Miami tensions: Is Spoelstra really to blame?

The Heat have lost four of their last five games, and road losses to the Magic and Mavericks (the latter of which was not nearly as close as the 11-point margin might indicate) over the extended Thanksgiving holiday dropped Miami to 1-7 against teams with winning records. The weekend also gave us that strange bump between LeBron James and coach Erik Spoelstra, which made for fantastic YouTube footage and over-analytical psychobabble.

The drama continues Monday morning, as ESPN’s Chris Broussard has at least two inside sources claiming the players are questioning Spoelstra’s leadership. In Broussard’s telling, you can boil down the complaints of the Heat players to three things:

1) Miami’s offense lacks creativity, and the players blame Spoelstra.

2) Spoelstra has been too strict with them, particularly James, whom the coach scolded for an alleged lack of seriousness in front of the entire team during a shootaround.

3) Spoelstra is concerned about his job security and taking those worries out on his players.

Let’s start with No. 2 because everyone will want to go there anyway. Here is the source’s description — it’s unclear whether this is a first- or second-hand account – of the Spoelstra-James shootaround incident:

Exhibit A was a recent shootaround in which Spoelstra told James that he had to get more serious. The source said Spoelstra called James out in front of the entire team, telling him, “I can’t tell when you’re serious.”

“He’s jumping on them,” one source said. “If anything, he’s been too tough on them. Everybody knows LeBron is playful and likes to joke around, but Spoelstra told him in front of the whole team that he has to get more serious. The players couldn’t believe it. They feel like Spoelstra’s not letting them be themselves.”

My response: too bad. Spoelstra is the coach of the team, and if he believes the Heat — who are mired in a very disappointing start — are joking around when they should be serious, he’s entitled to call them out. Coaches criticize their players, both in private and in public. This season alone, Phil Jackson tweaked Kobe Bryant’s shot selection, Jim O’Brien had strong words for several of his Pacers, John Kuester asked for leadership from his Pistons veterans, Paul Westphal criticized the entirety of the Kings’ roster, New Jersey’s Avery Johnson demoted Terrence Williams to the D-League, Cleveland’s Byron Scott scolded J.J. Hickson (repeatedly) for failing to grasp the intricacies of his Princeton-style offense … shall we keep going?

Coaches criticize their players, even the star players. James and the Heat might not be used to it, but it’s part of the deal, and an uncomfortable outburst here and there should be expected given the pressure on everyone in Miami.

The far larger issue is that first bullet point about Miami’s offense. On the one hand, the Heat rank sixth in the league in points per possession — above Boston, Utah, New Orleans, Orlando and Dallas. That’s better than respectable. On the other hand, a look at Miami’s game-by-game performance shows it fattened up its offensive rating with eviscerations of Toronto, Minnesota and Phoenix, and has struggled to score (especially of late) against good teams.

The Heat remain last in the league in points in the paint, though that is mitigated largely by their hole at center and the fact that they are getting to the foul line quite often. Still, only the Wizards are taking more long two-point jumpers per game, and that’s not what fans expected when the Heat united three of the league’s most efficient scorers.

And if you watch the games, you see it — the offense shows only fleeting bursts of what it could be and devolves into a stale pick-and-roll routine in between those isolated pieces of brilliance. The three-man game we all dreamed of appears every so often, in the form of James’ entering the ball to Chris Bosh and then setting an off-the-ball screen for Dwyane Wade. But you see those things on maybe a half-dozen possessions per game. James and Wade have not functioned well together, and the more I watch this team play, the more I realize why the triangle offense, with its constant movement and passing, is a thing to be treasured in Los Angeles (if not yet in Minnesota).

So is this on Spoelstra?

Of course. At least, in part. He designs the playbook, sets the team’s philosophy and calls at least some of the plays. But Spoelstra is only 17 games into a huge challenge – one that involves building an offense around two ball-dominating stars after spending two previous seasons stressing defense and building a traditional NBA offense around one ball-dominating star. And it’s not as if James and Wade have a huge amount of experience setting back screens, cutting off of big men and darting around the court without the ball. They have some — Cleveland’s offense hit another gear when James worked well off the ball — but hopes for a new offense rest on both the stars and the coaches making huge changes. That takes time.

Will Spoelstra get that time?