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Miami Heat, Goran Dragic Can Thrive When Small Ball Is in Full Effect
- Updated: May 14, 2016
MIAMI — Adversity and adjustment.
It’s become the unintentional theme of the Miami Heat’s 2015-16 season, and on Friday night it helped deliver their biggest win to date: an elimination-avoiding 103-91 triumph over the visiting Toronto Raptors in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference semifinals.
With their frontcourt decimated, the Heat opted against forcing a traditional big into their opening lineup and instead tipped off with 6’7″ rookie swingman Justise Winslow as their nominal center. Better spaced and faster paced, the Heat’s offense tallied its highest scoring output of the series, which previously featured three overtime contests.
And no one benefited more from Miami’s strategic shift than Goran Dragic. The 30-year-old notched a new playoff career-high with 30 points—his most since joining the Heat at last season’s trade deadline—on 12-of-21 shooting to go along with seven rebounds and four assists.
“I was just aggressive,” Dragic said after the game. “I didn’t want to go home to Europe. Still want to be here.”
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The Heat won’t be making any summer vacation plans between now and Sunday’s Game 7. There are any number of factors behind that fact—the Heat won the battle of the supporting casts by a landslide—but none played a larger role than Miami’s modernized offense.
Truth be told, it’s not the first time the Heat have won big by going small. When they lost All-Star big man Chris Bosh to blood clots at the All-Star break, they shifted Luol Deng from small forward to power forward and effectively accelerated their attack.
Their offense never looked better (109.0 points per 100 possessions, sixth overall), and, frankly, neither did Dragic.
His best moments come when he has room to breathe and the aggressiveness to exploit that space. His numbers jumped across the board after All-Star Weekend (17.3 points and 6.7 assists, up from 12.2 and 5.3), and they saw the same spike in Game 6.
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