Moore: The Heat Need a Better Offensive Identity Than Being Knockoff Version of Rockets

The Heat are trying to make it to shore, but the water is rising awfully fast.

Miami stands at 13-16 after winning four of its past six games. The Heat's leading scorer over that stretch has been Justise Winslow, averaging just 14 points per game with only 15 points in the past three games combined. Their most impactful player this season in terms of on vs. off court net rating has been Bam Adebayo thanks to his defensive impact.

The Heat are basically trying to come up with a new game plan every night because they don't have key elements to rely on.

This isn't to say the Heat don't have talent, they assuredly do. Adebayo shows sustained flashes. Josh Richardson — who they've featured in trade talks trying to swing for the fences the past few years — had a red-hot November before falling into a December deep freeze.

It's that the Heat are just piecing things together, and their record reflects how difficult that can be.

What's really keeping them from sinking to the bottom of the sea right now is coaching. Not just that Erik Spoelstra has built another top 10 defense, but the way that they play.

Miami faces Houston (-3.5) at home on Thursday night in a matchup featuring two prolific 3-point teams. The Rockets set an NBA record with 26 made 3-pointers on Wednesday against the Wizards, but Miami is fourth in 3-point attempts per 100 possessions.

It's a pretty smart mechanism for Miami: If you don't have individual scoring threats who can manage the game, especially with Goran Dragic on the shelf, you need a high-efficiency offensive model to compensate.

The results have still been awful — Miami is 25th in offensive rating. And that's because the Heat are the worst 2-point shooting team in the league, making just 48.6% of their shots inside the line and only 39.6% of their shots on drives according to NBA.com's tracking data.

Miami is a effectively pretty similar team to Houston in its shot selection, if not as zealous in its pursuit of statistical efficiency perfection. The Heat are just much worse on drives, and the shots where they don't commit to that Houston approach are where they suffer.

Miami is the cheap knockoff brand version of the Houston offensive.

Here's Houston's shot distribution (via NBA.com):

Now compare that to Miami's:

The Heat take the same amount of shots at the rim.

Now here's Houston's shot performance:

And compare that to Miami:

What we're seeing is a reflection of Miami's overall team issues: The Heat have a good core philosophical identity, but the actual performance doesn't match the idea.

Miami faces a different problem than most squads do against Houston. Usually teams can't keep pace with the Rockets because of the math problem: You can't trade 2s with Houston's 3s and stay within range. But the Heat can trade 3s for 3s, they just can't generate enough easy offense to keep up.

That's especially tough against the Rockets, who despite their defensive issues are surprisingly giving up the sixth fewest 3-point attempts and eighth-most makes per 100 possessions league-wide.

(What I'm saying here is that I lean Houston -3.5 on Thursday.)

The bigger issue is how incomplete this all proves Miami to be. The Heat need a radical realignment — to get away from good-not-great players and start building around specific talent. They need to either balance their offense or fully commit to a "Moreyball" assault.

In other words: The Heat need to get off the fence, because right now, they're being impaled by it.