![[OC] The Heat need shooters. Good thing they already have them.](https://external-preview.redd.it/kyBUPVdihmhW3lK-016WyDGIe_LwYda5UjL2DgG-uZw.png?width=140&height=73&auto=webp&s=0644ece826000315f89f16437c3a1c0487264910)
[OC] The Heat need shooters. Good thing they already have them.
TL;DR
- Miami has five qualifying positive shooters, tied for second in this 10-team comparison.
- Its supporting cast does not quite match the 2021 Bucks after removing Giannis, but Giannis should create better looks than Miami generated last season.
- The actual concern is pull-up and off-the-dribble shooting, not a total absence of shooters.
- A quick note for r/heat: I know I’m probably preaching to the choir here. The “you” throughout this piece is mostly aimed at the broader conversation surrounding this roster. Unless you disagree with me, in which case yes, I mean you specifically.
If you’re not one of the people saying that, you’re probably questioning it.
I figured you would.
Lowest-hanging fruit and such.
But even then, I figured you’d eventually get to the right answer.
Looking at last season, Giannis and Bam shot 33.3% and 31.8%, respectively, on 1.3 and 5.5 attempts per game.
Despite how we feel about Bam extending his range, the numbers are the numbers. We’ll get to some more numbers later, but the overall three-point percentages are low.
It’s true.
But I figured you’d go further than that.
Because, respectfully, that’s just the first stop on the way to figuring out whether the Heat actually do need shooters.
1. Did the Heat gut their roster?
So let’s look at the rest of the roster.
Or how most of the media would put it, what’s left of the roster.
Because, after all, the Heat gave up so much to acquire Giannis, didn’t they?
But what they gave up, the media had already long given up on.
Squares and circles.
But I digress.
Here are the other players that we know for certain will be featured in this offense:
- Andrew Wiggins: A champion. An ironman^(1). And most relevant, a 41.4% three-point shooter on 4.9 attempts per game, giving him a strong 3P rTS of +8.3 (meaning 8.3 percentage points above league-average three-point shooting, not a positional percentile. Defenses don’t care whether you’re a good shooter for your position; they care whether they can leave you open. I’ll be using this a lot.).
- Davion Mitchell: Off-Night, his nickname, doesn’t apply to his own shooting. 3.3 attempts per game on a 39.5% clip. +4.4 3P rTS.
- Pelle Larsson: Last season he took 2.7 attempts per game at a 32.3% clip. Our first negative 3P rTS on this list (-6.0). I was surprised by these numbers, but I have faith he can improve them.
- Dru Smith: Let’s get the bad shooters out all at once. 1.8 3PA/G at 29.5%, -10.7 3P rTS.
- Simone Fontecchio: 4.7 3PA/G at 37.6% (+5.3 3P rTS). Hard to argue with that.
- Tim Hardaway Jr.: The sniper comes home, and gets to wear the legendary retired No. 10 jersey. 6.9 3PA/G at 40.8% (+8.5 3P rTS). Now he wasn’t on the Heat last season, and detractors will point out that many of these were catch-and-shoot 3s (5.3/G at 41.5%) benefiting from the passes and gravity of Nikola Jokić. And to that point, I have less of a response, and more of a question: does Giannis not have gravity? More on that later.
- Bobby Portis Jr.: Also wasn’t on the Heat last season, but has a long history of playing with Giannis. 4.4 3PA/G at 45.6%!!!!! That’s a 3P rTS of +13.6. Out of the entire NBA, only Luke Kennard shot a better percentage from three than Bobby Portis. Kennard hit 47.8%; Portis hit 45.6%. That’s it. And before you accuse me of playing games with tiny samples, I set the bar ridiculously low: at least 20 games played and just 1 three-point attempt per game. Any way you slice it, Portis was one of the best shooters in basketball last season, and arguably the best shooting big man in the game^(2). There are a few players currently on the Heat roster I did not include, primarily because they don’t play all that much, if at all. Most notably missing is Nikola Jović, who may have a chance to redeem himself after a terrible year. We’ll talk about him more later. And a special shout-out to Ryan Conwell, our second-round draft pick that I’ve heard some great things about (especially about his shooting). And even though the Heat have a fairly long track record of finding these shooters out of nowhere, I’ll wait for him to prove it in the NBA before arguing his case.
2. How much shooting is enough shooting?
So after looking at our shooting depth, the next question is, how much shooting depth is actually normal? I figured you’d get here eventually but don’t worry, I’ll keep holding your hand through it. Walk with me.
To answer that question, I looked at the top teams in the East last season^(3) and how they performed, as well as the top two teams in the West. To be absolutely clear, this is not a future projection about any of these teams. Many of these rosters have changed quite a bit but I looked at the rosters as they were in the 2025-26 season because we know how that season ended up. We can compare the shooting depth of teams we already know were good enough to matter. From that, I wouldn’t even go as far as to say we could project how the Heat will do, but very simply, we can look at the Heat roster going into the 2026-27 season and see how it holds up against some of the best teams in 2025-26 as far as shooting goes**.**
The takeaway? Miami is tied with Cleveland for second in shooter depth among these 10 teams, behind only New York. That suggests our shooting is actually closer to strong, than deficient. For this comparison, I set the minimum sample at 900 minutes4. But the raw depth count only answers how many positive shooters each team has. It doesn’t tell us who those shooters are, or whether a team’s three-point volume is actually concentrated among its best ones.
The 3PA-weighted 3P rTS figure at the bottom answers that second question. It weights each 900-minute player’s efficiency relative to league-average three-point shooting by how many threes he actually takes. Higher scores mean more of a roster’s three-point volume belongs to better shooters. It does not measure shot creation, project team 3P% or guarantee future performance.
What this does tell us is that Miami’s depth isn’t simply a collection of shooters barely clearing that ‘positive’ threshold we set. That +3.35 is the highest mark in this comparison, and that’s including both Bam and Giannis. But that does bring us to an important qualifier, some teams get a significant share of their shooting from stars and primary creators, while Miami would be leaning heavily on its supporting cast to supply that shooting around Giannis.
This matters because Cleveland, New York and Oklahoma City get meaningful shooting from their primary creators themselves. That makes supporting-cast shooting depth less existential for those teams. And to be clear, I’m not taking shots at any of these rosters. I’m just trying to answer the question that has been asked. Do the Heat need more shooting?
Giannis isn’t a shooter, and he needs shooters to do his job.
The driving lanes can’t be full.
The paint can’t be clogged.
He needs floor spacing.
Shooters that he can pass out to if the defense collapses on him.
That was the formula when he won in 2021.
So you know what? Why don’t we take a little trip down memory lane and look at that 2021 roster.
3. Remember the 2021 Bucks?
Using those same definitions, here’s what Milwaukee’s 2020–21 championship roster looked like:
At first glance, the two rosters are remarkably close: Milwaukee had slightly more positive-shooter depth, while Miami has slightly better full-roster weighted efficiency.
Now, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention one big thing.
In that 2020-21 season, Giannis was shooting 3.6 attempts per game at 30.3%, weighing the Bucks’ overall shooting down significantly more than Miami’s, because we’re using his 2025–26 numbers for the projected Heat roster.
So what if we removed him from both rosters, to truly just compare the two rosters around Giannis and how they match up? Well that would move Miami’s 3PA-weighted 3P rTS up from +3.35 → +3.66 and Milwaukee’s up from +3.10 → +4.49.
That’s a fairly large shift, and it confirms what our eyes probably tell us. In that championship season Milwaukee had what looks like a better collection of shooters around Giannis. But there’s one thing that’s much harder to account for that could contribute to that difference. That Milwaukee team had Giannis on it. Giannis, by the nature of his game, gets you open looks. He makes your job easier as a shooter. Miami’s roster last season didn’t have Giannis, nor did it have anyone remotely in that realm.
4. The Giannis Effect
Looking at his last 5 seasons, when Giannis was on the court his teammates shot an average of 2.9 percentage points better from the corner than they did when he was off (while oddly enough non-corner 3s were flat/slightly worse at -0.3). That means there’s some reason to believe the Heat players might actually shoot even better than we’re expecting. For this projection, I’m leaving out Tim Hardaway Jr. because his numbers already account for that kind of bump by playing alongside Jokić^(5).
If last season’s shot distribution held, this group would take around 30% of its threes from the corners and would be expected to hit around 39.8% of them. If Giannis’ historical on-court effect carried over without changing the shot distribution (if anything, I’d expect Giannis to create even more corner 3s), that corner percentage would rise to 42.7%, lifting the group’s overall 3P% from 37.4% to 38.1%.
And that’s before we even start to consider the difference between open and wide-open shots from 3.
Totally acknowledging that some of these samples are small (looking at you, Dru), and that even some improvement would still leave certain percentages underwhelming (looking at you again, Dru), the point is last season showed that these guys can (mostly) hit shots when they’re wide open. And this season, the hope is they’ll be getting more of those types of shots.
But what really excites me about these splits is our man, our captain, Mr. 83 himself, Bam Adebayo.
5. Is Bam a problem, or a problem?
I could probably do a whole segment on just Bam and his shooting, so I’ll do my best to keep this brief. What those splits show is that if you leave Bam wide open, if you treat him like a non-threat, he’ll make defenses pay at a decent clip. But I dug even further than that. And this, I’ll say, I didn’t actually figure you’d do. I didn’t figure I’d do this. I’m just a sicko.
Heat fans will remember that from around December through the All-Star break, Bam was going through a pretty obvious slump. After returning, Bam acknowledged that he had been dealing with injuries and trying to play through them, and his play on the court surely made it seem that way. So I went ahead and split his season into three chunks: through Dec. 1, Dec. 2 through the All-Star break (the presumed injury window), and then post-All-Star break.
And there’s a pretty obvious statistical trough in the middle. Bam went from a 58.3% true shooting percentage before the window, to 53.2% during it, then back up to 55.7% after. His eFG% went 53.2% → 48.3% → 49.7%. His 2P% went 51.8% → 48.4% → 53.5%, while his restricted-area shooting went 68.4% → 66.1% → 70.3%. And here’s maybe the most important part: his usage didn’t spike during the slump. It actually fell from 24.6% to 23.4%, before jumping to 26.6% after the break.
So he was less efficient while carrying a smaller offensive load, then became more efficient while taking on his largest role of the three stretches. None of that “proves” he was injured for that whole stretch, obviously, but if you were looking for the statistical fingerprint of a player struggling through something physically and then getting healthier, that’s a pretty damn convincing one.
Now, there is one giant problem with this theory: if Bam got healthier after the break, why did his three-point percentage get even worse? He shot 37.2% before the window, 32.0% during it and then just 29.0% after.
Well, I’m stubborn, so I thought surely there must be a good reason for this, so I kept digging.
Before the presumed injury, Bam was taking 4.1 wide-open threes per game and shooting 39.3% on them. During the window, that fell to 3.5 attempts at 33.3%. After the break? His wide-open shooting basically came all the way back: 4.0 attempts per game at 41.4%.
The 29% overall number gets dragged down somewhere else.
The open, not wide-open, threes.
Bam took 1.1 per game before the window and shot 31.3%. During it, still 1.1 per game at 29.7%. After the break, that volume more than doubled to 2.4 attempts per game... and he shot 11.5%. Where he’d already been a poor shooter, he suddenly became a broke one.
But even with that, if you simply replace his wide-open shooting during that presumed injury window with his outside-window levels, his overall season three-point percentage rises from 31.8% to about 34.2%.
I’m not trying to argue Bam is some ‘Splash Mountain 2.0’, but what if the OG Splash Mountain wasn’t actually as wet as we remember?
6. Can the real Splash Mountain please stand up?
First and foremost, I have to acknowledge that Brook Lopez is 7’1”, making him much more of a mountain than Bam who is only 6’9”, regardless of the splashiness. Second, I have to acknowledge that the actual Splash Mountain in Disney World was remodeled/rebranded/renamed two years ago, which I’m choosing to interpret as precedent that change is acceptable. Third, this is in no way an attempt to slight Brook Lopez. He’s an incredible player who had a remarkable career, who expanded his game over time in ways no one could have predicted. Brook Lopez is the best (and one of the only) NBA players of Cuban descent^(6).
But this is just about his shooting and Bam’s, because he played next to Giannis and won a championship, and hopefully Bam will do the same. So let’s put the shooting side by side:
So even if you just take Bam’s season at face value—no injury adjustment, no Giannis adjustment—he’s only slightly worse than Brook in overall 3P% on significantly higher volume while having a better clip on wide-open shots. Brook was a fourth option (going off of FGA), Bam was a first option (Herro and Powell were nearly tied with him in FGA per game but played in far fewer games).
7. So Miami doesn’t need shooting?
This is where I figured you’d get. Eventually. Maybe you wouldn’t have done ALL the same research, maybe you would have just rewatched some games and used your eyes, but I really figured that eventually you’d be asking this question instead. Maybe I had too much hope for you.
And yes, I’m clearly biased. I clearly have an agenda. But the numbers are the numbers. There’s also an important number I haven’t touched on, that doesn’t let Miami completely off the hook.
Milwaukee took more than twice as many pull-up threes from its positive shooters, despite only a 2.4-attempt difference in their total positive-shooter volume. Shout-out Khris Middleton and Jrue Holiday.
As far as pull-up rates go for Miami, THJ took 1.5 pull-up 3s per game at 38.8%, and no other positive shooter on the current roster topped one attempt per game last season.
If you’re an optimist, you’ll look at pull-up attempts and percentages for Wiggins (0.7/G, 44%), Fontecchio (0.7/G, 42%), Davion Mitchell (0.7/G, 44%), and hope that they can increase that volume a bit without sacrificing too much efficiency.
Nonetheless, the blanket idea that the Heat simply don’t have enough shooting to be taken seriously is flat-out false. If we’re getting specific and talking about pull-up shooting and off-the-dribble three-point threats, then sure, I’ll hear you out. But that’s not the current conversation.
“The Heat need shooters.” Good thing they already have them.
Afterword: Before I go, Jović
I almost forgot, but in case you’ve made it this far and you’re still wondering why I left him out, the three main reasons are: 1) His minutes got cut because of his incredibly poor play this season. 2) He didn’t meet the minutes threshold when evaluating shooters on rosters. 3) His shooting prior to this season tells a completely different story.
Ultimately, either he’ll find his stroke again, find another way to contribute meaningfully, or he won’t play. I’m hoping he figures it out.
I originally published this on Substack, where you can find the fully formatted version and subscribe if you’d like to read more https://substack.com/@firedupfelipe
Notes
1
With the obvious exception of the seasons affected by off-court issues.
2
The first name that comes to mind for most is KAT at 36.8% on 4.1 attempts per game, who obviously draws way more attention to his shot. Aside from him, arguments can be made for Myles Turner, Royce O'Neale, Jokic, Vucevic, MPJ, Naz Reid, many more.
3
Except for Atlanta, not for any particular reason, just kind of forgot about them. Sorry Atlanta.
4
Yes, I know 900 minutes is an arbitrary cutoff. We had to draw the line somewhere. But looking at the rosters, it actually kind of worked out nicely.
5
I also didn't include Portis here because he played with Giannis last season, even though Giannis barely played last season. So maybe I should have included him. But I didn't.
6
There have only been four NBA players of Cuban descent. The first two, Andrés Guibert and Lázaro Borrell, each played fewer than 25 NBA games. The other two are Brook Lopez and his twin brother, Robin Lopez—who I think we can all agree loses this particular argument.