quest. Well, we're about to found out how true that statement really is.
As the calculus goes, LeBron James might have been the best player on the Heat roster, but their small-ball system hinged on the 6-foot-11 Bosh's two-way versatility and array of skills. Perhaps James had the best talent, but Bosh made it all happen.
Losing James is a crushing blow to the Heat. But we can't question the Heat's resolve after their best player spurned them Friday to re-join Cleveland. The Heat put their money where their mouth is, handing Bosh the five-year max of $118 million and keeping him in-house until 2018-19, by which time he will be 35. They didn't only give Bosh a truckload of money; they offered him the opportunity to prove he can still be the dominant big man who averaged 20.3 points and 9.3 rebounds in seven seasons in Toronto.
Is Bosh worth the max? And are they smart to build around him? Let's take a sneak peek into the Heat's post-LeBron era.
Bosh a max player?
From the surface, this looks like a hasty roll of the dice by the Heat. It's pretty much unprecedented to see a center who averaged a fairly pedestrian 16.2 points and 6.6 rebounds get offered the max. Remember when people thought $60 million was too much for Marcin Gortat? Well, he's the same age as Bosh, put up similar numbers and got half as much money over the same number of
Of course, Gortat has never shown that he's capable of putting up all-NBA numbers like Bosh. It seems like a lifetime ago that Bosh averaged 24 points and 10.8 rebounds as the focal point of the 2009-10 Raptors squad that finished 40-42. Bosh paid little attention to the defensive end of the floor and the numbers showed his general apathy. With a Bosh and Andrea Bargnani front line fumbling around defensively, the Raptors finished 29th in defensive efficiency.
However, with titles on the line, Bosh has revolutionized his game since his Toronto days. In a phone interview with ESPN.com on Sunday, Bosh, who was overseas, said he believes that he's a better player now than "CB4," the nickname he bore in Toronto.
"CB4 is never coming back," he said. "Right now, I think I'm a much better player. It's funny, even all the way over here in Africa, people are telling me: 'We need CB4 back.' I can't be that. That's impossible. But I feel I'm a much better leader and a much better player. I'm much more prepared for that role -- the all-around role -- that they need me to fill."
The question becomes whether Bosh will have the capacity to be the Heat's defensive anchor while shouldering the scoring load of a 20-point scorer. It's almost unheard of in today's NBA.Kevin Love, Blake Griffin, LaMarcus Aldridge, Al Jefferson, Anthony Davis and Dirk Nowitzki all averaged more than 20 points per game last season, but none was close to getting named to the NBA All-Defensive team. Maybe you can talk Davis in that conversation, but he's not of this Earth, and his Pelicans finished 25th in defensive efficiency.
Advanced metrics don't see Bosh anywhere close to being worth the max. So far, teams have paid free agents a going rate of $1.5 million per WAR (that's wins above replacement, an all-in-one metric derived from ESPN's real plus-minus framework). Bosh put up 8.0 WAR last season, which would indicate that he'd be in line for an annual salary of about $13 million. Instead, he's getting almost twice that, at $23.6 million annually.
But Bosh believes his game is going to expand next season with extra touches, making those numbers moot.
"I'm looking forward to expanding my game all over the court," he said. "I want to be able to do everything. I want to make plays, I want to play in the midrange, short range, free throws, post-ups, face-ups -- I want to do it all. It's exciting for me. I feel like my game can really open up now and I'll be in a position to do that now and help other guys out."
But is Bosh really ready to be the alpha dog without James? When asked about that, he seems up to the task.
"I haven't had to be that guy," Bosh said. "I played with the best player in the world, I didn't have to be the alpha. But now I get to see if I have it in me and not many people are going to believe I have what's necessary. But that's what makes it exciting."
Bosh in the big two
Starring without James isn't exactly uncharted territory for Bosh. The good thing is that we can look up this stuff across four years of evidence. From a scoring perspective, Bosh has responded well in James' absence. In the nine games without James since 2010-11, Bosh averaged 23.2 points per game, according to ESPN Stats & Info research. Hello, Toronto Bosh.
But that's admittedly not a huge sample size. We can go deeper than that by peering into lineup data in the NBA's StatsCube database. What do we find? Looking purely at lineups where Bosh played with Dwyane Wade but no James on the floor, Bosh averaged 17.6 points and 7.4 rebounds per 36 minutes as a member of the big two. That's actually worse than his normal averages of 18.3 points and 7.8 rebounds per 36 minutes. For those wondering, the James-less big two lineups make up a sample size of 1,083 minutes, so this isn't merely a snapshot.
Interestingly enough, Bosh has struggled to assert himself in the big lineups. With another big taking up space in the paint, Bosh has averaged just 16.8 points and 7.0 rebounds per 36 minutes with 46.8 percent shooting. Not great. But when Spoelstra goes "small" with a shooter, Bosh morphs into Toronto Bosh: 20.8 points and 9.1 rebounds per 36 minutes on 51.1 percent shooting. Perhaps Toronto Bosh has been hiding all along.
But we left out one super important piece of the puzzle: the scoreboard.
Even though Bosh has put up better individual numbers in small lineups, the Heat have not fared well. In big two lineups without James, the Heat have outscored opponents by 1.7 points every 100 possessions overall. That's encouraging for the James-less Heat. But this is not: If we isolate the small big two lineups, the Heat got blown out by 10.1 points per 100 possessions. Yikes. But when the Heat go big? Miami outscored by 4.4 points every 100 possessions. See how that flips?
To recap: Bosh thrives in small lineups ... the Heat not so much. This presents something of a dilemma for Spoelstra. The challenge will be for him to design a system this summer that can maximize both Bosh and the Heat at the same time. Bosh might put up 20-and-10 numbers when he has more space to operate, but they might not be able to get away with it unless another traditional big can hold it down defensively. This is where Josh McRoberts can be critical.
Re-tooling on the fly
Standing 6-10 with some bounce, McRoberts has the size of a traditional big, but he can space the floor like a wing player. Last season, his first playing as a stretch 4 for Charlotte, McRoberts shot 36.1 percent from deep on 3.5 attempts per game. The Heat are confident his efficiency will only rise in the Heat's pace-and-space system. But we should exercise some caution here. McRoberts has only one season of reliable 3-point shooting under his belt. From talking with those familiar with the Heat's thinking, team president Pat Riley and Spoelstra were intrigued by McRoberts' versatility that allows him to be a stretch 5 in spot duty. Of course, they envisioned he'd be playing next to James, but McRoberts becomes even more pivotal now as someone who can guard power forwards and centers alike. Keep in mind, Charlotte last season ranked sixth in defensive efficiency with a McRoberts-Jefferson back line, and Bosh is a superior defensive player to Jefferson. McRoberts isn't a defensive stopper, but he was smart and athletic enough to play in the context of an elite Steve Clifford defense in Charlotte.
McRoberts can offer the Heat the best of both worlds -- the 3-point shooting of the wing and the size of a traditional big. Throw in McRoberts' playmaking -- he registered the same assist rate as Darren Collison (21.9 percent) and a higher one than Shaun Livingston (20.1) -- and you can see why the Heat targeted McRoberts in free agency. The risk is that last season was an outlier and McRoberts regresses to the mean.
Without James, the Heat don't plan to tinker with their system too much. The Heat's offense will still be predicated on quick passes, elite shooting and actions off the ball. For the most part, the supporting cast remains the same. Mario Chalmers and Andersen have decided to stay in Miami rather than follow James to Cleveland. Elsewhere, Wade, Haslem and James Jonesfigure to be right behind.
The Deng factor
Luol Deng will be a big part of the Heat's plan next season, but don't count on him staying long term. The Heat signed him to a two-year deal with a player option in the second year, which gives Deng the chance to replenish his stock after a rough season in between Chicago and Cleveland, and then hit the market again next summer.
Deng will have a chance to prove himself in Miami after a season in transition. But there's plenty of reason to like this move for the Heat. Like McRoberts, the Heat valued Deng's versatility. At 6-8 and 220 pounds, Deng has the size of a larger small forward who can slide over to a stretch 4 role. Early in free agency, the Heat saw Deng as a long shot and didn't even schedule a free-agent meeting with his camp until the last minute, when they decided to make a pit stop in Chicago on their return from Vegas to Miami.
The Heat's pitch was simple: Deng could thrive in the Heat's space-oriented system and watch his efficiency return to 2011-12 levels, when he shot 36.7 percent alongside a healthy Derrick Rose. Deng's shooting rates have suffered lately, but the Heat hope the gravity caused by Wade and Bosh will give Deng the breathing room he didn't have in a broken Cleveland system last season.
Word around the league is that Deng tried to hold out for more money in the range of $12 to $13 million annually, but after a game of chicken, Deng snagged the Heat's offer of $20 million over two years. Deng has the potential to be the Heat's 3-and-D option that the they lacked last season, but a healthy dose of skepticism is warranted after he shot 31 percent from deep the past two seasons. The Heat will have some Deng insurance with Danny Granger on the roster. Like Deng, Granger can slide to the stretch 4 and give the Heat another layer of versatility.
Eyes on summer 2015 and 2016
Judging by the Deng deal, the Heat are following the Dallas Mavericks' post-title model of building around their star big man while maintaining year-to-year flexibility with short-term deals. We haven't seen what Wade's contract will look like, but he figures to make back the money that he left on the table when he opted out of two years and $42 million left on his deal.
The Heat have shown some restraint here. With Deng's deal potentially off the books next season, they figure to have cap space to chase a big fish in free agency then and beyond when James, Kevin Durant, Dwight Howard and Al Horford all hit the market in 2016. As I outlined on Saturday, the league is expecting the salary cap to soar in 2016 with a blockbuster TV deal, and Bosh's numbers may not look so heavy on the books by then. If Bosh is capable of returning to the No. 1 force like he was in Toronto, it'll be money well spent. But that's a big if.
"We'll have to be a force on offense and we'll have to play together," Bosh said. "Coach Spo will have to implement a system that everybody can thrive in. We've got some talented guys who can play multiple positions. That's what we'll thrive on and make plays for each other and do some special things."
All things considered, the Heat should be right back in the playoffs next season. With a projected starting lineup of Chalmers, Wade, Deng, McRoberts and Bosh, the Heat can contend for a top-four seed in a still-weak conference and have an outside shot at an Eastern Conference finals bid. They still need to plug some holes on the roster, especially at the 2, where there's no one to back up Wade once he comes back. Taking a flier on a guy likeBrandon Rush, Alan Anderson or Francisco Garciawould make sense in the event that Ray Allenhangs 'em up for good.
Even after losing James, a top-10ranking in both offensive and defensive efficiency isn't out of the question for the Heat, but it'll take a lot of work to get there. Considering the Cavs' total disarray in James' wake in 2010, this has to be viewed as a soft landing for the Heat. Bosh believes the Heat can still contend for a championship if things roll their way, and it'll be largely up to him if they want to get there. After all, a maximum contract means maximum responsibility.
For years, Erik Spoelstra has maintained thatChris Bosh is the most important player to theMiami Heat's championship quest. Well, we're about to found out how true that statement really is.
As the calculus goes, LeBron James might have been the best player on the Heat roster, but their small-ball system hinged on the 6-foot-11 Bosh's two-way versatility and array of skills. Perhaps James had the best talent, but Bosh made it all happen.
Losing James is a crushing blow to the Heat. But we can't question the Heat's resolve after their best player spurned them Friday to re-join Cleveland. The Heat put their money where their mouth is, handing Bosh the five-year max of $118 million and keeping him in-house until 2018-19, by which time he will be 35. They didn't only give Bosh a truckload of money; they offered him the opportunity to prove he can still be the dominant big man who averaged 20.3 points and 9.3 rebounds in seven seasons in Toronto.
Is Bosh worth the max? And are they smart to build around him? Let's take a sneak peek into the Heat's post-LeBron era.
Bosh a max player?
From the surface, this looks like a hasty roll of the dice by the Heat. It's pretty much unprecedented to see a center who averaged a fairly pedestrian 16.2 points and 6.6 rebounds get offered the max. Remember when people thought $60 million was too much for Marcin Gortat? Well, he's the same age as Bosh, put up similar numbers and got half as much money over the same number of
Of course, Gortat has never shown that he's capable of putting up all-NBA numbers like Bosh. It seems like a lifetime ago that Bosh averaged 24 points and 10.8 rebounds as the focal point of the 2009-10 Raptors squad that finished 40-42. Bosh paid little attention to the defensive end of the floor and the numbers showed his general apathy. With a Bosh and Andrea Bargnani front line fumbling around defensively, the Raptors finished 29th in defensive efficiency.
However, with titles on the line, Bosh has revolutionized his game since his Toronto days. In a phone interview with ESPN.com on Sunday, Bosh, who was overseas, said he believes that he's a better player now than "CB4," the nickname he bore in Toronto.
"CB4 is never coming back," he said. "Right now, I think I'm a much better player. It's funny, even all the way over here in Africa, people are telling me: 'We need CB4 back.' I can't be that. That's impossible. But I feel I'm a much better leader and a much better player. I'm much more prepared for that role -- the all-around role -- that they need me to fill."
The question becomes whether Bosh will have the capacity to be the Heat's defensive anchor while shouldering the scoring load of a 20-point scorer. It's almost unheard of in today's NBA.Kevin Love, Blake Griffin, LaMarcus Aldridge, Al Jefferson, Anthony Davis and Dirk Nowitzki all averaged more than 20 points per game last season, but none was close to getting named to the NBA All-Defensive team. Maybe you can talk Davis in that conversation, but he's not of this Earth, and his Pelicans finished 25th in defensive efficiency.
Advanced metrics don't see Bosh anywhere close to being worth the max. So far, teams have paid free agents a going rate of $1.5 million per WAR (that's wins above replacement, an all-in-one metric derived from ESPN's real plus-minus framework). Bosh put up 8.0 WAR last season, which would indicate that he'd be in line for an annual salary of about $13 million. Instead, he's getting almost twice that, at $23.6 million annually.
But Bosh believes his game is going to expand next season with extra touches, making those numbers moot.
"I'm looking forward to expanding my game all over the court," he said. "I want to be able to do everything. I want to make plays, I want to play in the midrange, short range, free throws, post-ups, face-ups -- I want to do it all. It's exciting for me. I feel like my game can really open up now and I'll be in a position to do that now and help other guys out."
But is Bosh really ready to be the alpha dog without James? When asked about that, he seems up to the task.
"I haven't had to be that guy," Bosh said. "I played with the best player in the world, I didn't have to be the alpha. But now I get to see if I have it in me and not many people are going to believe I have what's necessary. But that's what makes it exciting."
Bosh in the big two
Starring without James isn't exactly uncharted territory for Bosh. The good thing is that we can look up this stuff across four years of evidence. From a scoring perspective, Bosh has responded well in James' absence. In the nine games without James since 2010-11, Bosh averaged 23.2 points per game, according to ESPN Stats & Info research. Hello, Toronto Bosh.
But that's admittedly not a huge sample size. We can go deeper than that by peering into lineup data in the NBA's StatsCube database. What do we find? Looking purely at lineups where Bosh played with Dwyane Wade but no James on the floor, Bosh averaged 17.6 points and 7.4 rebounds per 36 minutes as a member of the big two. That's actually worse than his normal averages of 18.3 points and 7.8 rebounds per 36 minutes. For those wondering, the James-less big two lineups make up a sample size of 1,083 minutes, so this isn't merely a snapshot.
Interestingly enough, Bosh has struggled to assert himself in the big lineups. With another big taking up space in the paint, Bosh has averaged just 16.8 points and 7.0 rebounds per 36 minutes with 46.8 percent shooting. Not great. But when Spoelstra goes "small" with a shooter, Bosh morphs into Toronto Bosh: 20.8 points and 9.1 rebounds per 36 minutes on 51.1 percent shooting. Perhaps Toronto Bosh has been hiding all along.
But we left out one super important piece of the puzzle: the scoreboard.
Even though Bosh has put up better individual numbers in small lineups, the Heat have not fared well. In big two lineups without James, the Heat have outscored opponents by 1.7 points every 100 possessions overall. That's encouraging for the James-less Heat. But this is not: If we isolate the small big two lineups, the Heat got blown out by 10.1 points per 100 possessions. Yikes. But when the Heat go big? Miami outscored by 4.4 points every 100 possessions. See how that flips?
To recap: Bosh thrives in small lineups ... the Heat not so much. This presents something of a dilemma for Spoelstra. The challenge will be for him to design a system this summer that can maximize both Bosh and the Heat at the same time. Bosh might put up 20-and-10 numbers when he has more space to operate, but they might not be able to get away with it unless another traditional big can hold it down defensively. This is where Josh McRoberts can be critical.
Re-tooling on the fly
Standing 6-10 with some bounce, McRoberts has the size of a traditional big, but he can space the floor like a wing player. Last season, his first playing as a stretch 4 for Charlotte, McRoberts shot 36.1 percent from deep on 3.5 attempts per game. The Heat are confident his efficiency will only rise in the Heat's pace-and-space system. But we should exercise some caution here. McRoberts has only one season of reliable 3-point shooting under his belt. From talking with those familiar with the Heat's thinking, team president Pat Riley and Spoelstra were intrigued by McRoberts' versatility that allows him to be a stretch 5 in spot duty. Of course, they envisioned he'd be playing next to James, but McRoberts becomes even more pivotal now as someone who can guard power forwards and centers alike. Keep in mind, Charlotte last season ranked sixth in defensive efficiency with a McRoberts-Jefferson back line, and Bosh is a superior defensive player to Jefferson. McRoberts isn't a defensive stopper, but he was smart and athletic enough to play in the context of an elite Steve Clifford defense in Charlotte.
McRoberts can offer the Heat the best of both worlds -- the 3-point shooting of the wing and the size of a traditional big. Throw in McRoberts' playmaking -- he registered the same assist rate as Darren Collison (21.9 percent) and a higher one than Shaun Livingston (20.1) -- and you can see why the Heat targeted McRoberts in free agency. The risk is that last season was an outlier and McRoberts regresses to the mean.
Without James, the Heat don't plan to tinker with their system too much. The Heat's offense will still be predicated on quick passes, elite shooting and actions off the ball. For the most part, the supporting cast remains the same. Mario Chalmers and Andersen have decided to stay in Miami rather than follow James to Cleveland. Elsewhere, Wade, Haslem and James Jonesfigure to be right behind.
The Deng factor
Luol Deng will be a big part of the Heat's plan next season, but don't count on him staying long term. The Heat signed him to a two-year deal with a player option in the second year, which gives Deng the chance to replenish his stock after a rough season in between Chicago and Cleveland, and then hit the market again next summer.
Deng will have a chance to prove himself in Miami after a season in transition. But there's plenty of reason to like this move for the Heat. Like McRoberts, the Heat valued Deng's versatility. At 6-8 and 220 pounds, Deng has the size of a larger small forward who can slide over to a stretch 4 role. Early in free agency, the Heat saw Deng as a long shot and didn't even schedule a free-agent meeting with his camp until the last minute, when they decided to make a pit stop in Chicago on their return from Vegas to Miami.
The Heat's pitch was simple: Deng could thrive in the Heat's space-oriented system and watch his efficiency return to 2011-12 levels, when he shot 36.7 percent alongside a healthy Derrick Rose. Deng's shooting rates have suffered lately, but the Heat hope the gravity caused by Wade and Bosh will give Deng the breathing room he didn't have in a broken Cleveland system last season.
Word around the league is that Deng tried to hold out for more money in the range of $12 to $13 million annually, but after a game of chicken, Deng snagged the Heat's offer of $20 million over two years. Deng has the potential to be the Heat's 3-and-D option that the they lacked last season, but a healthy dose of skepticism is warranted after he shot 31 percent from deep the past two seasons. The Heat will have some Deng insurance with Danny Granger on the roster. Like Deng, Granger can slide to the stretch 4 and give the Heat another layer of versatility.
Eyes on summer 2015 and 2016
Judging by the Deng deal, the Heat are following the Dallas Mavericks' post-title model of building around their star big man while maintaining year-to-year flexibility with short-term deals. We haven't seen what Wade's contract will look like, but he figures to make back the money that he left on the table when he opted out of two years and $42 million left on his deal.
The Heat have shown some restraint here. With Deng's deal potentially off the books next season, they figure to have cap space to chase a big fish in free agency then and beyond when James, Kevin Durant, Dwight Howard and Al Horford all hit the market in 2016. As I outlined on Saturday, the league is expecting the salary cap to soar in 2016 with a blockbuster TV deal, and Bosh's numbers may not look so heavy on the books by then. If Bosh is capable of returning to the No. 1 force like he was in Toronto, it'll be money well spent. But that's a big if.
"We'll have to be a force on offense and we'll have to play together," Bosh said. "Coach Spo will have to implement a system that everybody can thrive in. We've got some talented guys who can play multiple positions. That's what we'll thrive on and make plays for each other and do some special things."
All things considered, the Heat should be right back in the playoffs next season. With a projected starting lineup of Chalmers, Wade, Deng, McRoberts and Bosh, the Heat can contend for a top-four seed in a still-weak conference and have an outside shot at an Eastern Conference finals bid. They still need to plug some holes on the roster, especially at the 2, where there's no one to back up Wade once he comes back. Taking a flier on a guy likeBrandon Rush, Alan Anderson or Francisco Garciawould make sense in the event that Ray Allenhangs 'em up for good.
Even after losing James, a top-10ranking in both offensive and defensive efficiency isn't out of the question for the Heat, but it'll take a lot of work to get there. Considering the Cavs' total disarray in James' wake in 2010, this has to be viewed as a soft landing for the Heat. Bosh believes the Heat can still contend for a championship if things roll their way, and it'll be largely up to him if they want to get there. After all, a maximum contract means maximum responsibility.
. Thats not going to stop because he left. 
at you telling me Im not a Heat fan because I like Lebron
. Let them create their imaginary fan hierarchy.
seems like these niccas are dead serious with this sh!t 
