Tale of the Tape: Max Strus gives the Heat’s offense the jolt it needs
Photo Credit: Miami Herald
The regular season is weird.
Teams can get caught up in the middle of the 82-game grind that is the NBA season, between extended road trips and losing key players for long stretches. As a result, player and team performance can fluctuate from game to game. It can be tricky to determine if what you’re watching is the result of something the other team is doing, or if a player — or players — just aren’t bringing it tonight.
But the NBA schedule-makers did hoops junkies a favor this year. They've added a ton of baseball-style mini-series, where two teams play each other consecutively, a relatively rare occurrence in the past. Among benefits like removing a travel day on the schedule for the road team, it doubles the sample size of the film for people like me.
Getting to watch the same team twice consecutively is illuminating in a way usually reserved for playoff series. While there’s less of a concerted effort to adjust entire schemes to the opponent, it offers the opportunity to see what changes are made and how they shift the final outcome, as well as hopefully accounting for outlier off (or hot) nights.
In this article, I'm going to break down one such observation from the Miami Heat’s back-to-back wins against the Charlotte Hornets last week. In the first game, Miami’s offense down the stretch slowed to a halt, and Jimmy Butler had to put the team on his back offensively while their defense gutted out an overtime win. Two nights later, they scored 132 points in regulation, headlined by a 45-point third quarter explosion where the Heat’s offense looked unstoppable, cutting, shooting and passing their way to a 10/10 start from the floor.
When trying to diagnose what could have caused such a dramatic upgrade to Miami’s offense, both in terms of process and results, all roads lead back to one player: Max Strus. Strus’ constant off-ball movement, innate cutting ability and otherworldly shooting give the Heat the spark their offense needs to not just run, but hum. This two-game sample is a fantastic demonstration of how important Strus is to Miami’s offense, and how quickly it can combust without him.
To get it out of the way early: yes, Miami was missing a key offensive cog in Tyler Herro for both of these games. I’m still writing this article. So far this season, the Heat’s halfcourt offense with Herro (who has played 10 of the team’s 15 games, so this will surely go up with a larger sample size) on the floor, the Heat’s halfcourt offense has been a team-worst 11.6 points per 100 possessions worse, per Cleaning the Glass. The player with the highest increase? It’s actually a tie between Jimmy Butler (to be expected) and… Max Strus, with the Heat improving by 9.5 points per 100 halfcourt possessions when either takes the floor.
Herro is unequivocally a better player than Strus, and a more potent offensive threat with the ball in his hands. But the numbers don’t lie, and in the case of Strus, they back up the eye test. This is a great example of how depending on what a team has or needs, certain players can become crucial for it to function properly. In this case, the difference between Miami’s offense grinding to a halt and running at maximum effectiveness was, more than anything, Max Strus.
The most important way that Strus bends a defense is with his 3-point shot. One of the league’s deadliest and most versatile shooters, he’s able to hit at a high rate both off the catch and off of movement. Some nights, though, your shot just doesn’t fall, as was the case in the first game vs. Charlotte:
Strus shot 2/11 in the overtime win, and was consistently unable to find his rhythm, even on some very open looks. As a result, a lot of Miami’s usual offensive actions, involving constant player and ball movement, off-ball actions, and multiple pressure points, started to go away in favor of Jimmy Butler isolations down the stretch. Butler, to his credit, played incredible in the second half and did just enough to earn Miami the win, but that style of offensive basketball isn’t sustainable.
The third quarter of that first game saw Miami’s offensive process devolve. The cuts, multiple actions, and improvisation off the ball disappeared, and more and more often, possessions looked like this (Note: clips from the first game between these two will have the Hornets in their dark blue jerseys, like below. Clips from the second game will have Charlotte wearing their usual, lighter blue jerseys):
It’s not as much of a stretch as you’d think to correlate that offensive downturn to Strus’ cold night. He’s top 10 on the season in 3-point attempts, ahead of names like Donovan Mitchell and Klay Thompson. And coming off of an Eastern Conference Finals run in which he started every playoff game, Strus is a big part of what the Heat have done offensively for a while now. As the only high volume 3-point shooter that isn’t a guard out of Miami’s big minute rotation players and with Duncan Robinson’s shooting numbers taking a slide this season, Strus is Miami’s secret sauce. But if you can’t hit shots when plays are being called for you, eventually plays will stop being called for you. And when plays stop being called for Max Strus, the Miami Heat stop moving. Watch this compilation of late-game plays from the Heat:
Every single time, the exact same setup. Butler on the right wing, one guy (usually Kyle Lowry) a pass away, everyone else bunched up on the left side to give Butler as much room as possible. Credit to Butler and Lowry for making several huge shots, but that form of offense doesn’t translate to consistent wins.
Miami’s offense is at its best when it’s completely unpredictable, throwing two things at the defense while slipping a third under their noses. That necessitates constant moving of both players and the ball. When the Heat slow things down like this, it takes them away from so many of their strengths as a team.
That’s great and all, you might say, but there’s a link in this chain that’s missing: The Heat could just run those sets all game anyway if it works so well for them. What does any of this have to do with Max Strus?
As it turns out, quite a bit.
This is where team offensive dynamics take center stage. The simplest way to think about a team’s offensive process is to watch the reaction of the defense. If an offense is running the same stuff for an entire game and the defensive scheme hasn’t changed at all since tip, it’s safe to assume that the defense is okay with whatever shots they’re giving up. If the defense is constantly changing things up, be it their ball screen coverage, how they guard specific actions, or anything else, that’s an indicator that the offense is getting things the defense doesn’t want to give up — and that’s good offense.
How does that pertain to Max Strus? His skillset lets the Heat do a lot of different things, and his play is central to unlocking a lot of them (which sounds obvious, but there are many players for whom this isn’t necessarily the case). The more stuff an offense can throw at a defense, the better off they are both in the short and long-term.
For the rematch between Miami and Charlotte, I decided to take note of every time Strus was involved in an offensive possession; if he shot, screened, cut, or relocated, I marked it down, regardless of the result of the play. It’s a very simple way of seeing how involved Strus was in Miami’s offense, and how important that involvement is in its success.
At the end of the first half, Miami was trailing 57-59, and Miami’s offense was starting to devolve much like the last game. A key difference, though, is that Strus was hitting. His 3 first half 3s were more than he hit the entire last game, and he was getting them in ways that benefitted the Heat as a team.
Overhelp, as Jalen McDaniels is wont to do, and he’ll make you pay:
Some might blow this play off as bad defense on a good shooter, but thinking about it in terms of what it does for Miami’s offense makes it pretty important. McDaniels might be too keyed in on Butler, but his length and ability make him a good help defender. If Strus can make him pay like he did in the second game — and like he couldn’t in the first — it shifts the calculus for the rest of the defenders on the floor. Defenders have to make a choice: send help to Butler and give up open 3s to one of the best shooters in the league, or stay home and let Butler play one-on-one.
Strus’ shooting makes him a threat coming off of screens; his ability to run pick-and-rolls as a ball handler weaponizes that. The first half of the rematch saw Strus handling the ball more, making plays as a driver with accurate, timely passes and some on-ball spunk:
Plays like this matter. When Strus is a threat to shoot the ball, defenders are more likely to go over on screens, as they do in these clips. That gives Strus a runway, and his ability to make plays with what the defense gives him makes him a complete offensive threat.
The more ways a player can make life hard on the defense, the more effective that player is within an offense. When you have a skill as coveted and important as Strus does, the ability to augment it weaponizes you in a way that makes things easier for your entire team. As you’ll see from the third quarter, Strus certainly did that for the Heat.
I mentioned making a note of every time Strus was involved in a play in the second game; he was a part of 14 first half Heat plays, 7 per quarter. By the 6:40 mark of the third quarter, Strus had already hit 7 — and the Heat were 10/10 from the floor, en route to a 45-point third quarter explosion, two days after scoring 46 in the entire second half. The Heat were unstoppable, and Strus’ fingerprints were all over it.
The shot was falling for Strus, going 4/4 from the floor with three 3s, but his impact went far beyond that. We’ll start with the shooting, though — it’s pretty magnificent:
When someone’s that hot, the defense has to key in on them at all times. That helps the Heat even when Strus doesn’t have the ball. He can set screens for teammates and flare to the 3-point line, causing panic between defenders and creating opportunities for teammates:
Strus’ shooting gravity can create opportunities for his teammates just with his spacing. Watch Strus and McDaniels this time:
Strus, who never touches the ball, times his fake cut just before Robinson’s real cut, distracting McDaniels and reminding him of Strus’ presence, realizing how far he spaced out. The threat of his shooting occupies McDaniels, a chronic overhelper, enough to give Gabe Vincent an open driving lane.
It also means more opponents going over on screens, which opens up more of those pick-and-roll opportunities I brought up from the first half. Those reps unlock even more for the Heat’s offense, especially for their best player:
Jimmy Butler is one of the NBA’s best cutters, and having another player on the floor that can assume on-ball duties in the halfcourt lets him wreak havoc behind his man’s back. (This shot pushed Miami to 10/10 start from the floor in the quarter, by the way.)
Strus also helps Miami out in one of their preferred methods of transition offense. Miami ranks 9th in transition 3PT frequency above the break, where Strus takes 44% of his shots, more than any other zone on the floor (including the rim!), per CTG. They love early clock 3s, an easy way to get Strus open opportunties:
The most important thing Strus can do for the Heat, though, is make the defense bend to him. As the third quarter barrage kept coming, the Hornets, in a last-ditch effort, started sending two players to Strus when he came off a screen with the ball, trusting their rotations behind the 3-on-4 disadvantage it creates. The only problem? Sending two to the ball versus the Heat is death.
Whenever the Heat can generate an advantage in the halfcourt, they’re surgical in their execution to get an open shot. These opportunities can be few and far between, though; for as great as he is, Butler’s lack of 3-point shooting makes him an easy under on screens, not someone defenses are rushing to trap off of every pick-and-roll. Lowry isn’t nearly enough of a scoring threat to warrant that coverage consistently. Herro is the only other player on the roster who you might look at and imagine that potential; the team’s halfcourt woes with him on the court so far this season have made Strus’ ability to put the defense in motion and unleash Miami’s best offense absolutely critical.
I want to note that every single clip — all seven! — in this segment came from the third quarter. It was everything Max Strus brings to the table at once, a symphony of offensive excellence. Compare all of that to this third quarter offensive possession from the first game, when Miami’s offense was stuck in the mud:
No disrespect to Caleb Martin, a very good player who’s more than deserved Miami’s fifth starting spot, but if a Martin isolation post-up is the offense you’re running, you’re in bad shape. I want to note that Miami’s shot profile was pretty similar in both games, with lots of 3s and not a lot at the rim, lending further to the idea that the big difference came in the process. Strus is at the core of so much of what makes the Heat’s offense work; he and the Heat amplify each other with their perfect harmony of skills and scheme.
Sometimes in basketball discourse, there’s a tendency to forget about the role a player serves to a team when discussing rotations, lineups and comparing players. It can get diluted to discussing players as if they’re one of five individuals on the court, rather than one of five members of a collective unit, whose gameplan on both ends of the floor has been drilled into them by their coaching staff. That means that different coaches are looking for different things, which is why fit can be so important when evaluating players in the context of their team.
When it comes to the Heat, Max Strus provides all of the offensive tools that the Heat’s system looks for — off-ball movement, secondary ball-handling, transition shooting — and when he’s rolling, the Heat’s offense rolls with him. Strus isn’t close to the best player on the Heat. He wasn’t even a starter headed into this season, and is only in the role now because of Herro’s injury. But his importance to this offense can’t be understated.
The Heat won’t win the title because of Max Strus. He is, for all he brings, a role player. If they do, it’s because players like Jimmy Butler, Tyler Herro and Kyle Lowry inevitably take over the offense down the stretch as defenses key in on their offensive principles. But Strus will be a crucial component in getting them there.
This is why role players matter; all five players on the court can make an impact, and the best coaches figure out how to maximize all of them. Stars transcend a system; the best role players maximize it. This fun little regular season scheduling wrinkle gave us front row tickets to why Max Strus is one of the league’s elite.