MIAMI — For all the machinations with the roster, as well as the maneuvering at a faster pace with the offense, the reality for the Miami Heat is another season without a true veteran playmaker, without a pure point guard to settle and set the offense.
All too often during what turned into an 0-6 exhibition record, chaos trumped continuity when it came to the attack, the Heat closing the preseason with 110 turnovers to 147 assists.
With all due respect to Davion Mitchell and Dru Smith, there is not a true veteran point guard in the house, with only rookie Kasparas Jakucionis seemingly possessing such a playmaker-first mentality.
“We got to be able to make the right reads, once we get in there, into the teeth of the defense,” forward Norman Powell said, with the Heat in the midst of a four-day break before Wednesday night’s season opener against the Orlando Magic at Kia Center. “So I think our offense is operating at probably like 65%. The good thing is we’re operating that low, so there’s a high ceiling for us at the end of the floor.”
All with the clock ticking toward the games that matter.
“It’s just increasing our IQ and understanding spacing, movement, rotations, cutting, pulling behind, finding open space and making those plays,” Powell said. “We want to be a team that attacks the paint and is aggressive. But with our aggressiveness comes being able to make the right decisions once we get down in the paint.”
The goal from coach Erik Spoelstra has been getting into the paint, attacking the rim, and then spraying out to shooters or finding cutters, if necessary.
Instead, it has been a collision of randomness and recklessness.
“With pace comes responsibility, at the end of the day,” center Bam Adebayo said. “We’ve got to have better IQ. We all got to be high-IQ when we’re on the court. We’ve got to be able to think while we’re pushing the pace and while we’re tired.”
Over the past decade, an argument could be that the only true veteran pure point guard on the roster had been Kyle Lowry.
Otherwise, it has been wings doubling as facilitators, big men such as Adebayo operating as fulcrums.
Based on the roster the Heat have crafted in the wake of Saturday’s maneuvers, the reality is no table setter is walking through that door.
“I think it’s an adjustment,” Powell said of the void of a singular set-up man. “But I think honestly it’s also better for us, because you can’t really scout and figure out who’s bringing the ball up. We’re playing in a lot of random, open offense, reading defenses and seeing what they’re giving us, rather than having a set play.
“I feel like when you have like a true point guard, somebody’s that ball dominant like Chris Paul or James (Harden), it’s more them dictating the actions and getting guys where they need to be, in a lot of pick-and-roll.”
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The irony is while the opposition might not know where the ball is going, the Heat all too often have been unable to get the ball where it is supposed to go.
“With this offense,” Powell continued, “it keeps defenses off-balance, because they don’t know what we’re going to do. And I think it plays to our versatility more, with guys like Bam, Niko (Jovic), me, Wiggs (Andrew Wiggins). Whoever gets the ball, we can push it and get out and start our offense and start the break.”
So even after only the second winless preseason in the franchise’s 38 seasons, insistence from within that there is direction.
“It’s more dynamic than negative,” Adebayo said of life without a pure playmaker. “When you go into situations where everybody feels involved and everybody knows they’re going to touch the ball, on random plays, where there’s not a set play, everybody’s live. We swing it, he can drive or shoot it and we move from there.
“But I feel like it’s more of a positive than a negative.”
