HEAT Produced: Ray Allen Pushed Norris Cole Out the Backcourt Rotation In 1st Preseason Game

Ray Allen, Norris Cole and Terrel Harris' performance in the Miami HEAT's 79-92 loss to the Atlanta Hawks in the first preseason game of the year let fans know what to expect from the backcourt rotation.

NFL: Week 3 Picks for HEAT Players' Favorite Teams

Yupcant waitRT @_poeticmindset: @mchalmers15 Hey, you ready for the Panthers game tonight?
— Mario Chalmers (@mchalmers15) September 20, 2012

Mario Chalmers is ready to watch his Carolina Panthers take on the Giants in NFL Thursday Night Football, but man & machine disagree about whether he'll be happy with the outcome.

HEAT Summer League: Terrel Harris Made the Strongest Case to Make the Roster

Jarvis Varnado led the HEAT against the Blazers, but Terrel Harris led the five players that stood out on the HEAT Summer League team.

HEAT Produced: 2 Surprise Players Outplayed Harrison Barnes in Ugly Summer League Game

The HEAT's 62-65 loss against the Warriors in the Vegas Summer League was hard to watch, so let's look at the numbers instead.

HEAT Check: Summer League Preview by the Numbers

What should fans expect from the HEAT summer league team? Let's take a look by the numbers and the matchups.

HEAT Produced: Low Expectations For Rashard Lewis

Don't expect Rashard Lewis to add any wins to the Miami HEAT roster unless Trainer Jay Sabol has a Hot Tub Time Machine at American Airlines Arena.

Miami HEAT, Ray Allen and Fab Melo: The Definition of Insanity

Given the HEAT's experience with free agents the last two seasons, who's crazier for being excited about Ray Allen and Fab Melo: HEAT fans or management?

HEATcast: On the Road at the Trade Deadline

Bloggers from the Miami Heat Index and HeatFreak.com discussed what trades the Miami HEAT should and should not make before next week's trade deadline and how the team will fare on the road next week against the top teams in the Eastern Conference.

Chris Bosh: What's the Impact of His Loss?

LeBron James played his most minutes at power forward this season against the Toronto Raptors on February 5th and he finished the game with 30 points and nine rebounds. The HEAT may need even better production than that to maintain their winning streak while Chris Bosh misses the next two games to deal with the death of his grandmother.

HEAT Produced: West Coast Killa

The Western Conference killed the Miami HEAT on the road, but what will happen when the San Antonio Spurs and Los Angeles Lakers come to Miami this week?

Heat Produced: Miami Is Udonis Haslem's Team Halfway Through The Pre-Season

After Tuesday night's game against CSKA Moscow, the Heat were halfway through their pre-season schedule.  Let's see what the Win Score and Estimated Wins Produced stats have to say about the players' performance so far.  The spreadsheets below summarize each player's overall productivity as well as their productivity in each pre-season game.





Win Score and Estimated Wins Produced are statistical models created by Professor David Berri from the Wages of Wins Journal to measure how much a player's boxscore statistics contributes to their team's wins.  An average player produces an estimated 0.100 wins per 48 minutes (EWP48). More information on these stats can be found at the following links:


Simple Models of Player Performance
Wins Produced vs. Win Score
What Wins Produced Says and What It Does Not Say
Introducing PAWSmin — and a Defense of Box Score Statistics




Most Heat Produced: Udonis Haslem
When Dwyane Wade limped off the court with a hamstring injury just three minutes into the pre-season, most reporters wrote that the Heat were now LeBron James' team.  The truth of the matter, however, is that Udonis Haslem has been the most productive player for Miami in the pre-season with an estimated 0.8 wins produced in just 79.8 minutes over three games.  He was the most productive player against Detroit and Oklahoma City and has been almost three times more productive this pre-season (with a 0.476 EWP48) than he was all of last season (with a 0.160 WP48).




Alternative Energy Sources: LeBron James and Chris Bosh
As expected, two of the Heat's top three producers are LeBron James and Chris Bosh.  Each has had one bad game in the pre-season but have both played like superstars otherwise.  LeBron's bad game was his first one for the Heat when he got up as many shots as he could but sunk his productivity into the negative range.  I don't know if LeBron has been trying to make up for the loss of Wade in the pre-season or just trying to put on a show for the fans but after four games he's averaging about three more shot attempts per 48 minutes than he did in Cleveland last season and has not been as efficient.  So far his shooting efficiency has declined from 54.5% last season to 48% this pre-season.  Outside of the shooting efficiency, his production is pretty close to what he provided last year and if you throw out the first pre-season game, his EWP48 jumps to 0.395 (which is much closer to the expected 0.400+ production from the NBA's reigning MVP).  Hopefully, the cramps in his legs from last night's game won't prevent LeBron from getting all the way back into MVP form before the season-opener in Boston.


Unlike LeBron, Bosh has been much better than expected if you throw out his one bad game on the second night of a back-to-back against the Spurs (Haslem being the most productive power forward on the team was also unexpected but  I think they should play Bosh at center anyway).  If you throw out the game in San Antonio, Bosh's EWP48 jumps 100 points to 0.358.  Bosh's shot attempts have slightly increased from last season but he's only gotten to the free throw line half as much in the pre-season as he did last year.  His increased shooting efficiency has helped him keep his scoring average within two points of last year's number per 48 minutes.  His rebounding numbers are way down but he's increased his steals and decreased his turnovers to keep the net possessions he provides close to last season's number.  Lastly, there haven't been too many shots sent flying out of the "Bosh Pit" but with Joel Anthony blocking six shots per 48 minutes, I don't think the Heat need another shot-blocker right now. Of course, when Anthony's not in the game, Bosh will have to be more of a presence in the paint.




Burnouts: Kenny Hasbrouck and Shavlik Randolph
Five Heat players have provided sub-zero productivity in the pre-season - Kenny Hasbrouck, Shavlik Randolph, Anthony Mason Jr, Mickell Gladness and Jamaal Magloire.  Mason and Gladness were already cut and Magloire has only played 7.6 minutes.  Since Magloire's a veteran, I think it's safe to say he'll return back to the positive production he provided last year.  That leaves Hasbrouck and Randolph fighting Da'Sean Butler for the 15th spot on the roster.  If they can't find a way to be more productive than a guy who isn't even playing, then they deserve to be cut well before the October 25th deadline to ensure they don't even take up a D-League roster spot.  They've both been above average at getting their shot off but not much else. Hasbrouck has been below average in every other category except assists.  Randolph has been below average in every other category except for rebounds and blocked shots.  At least they'll get to take home some nice parting gifts - a combined $1.75 million.




Ambient Heat: Is Patrick Beverley Productive Or Just Healthy And Hungry?
Beverley has definitely taken advantage of the fact that he's the only fully healthy PG on the Heat roster.  Chalmers is playing, but still recovering from the high ankle sprain he sustained this summer; Arroyo suffered a bad thigh bruise in the FIBA World Championships; and Eddie House is still recovering from off-season shoulder surgery.  Those injuries have allowed Beverley to log a team-high 81.9 minutes at point guard and produce an amazing 0.198 EWP48 and 0.3 estimated wins (good for 5th on the team).  I say it's amazing because he was the least productive guard for Miami in the Vegas Summer League this year with a -0.067 EWP48.  Beverley's poor production in the summer league makes me skeptical of his pre-season numbers.  While he's been productive, I think his numbers could be representative of a "looter in a riot" as Kenny Smith would say.  Despite being very productive, his plus-minus for the pre-season is -25.  That leads me to believe he could just be racking up numbers in garbage time like the double-double he posted in a 17-point loss to the Spurs.  I like the fact that he's healthy, appears to be hungry and is much more productive against what is likely the same level of competition he faced in summer league, but I'm not sure if he's more deserving of a spot on the roster than Dexter Pittman.  Pittman, however, isn't exactly making a strong case for playing in South Beach instead of Sioux Falls.


Like Beverley, Pittman was the worst player at his position for the Heat in the Vegas Summer League.  Unlike Beverley, Pittman has only  produced 0.007 EWP48 after three pre-season games.  Beverley has improved his free throw shooting, scoring, rebounding and passing while reducing his turnovers and personal fouls.  His shooting efficiency has gotten worse (I didn't really think it was possible for a guard to shoot worse than 34.8%) but his improvement has been somewhat remarkable.  Pittman improved his shooting efficiency (which subsequently improved his scoring) but he's continued to struggle with the other facets of his game. His rebounds and blocked shots have declined while his turnovers and fouls have increased. With three centers on the roster in addition to Bosh, Haslem and Howard, it might be best to send Pittman to the D-League this season and let him continue to shed pounds while developing his game.




15-Man Roster Prediction Halfway Through the Pre-Season
Based on the Heat Produced halfway through the pre-season, the opening night roster should be as follows:

POSITION - PLAYER (PRE-SEASON EWP/EWP48)
PG - C. Arroyo, P. Beverley, M. Chalmers
SG - D. Wade, M. Miller, E. House
SF - L. James, J. Jones
PF - U. Haslem, J. Howard
C - C. Bosh, Z. Ilgauskas, J. Anthony, J. Magloire, D. Pittman

Of course, I realize that's probably not what it's going to look like. It will probably look more like this:

POSITION - PLAYER (PRE-SEASON EWP/EWP48)
PG - C. Arroyo, M. Chalmers, P. Beverley
SG - D. Wade, M. Miller, E. House
SF - L. James, J. Jones
PF - C. Bosh, U. Haslem, J. Howard
C - J. Anthony, Z. Ilgauskas, J. Magloire, D. Pittman

Either way, with this much talent Erik Spoelstra really can't go wrong.

Statistics for Heat players from the Vegas Summer League mentioned in this article can be found in this spreadsheet or in this blog post.


Like this post? It's even better with video! Check it out at Bleacher Report.

Running With The Bulls Without Erick Dampier

I received the following comment on my last piece about the Heat winning 72 games, “Apparently the Heat don't care about 72 games, or they would have picked up Dampier.”  I’ve been looking through the numbers to see if there’s any statistical justification for declining to invite Erick Dampier to Heat training camp and I haven’t been able to find much.  Of course, the statistical models I used to guide my search were Win Score, Estimated Wins Produced, Estimated Wins Produced per 48 minutes (EWP48), Wins Produced and Wins Produced per 48 minutes (WP48).  An average player produces 0.100 wins per 48 minutes (WP48).  For more information on these stats can be found at the following links:

Simple Models of Player Performance
Wins Produced vs. Win Score
What Wins Produced Says and What It Does Not Say
Introducing PAWSmin — and a Defense of Box Score Statistics

After searching for hours, I've come to the conclusion that there’s no way around it – Dampier’s better than any traditional center the Heat invited to camp.  Here’s a list of what the Heat could have expected each center to produce on a per-minute basis this season before training camp began.

Productivity Forecast for Dampier & Heat Centers Invited to Training Camp
Erick Dampier (Age 35):               0.130 WP48
Joel Anthony (Age 28):                -0.034 WP48
Zydrunas Ilgauskas (Age 35):       -0.060 WP48
Jamaal Magloire (Age 32):             0.051 WP48
Dexter Pittman (Age 22):              -0.499 EWP48 (2010 summer league production)
Mickell Gladness (Age 24):           -0.348 EWP48 (2010 summer league production)

The forecast is based on the impact of age on the performance of an average NBA player reported in Stumbling on Wins by David Berri and Martin Schmidt.

Clearly, Dampier could improve the Heat’s production at the center position if he signed with the team and would increase the likelihood of winning more than 72 games.  Will the team regret telling him to kick rocks?  On another Miami Heat blog, Asylum For Ira’s Followers, a writer named Cyrus listed 10 reasons why the Heat won’t regret passing on Dampier.  Let’s see what Wins Produced has to say about the top five using original data from basketball-reference.com.

1) Joel Anthony is one of the league's best shot blockers.  He averaged 1.4 blocks in just 16.5 minutes per game last season.  That projects to around three blocks per game if given starters minutes.  Miami had a 13-3 record during Joel's 16 starts last season.  While he is still raw in many aspects of the game, he sets excellent, crushing screens and keeps balls alive on the offensive glass.  He is not an excellent on the boards and still struggles catching the ball cleanly, but his intangibles have earned him a five-year, $18 million extension.  He could be the starting center for years to come if he can maintain last year's winning ways—it projects to 67 wins over the course of a season, by the way.

What Wins Produced Has To Say:

Anthony averaged 27.6 minutes in 16 games as a starter last season.  As a starter, his shot-blocking averaged decreased by 16% to 1.9 per game.  Coincidentally, his foul rate also decreased by 22% as a starter.  My guess is that Anthony couldn’t be as aggressive blocking shots as a starter last year because the Heat didn’t have a lot of depth at the center position.  With Bosh, Haslem and potentially four centers on the final roster, Anthony should be able to remain an aggressive shot-blocker if he starts this season.  So, if he averages three blocks in 36 minutes per game for 80 games this season, then Anthony’s shot-blocking would be worth 4.2 wins to the Heat – that’s 1.3 wins more than Dampier’s shot-blocking would be worth in the same number of minutes.  Dampier, however, is coming off a season that only saw him play 55 games due to injuries.  If he’s limited to 55 games this season, then Anthony’s shot-blocking would be worth 2.2 more wins than Dampier’s.  The problem with Anthony, though, is that he does more than block shots when he’s on the floor – and he does almost all of it poorly.  His rebounding is below average, as Cyrus mentioned.  He’s also below average at his position when it comes to scoring, steals, assists and fouls.  The funny thing is that despite his reputation for having bad hands, he’s above average when it comes to protecting the ball from turnovers (which leads me to believe his teammates were credited with turnovers for the passes he dropped).  As for the Heat’s success with Anthony as a starter last season, it seemed to be in spite of him.  His performance actually cost the Heat an estimated 0.5 wins in the 16 games he started and that’s the problem with Joel Anthony.  When all the shot-blocking is done, and the rest of his stats are accounted for, Anthony is worth 5–10 wins less than Dampier as a starter (depending on Dampier’s health).

2) Zydrunas Ilgauskas was one of the first veterans to jump on board and sign a minimum contract.  He has had an amazing career.  Yes, he had a down year last year, averaging 7.4 points and 5.4 rebounds in just 21 minutes of action per game, but was contributing 12.9 points and 7.5 rebounds in 27 minutes of action the year before Shaquille O'Neal was acquired.  That's a higher combination of points and rebounds than Dampier ever delivered for Dallas.  The perception may be that Ilgauskas is a dinosaur, but he is in fact just one month Dampier's senior.  LeBron still believes he has something left in the tank and they have great chemistry together.  I wouldn't be so sure that Ilgauskas will not have a better season than Erick Dampier.

What Wins Produced Has To Say:

Ilgauskas has been slightly above average for his career with an estimated 0.112 WP48 and an estimated 51 wins produced but his production fell off a cliff last season, which was the first time in his career that he wasn’t a starter.  He’s always been a better scorer than Dampier but not a better rebounder.  The season before Shaq came to Cleveland, Big Z averaged 13.3 rebounds per 48 minutes compared to Dampier’s 14.8 rebounds per 48 minutes.  The rebounding difference between Ilgauskas and Dampier is worth 1.5 wins (assuming both players came off the bench for 840 minutes during the season).  Big Z makes up for that deficiency with his superior scoring, free throw shooting and passing abilities, but not by much.  Those advantages for Ilgauskas are worth 2 more projected wins than Dampier would provide in those categories for a net advantage of 0.5 wins.  Unfortunately for the Heat, the disadvantages of choosing Ilgauskas over Dampier are not as slim.  Compared to the rest of the league’s centers, he was below average in getting to the line, scoring, rebounding, steals, shot-blocking, assists and fouls.  The result is that Big Z is projected to be worth 3.4 wins less than Dampier.  The decline in Big Z’s production from 2009 to 2010 was steeper than expected but an average player would still be expected to provide negative production at 35 years old.  If last season is ignored for Ilgauskas’s projection, then the forecast for his WP48 increases from -0.060 to 0.047.  While he would still be expected to be below average, the gap between his value and Dampier’s value as a backup playing 840 minutes would decrease from 3.4 wins to 1.4 wins.  Either way, Dampier remains a more productive player, despite being the same age as Ilgauskas.

3) Jamaal Magloire was actually an All-Star in 2003-04, thanks to a weakened class of centers in the Eastern Conference, the last year either player averaged a double-double.  Nowadays, it is pretty widely accepted that Dampier is a more reliable option.  The 32-year-old Heat center now has three advantages over Mr. Dampier.  He is three years younger, has already accepted a bench role, and is the resident bad boy on the roster.  When the Heat and Celtics got into an altercation during last year's playoffs, Magloire was the intimidating presence that seemingly made Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett reconsider whether they should exchange blows with Miami players.  Stan Van Gundy said it best "Jamaal Magloire has a role and that role is to beat the hell out of people."  He is not going anywhere.

What Wins Produced Has To Say:

Magloire is definitely better at beating the hell out of people than Dampier.  The Big Cat is projected to average 7.6 fouls per 48 minutes next season compared to Dampier’s 5.5 fouls per 48 minutes.  Magloire “beating the hell out of people” cost the Heat about 1 win last season while Dampier’s hacking cost the Mavericks 2.4 wins last season in about 3.5 times more minutes.  On a per minute basis, however, Dampier averages less fouls than all of the centers invited to Heat training camp.  Maybe that’s why the team wasn’t interested in Dampier – he wasn’t the enforcer they were looking for in the middle.

4) Dexter Pittman was picked by Miami at the top of the second round ahead of potential lottery picks like Solomon Alabi and Hassan Whiteside.  When Riley says that he likes Dexter, you have to believe him, because he had a chance to draft either of the bigs that had lottery potential and passed in favor of the big man out of Texas…  He had his ups and downs during summer league play, but that was to be expected from the prospect who once weighed over 400 pounds.

What Wins Produced Has To Say:

Dexter Pittman was the 17^th most productive NCAA player drafted, so he was definitely a smart second round draft pick for the Heat.  However, he was also the least productive player on the Heat summer league team with -0.173 EWP48 (good news for Heat fans is that Berri reported summer league performance doesn’t say much about regular season performance).  After three pre-season games, his productivity has improved to 0.004 EWP48 (good/bad news for Heat fans is that rookie pre-season performance is an indicator of regular season performance).  The swings in production from summer league to pre-season are good examples of the ups-and-downs that Cyrus was probably talking about.  Dampier was not a productive player his rookie season either, with -0.017 EWP48.  In fact, he produced less than zero estimated wins in five of his first six seasons in the league.  In six years, maybe Pittman will become as productive as Dampier and the Heat will have a productive center but for now, the doughnut remains.

5) Chris Bosh… Expect Bosh to play the Gasol role in Miami if the other centers are not earning their minutes.

What Wins Produced Has To Say:

Bosh is more than capable of filling in at center.  Last season, he was the sixth most productive player in the NBA at center with 11.7 wins produced in 2,526 minutes.  Dampier was only able to play half that many minutes last season and has only played more than 2,500 minutes once in his career.  Bosh produced 7.5 more wins at center than Dampier last season.  After Saturday’s pre-season game against the Spurs, South Florida Sun-Sentinel reporter Ira Winderman reported the following on his blog:

“Spoelstra said he does not see an issue occasionally casting Bosh at center.  ‘I think the more you ask him, the less he’ll care,’ he said, ‘especially when you’re flanked by a warrior like Udonis Haslem.’

Spoelstra said he likes the combination of Bosh and Haslem, who was held out Saturday due to a sore shoulder.  ‘It’s also a dynamic rebounding duo for us and offensively it gives us some versatility,’ Spoelstra said.”

I think playing Bosh at center gives the Heat their best chance of breaking the ’96 Bulls’ record of 72 wins because it will allow Haslem to play over 2,000 minutes at power forward.  A lineup with that frontcourt, Carlos Arroyo as the starting point guard and Mike Miller as sixth man (splitting time between shooting guard and small forward), would provide 73 wins by itself, as illustrated in the table below.

The Wins Produced for LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh were taken from HERE.  The Wins Produced for Arroyo, Haslem and Miller were calculated using numbers from the Wins Produced Viewer and are based on the impact of age on performance as reported in Stumbling On Wins.

With the top six players producing nearly 74 wins, the only thing that could prevent the Heat from breaking the record would be negative productivity from the bottom six players on the rosters.  The bottom six players for the ’96 Bulls produced -6.1 wins.  Five of the eight veterans invited to training camp for the 2011 Heat produced less than zero wins last season – Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Eddie House, Juwan Howard, Joel Anthony and Shavlik Randolph.  Strangely enough, garbage time for the Heat this season could be the difference between a great regular season and the greatest regular season of all-time.  And maybe that's where the Heat will regret not signing Dampier - he would've been one less garbage player to put on the floor when the game's out of reach.