Giannis Antetokounmpo officially took the floor for the first time in a Heat uniform on Wednesday night as his new team played host to the Timberwolves, a prime-time affair during the NBA’s opening week showcase. Changing jerseys and cities for the first time in his career did nothing to slow the Greek Freak down. Not that we expected much else.
Antetokounmpo was the same rampaging, physically dominant force we saw win two MVPs and a championship in Milwaukee. He scored 21 points in the first half as he ran roughshod over a Minnesota squad lacking the big bodies required to stop him. Erik Spoelstra’s offensive system, with a focus on pace and running whenever possible, is the best possible counter to the classic “build a wall” strategy that has been the preferred method of stopping Giannis over the years. Miami’s focus on playing fast means the defense can’t get set, and it’s nearly impossible to wall off Antetokounmpo’s paint access if the defense isn’t set.
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As a result the Greek superstar finished with 35 points on 13-for-19 shooting. He ran through waves of defenders every trip down the court, dunking and finger-rolling all over the paint. Antetokounmpo was unstoppable—individually.
As a team? Not so much.
Despite Antetokounmpo’s strong statistical debut, the Heat got blown out of the water in their first game of the season. A high-powered Wolves offense with a scorching Anthony Edwards at the middle of it all earned Minnesota a 10-point halftime lead, but Miami kept pace and even pulled within single digits with just under eight minutes to go in the third. From there? The Heat got steamrolled. Edwards went wild and the Wolves outscored Miami by 21 points until garbage time began with three minutes remaining.
“No,” Antetokounmpo told reporters bluntly when asked if he felt good about his Heat debut. “I feel good when the team plays good. When things are clicking. When we’re playing with a good rhythm, playing with a good pace, winning games, that’s when I feel good. Hopefully Friday will be better.”
“We didn’t get many good looks,” Spoelstra said afterwards. “(Giannis) was a force of nature for sure, doing what he does, but we didn’t look like us offensively... we outshot them tonight and we got beat by 30. They dominated the turnovers, they dominated the offensive glass, they dominated the three-point line, and they outscored us at the three-point line by a big margin.”
It’s only the first game of the season. There’s no reason to overreact or rule the Heat as pretenders rather than contenders, especially when Minnesota enjoyed a blessed shooting night from deep, sinking 21 treys. But the way the loss unfolded emphasized the flaws in Miami’s roster that have to be addressed by Spoelstra in the early going of the season, with two standing out in particular.
Giannis’s partnership with Bam Adebayo needs work
The most glaring problem with Giannis’s opening game with the Heat was that he and Bam Adebayo did not play very well together.
This was an issue foreseen long before Wednesday night based on their profiles alone. While both can shoot jumpers (and Adebayo, in particular, has improved a lot in that area over the last few years), they’re both much better operating inside-out. Good possessions for both players start with a paint touch and go from there. It isn't rocket science to conclude that may result in some clunky play together offensively as they get used to each other’s presence, and Wednesday provided proof.
While Antetokounmpo got his, Adebayo finished with only 15 points on 6-for-12 shooting in 31 minutes of play. He was not involved in the offense very much when Giannis was on the floor with him. Adebayo’s best stretch came in the third quarter—when Antetokounmpo was on the bench. Bobby Portis, Miami’s only true stretch five, was on the floor instead and forced defenders to leave the paint in a way they never will with Giannis. Adebayo took full advantage and scored nine points in a five-minute stretch, assisting on two baskets along the way. In his other 26 minutes, largely spent alongside Antetokounmpo, he totaled six points.
Adebayo was a bit overcast the last two seasons as a No. 1 scoring option, 83-point night aside. But he is clearly capable of more than what we saw on opening night. Some of it is on him to seize more opportunities, but ultimately the burden will fall on Spoelstra and his staff to put Adebayo in a position to succeed despite the overlap with Antetokounmpo.
The three-point line could be a problem area
Of Antetokounmpo’s many strengths, three-point shooting is not one. That’s why the Bucks’ most successful teams around Antetokounmpo always featured great shooting in great quantity. The Heat knew that as well as anybody upon acquiring the superstar forward and tried to add as much deep shooting as possible in free agency over the offseason despite a distinct lack of assets post-Giannis trade.
Things didn’t pan out as hoped on opening night. Miami shot 24% from beyond the three-point line and took only 33 shots from deep; last year the league average hovered around 37 attempts every night. When the roster’s top two players aren’t volume shooters it’s on the rest of the roster to shoot a lot, and accurately, to ensure they don’t fall into a deficit from the three-point line. Wednesday wound up everyone’s worst fear in that regard—the Timberwolves outscored the Heat by a whopping 39 points on the three-point shooting front alone. Similarly, Antetokounmpo and Adebayo are excellent interior defenders but Miami’s perimeter defense is iffy beyond Davion Mitchell, leading to Minnesota’s opening night barrage.
“We’re going to have to step up our defense. We know that,” Spoelstra said. “And I feel, across the board, more efforts and disruptiveness and these effort plays, we’re capable of doing it. We’re just going to have to get better at committing to it. All five guys on the floor.”
In the modern NBA, you can’t be a bad shooting team and a bad perimeter defense team. Great teams contain neither quality but good teams can get away with one such weakness. When it’s both weaknesses, they compound each other. The Heat shot 63% on two-point shots, a strong number well above the Wolves’ 52% from inside the arc. They still got blown out of the water because they couldn’t keep up at the three-point line or defend it nearly well enough.
Not every team will be as three-point heavy as Minnesota. The shooting luck will favor Miami on plenty of nights. But the team’s opening game was the realization of the fears around the Heat’s personnel when it comes to the three-point line.
Antetokounmpo’s excellence was a nice sight after he spent most of last season on the shelf with nagging injuries. But his new team has a ways to go before they can hope to reach the level of contention his presence demands.
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