After the Miami Heat lost to the Cleveland Cavaliers in the playoffs last season — a four-game sweep by a margin of 122 points, the most lopsided postseason loss in NBA history — head coach Erik Spoelstra realized the team needed a new identity.
“It was a very painful and embarrassing first-round loss,” Spoelstra said this month 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.
“So that sparked a lot of thought that we needed to do some things better and differently,” Spoelstra said.
So far this season, Miami is not only doing things differently — its offense is essentially unlike any the NBA has seen over the last decade-plus.
After a 110-96 win over the Golden State Warriors on Wednesday, the Heat are 9-6 and averaging 123.6 points per game — a top-three mark in the league. Miami is doing so despite averaging only 15.5 pick-and-rolls per 100 possessions — 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.)
The Heat aren’t 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.
Back when former NBA player JJ Redick was podcasting with LeBron James — and wasn’t his head coach at the Los Angeles Lakers — Redick described the most important aspect of every possession during a game.
“Basketball boils down to: Can you put two [defenders] on the ball?” he said.
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.
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’s typically been one of the league’s most plodding.
“We knew after last year that [coach Erik Spoelstra] was going to switch up the whole philosophy of his offense,” Heat captain Bam Adebayo told reporters in October. “He told me that. He said he wanted us to play faster and we are.”
In each of the last three seasons, Miami finished in the bottom third of the league in offensive rating, which takes pace into account. The Heat are currently ranked 16th in that category, and while not elite, it is a massive improvement for the franchise: Miami’s 115.3 offensive rating is its best of the decade.
“Playing with a pace like this, you love to see everybody collectively having fun, everybody getting to touch the ball,” Adebayo said. “You can’t really scout plays for us. There are no plays.”
How have the Heat made up for not setting screens? By running relentlessly and barreling toward the rim. Miami is second in the NBA in drives per game, second in miles run per game and first in average offensive speed, according to the league’s tracking data.
The offense is a complete 180 from the way the Heat typically play.
From 2020 through 2025, Miami finished in the bottom four in pace every season, slogging through games in the half-court.
This season, the Heat are averaging over 106 possessions per game — the fastest pace of any team since 1992.
Whether Miami can keep up the pace and the style of play for a full season are legitimate questions. The Heat have yet to play a game with guard Tyler Herro, their leading scorer from last season who ran the 17th-most pick-and-rolls per game a year ago.
The ultimate test could be the playoffs, when pace typically tightens and teams are forced to play more in the half-court.
For now, though, Miami has boiled basketball down to getting the ball in the hoop any way possible, running right by conventional logic in the process.