Dwyane Wade’s Sacrifice in 2011 Led to the Heat Perfecting Small-Ball
The early 2010 Miami Heat was one of the pioneers of small-ball. But no one ever talks about it.
The Miami Heat in the early 2010s were one of the most dominant teams in NBA history.
They went to the NBA Finals four times in a row and won back-to-back championships in 2011-12 and 2012-13.
However, the main reason they were able to be in command of the league was because star players sacrificed their personal gains for the better of the team.
Dwyane Wade talked to Shannon Sharpe on Club Shay Shay and said after the Heat lost to the Dallas Mavericks in 2011, he and LeBron James had a conversation at practice about why they weren’t able to win.
They came to the conclusion that LeBron was too hesitant; LeBron was too worried about getting other players their numbers and not getting enough himself.
So, Wade told King James he had to take over and he was willing to sacrifice for LeBron to get his food so that the Heat could win championship titles.
“I listened to and heard LeBron talk and everything that I was getting from LeBron in that year, even though he had a great year and even in that moment, there was still hesitation.
“So, for me, I was like if we’re going to reach the level that we’re going to reach, and how I can help us is to take that hestation out of one of the game’s greatest players. Because I watched him play and I know how he plays when he has no ‘uh, I shot two in a row. D. Wade ain’t get any yet…[I had to tell him], ‘No bro, press on!’
“We said we wanted to win rings. No one said that ‘I wanted an extra endorsement. We wanted to win rings so for us to win rings, you have to be who you are -and besides Kobe- the game’s greatest player.’ And so I can’t stand in the way of that. I can’t let my ego and my pride stand in the way of that.”
As a result, the Heat evolved and revolutionized NBA offences by running small-ball lineups because, according to Andre Iguodala when he was on the Old Man and the Three, LeBron played better with perimeter shooters and rim runners.
“Bron does well with shooters and guys that dive into the basket. He doesn’t do well with mid-range guys. It’s either you’re a stretch or at the basket for a lob. And when he played with Miami and they lost to Dallas, they made subtle tweaks.”
The season following their loss in the Finals, LeBron was the primary ball handler with the green light from his teammates. He was basically unstoppable when he slashed, so the Heat developed plays for him to control the paint.
But sometimes, defences collapsed into his attack, preventing him from getting to the rim. Hence, having shooters surround him allowed him to dish the ball out and having someone run with him allowed him to throw a lob when he didn’t have space to do his thing.
“It’s interesting, you started seeing certain tweaks where Chris Bosh would be at the five… it didn’t look small because LeBron’s got the ball and he’s a big human being with the rock a lot… but they tweaked it against San Antonio and I think that’s when you started seeing like, smaller basketball. Nobody really talks about that. But it could be Chalmers, Bron, D. Wade, Mike Miller, Shane Battier, or Ray Allen and then you had Bosh.”
Final Thoughts
When you think of small-ball basketball at its perfection, you don’t visualize the Miami Heat.
But apparently, they were one of the first ones to have success running it, which led to other teams imitating their system.
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