The moment Lebron James announced his decision to team up with Dwyane Wade in Miami the debating began. One of the more discussed questions was “Who would be Batman and who would be Robin?”
Many thought that since it was Wade’s team, the team that he carried on his back in the 2006 NBA Finals, he would be the alpha dog. He would be the one taking the final shot most often. Lebron’s points would dip as his assist numbers rose. Whether this would translate into championships no one knew, and it seems as if we’ll never find out.
While Lebron’s scoring has dropped three points since last season, he has made it clear with his play that he will not be the Robin to anyone’s Batman. He’s a leading candidate for MVP, second in the league in points per game and always the one with the ball in his hands in the final seconds.
Wade’s averages have stood relatively pat since last year (assists down, rebounds up), but the inconsistency in his play has been a major problem for the Heat. Only once last season did Wade score less than 15 points while playing 30 minutes or more. This year, with a quarter of the season remaining, that has occurred seven times including twice in losses to the Celtics and a twelve-point effort in Sunday’s loss to the Knicks. Despite this abnormally high number of bad performances, Wade has been able to maintain a scoring average right around 25 points per game due in part to four 40-point outbursts. The difference is that his best games have come in close wins against the Rockets, Pacers, Wizards and pre-Melo Knicks; not exactly the cream of the NBA crop.
As the team tries to address its weakness at the point guard position by adding Mike Bibby and continues to experiment with a rotation of ineffective centers, they are ignoring the issue of Wade’s uncertain role in the offense. The fact is Dwyane Wade is not very good at moving without the ball. He shouldn’t be. It has never been asked of him prior to this season. For the first seven years of his career, much like Lebron, the offense was largely designed to get him the ball at the top of the key, at the elbow, or in the post to create a one-on-one opportunity which Wade would win more often than not. If and when the double team came he would find the open teammate. It’s the way all superstar driven teams run a large chunk of their offense. The trick is this is no superstar driven team. This is a MULTI-superstar driven team. For the Heat to live up to their full potential something needs to change.
Put it this way: when the game is coming down to the wire and the Heat need a hoop what do they do? The same thing everyone else does. Run a 1-4 with their superstar (Lebron) where he creates and ends up taking the ball to the rim or dishing to Eddie House, Mike Miller or whomever else has a clean look. Dwayne Wade is nothing more than a spectator who makes sure at least one defender can’t provide help defense. This defeats the entire advantage of having two of the greatest players in the world on the same team. This isn’t to absolve Lebron of his late-game failures. First he was passing up the shots and now he’s just flat out missing them, but this isn’t his fault either.
The blame lies in the hands of Erik Spoelstra and the Heat management. Spoelstra has made a concerted effort not to “overcoach” this team, relying more on not screwing up their talent than trying to implement a real offense. A steady diet of Wade isolations and Lebron/Bosh pick-and-rolls might win close to 60 games in the regular season, but it will not suffice in the playoffs. Who’s to say that Mario Chalmers, a player who continues to get underplayed, wouldn’t be able to make the correct decisions in a more motion-based offense that relied on him to make the correct decision of which star to distribute the ball to each possession? Maybe that will be Bibby’s role, but for the past few years he hasn’t been much more than a wealthy man’s Eddie House.
This isn’t necessarily to say that Spoelstra is a bad coach. He’s been put in a situation that very few, if any, NBA coaches have ever been put in, which is all the more reason that an all-time great like Pat Riley might be better suited to coach the team. The bottom line is it shouldn’t be possible to defend a team with two of the greatest scorers of all-time and another bona fide all-star, but when that team only makes you guard one of those players at a time it suddenly becomes a less than daunting task.
If a coach ever figures out how to maximize all of the Heat’s talent at the same time the rest of the league will be in trouble.