After the Miami Heat lost to the Cleveland Cavaliers in the playoffs last season \u2014 a four-game sweep by a margin of 122 points, the most lopsided postseason loss in NBA history \u2014 head coach Erik Spoelstra realized the team needed a new identity. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a very painful and embarrassing first-round loss,\u201d Spoelstra said this month<\/a> before a regular-season matchup with the Cavaliers. In each of the last two games of the playoff series, the Heat failed to crack 90 points.<\/p>\n \u201cSo that sparked a lot of thought that we needed to do some things better and differently,” Spoelstra said. <\/p>\n So far this season, Miami is not only doing things differently \u2014 its offense is essentially unlike any the NBA has seen over the last decade-plus.<\/p>\n After a 110-96 win over the Golden State Warriors on Wednesday, the Heat are 9-6 and averaging 123.6 points per game \u2014 a top-three mark in the league. Miami is doing so despite averaging only 15.5 pick-and-rolls per 100 possessions \u2014 the fewest in the NBA by a galaxy or two, per Genius Sports. (The 29th place Utah Jazz, the next lowest, are running 44.7 pick-and-rolls per 100.)<\/p>\n The Heat aren\u2019t only an outlier this season, they are a historical one. Miami is deriving the least offense from picks of any team over the last 15 seasons, per Sportradar.<\/p>\n Back when former NBA player JJ Redick was podcasting with LeBron James \u2014 and wasn\u2019t his head coach at the Los Angeles Lakers \u2014 Redick described the most important aspect of every possession during a game.<\/p>\n \u201cBasketball boils down to: Can you put two [defenders] on the ball?\u201d he said<\/a>.<\/p>\n The most common way for an offense to force such a situation is the pick-and-roll, which almost always means having its best scorer call for a screen, causing the defense to make a series of rapid-fire decisions from a leveraged position.<\/p>\n Instead of on-ball screens, Miami is relying on pace (first in the NBA), off-ball movement and drives to the hoop to score. And it has revived an offense that\u2019s typically been one of the league\u2019s most plodding.<\/p>\n