Crunch-time failures cost Heat (again)

LeBron James wasn’t good enough in crunch time Wednesday night against the Clippers, just as he wasn’t nearly good enough over the last three games of the 2011 Finals.

But he failed in a different way on Wednesday, attacking the rim, bricking free throws, committing a charge near the rim late in the fourth quarter, forcing a turnaround from the post in overtime and settling for two mid-range jumpers over Chauncey Billups after the Clippers switched on the dreaded James/Dwyane Wade pick-and-roll.

It was a different sort of crunch-time failure, a weird mix of worthy aggression, occasional passivity and bad luck. Some of those free throws rolled around and out, and though James has never been as good a foul shooter as perhaps he should be (career 75 percent), some of those misses will go in next time. Still, he wasn’t good enough, and those misses over Billups were especially disturbing because they came after a unique Heat action (the Wade/James pick-and-roll) designed to give James an advantage — an advantage he used to attack the rim, as everyone says he should, on two other late possessions.

But he settled on these two possessions for jumpers, the last of which he waited so long to launch, dangling the ball endlessly over Billups’ head, that he nearly committed a shot-clock violation.

Something else stuck out about those Wade/James pick-and-rolls: The Heat finally found a bit of the creativity they discovered last season — one of the sets that make perfect use out of at least two of their three stars. That kind of creativity in the half court was lacking for much of the game, and it raises questions about whether Miami can function well enough on offense when the game slows down and it can’t get its high-octane transition attack in gear. It also makes you wonder about Wade’s foot and the impact of a compressed schedule that had Miami on the second end of a back-to-back and playing its seventh game in 11 days.

Those aren’t excuses. They’re realities. And they might explain a lot of why Miami’s offense regressed Wednesday night. It wasn’t “bad,” and it wasn’t isolation-heavy; it just lacked the extra oomph the Heat get when all three stars are actively involved in every (or most) offensive sets.

Here are some possessions from Wednesday that were typical of Miami’s half-court struggles (apologies for the blurry video):

This is straight from crunch time, and it features perhaps the game’s two greatest players doing almost nothing after Mario Chalmers enters the ball to Chris Bosh. James doesn’t move at all, though he does adjust his headband at one point, and Wade stands on the weak side, gently bumping Blake Griffin for what might be a back screen if the Heat were interested in doing anything on that side.

Here’s another Bosh post-up that goes badly, this one from the third quarter:

This play actually starts with something that holds potential danger: Bosh sets a screen for Wade on the left side and suddenly cuts to the hoop as Chalmers backs into Bosh’s man (Griffin). That forces Chalmers’ man (Chris Paul) to linger on Bosh for an extra second, opening up more possibilities for Miami.

But again: Nothing happens. James stands around on the weak side doing nothing, being less useful than James Jones — a knockdown three-point shooter — would be. Wade makes what might be the slowest “cut” of his illustrious career, stopping at the foul line. Then Jordan smothers Bosh’s shot.

Fine, you say. Griffin is a so-so defender, and Bosh is a star in his own right. The Heat have collected three great players, and it makes sense to isolate each of them once in a while against inferior defenders.

Then explain this:

Or this:

Oh, wait! The Heat scored on this last one. But it remains problematic, in part because, like the second Bosh post-up above, it starts in a promising way: Chalmers and Joel Anthony set a big double screen for Wade, who starts the possession in the right corner, curls around the screen and makes the catch on the left side.

This corner-based stuff was core to the Heat’s offense last season, but this is an inferior version of what they ran in 2011. Miami’s very best half-court sets last season involved the stars working with each other, so that perhaps Bosh would be one of the screeners for Wade on this corner play, drawing even more attention and giving James, stationed on the left side, a better chance to cut backdoor along the baseline.

But James and Bosh are not really involved. They stand around as the Heat go into a secondary action (the Chalmers/Anthony pick-and-roll), acting only as outlets in case that action goes nowhere.

This continued into overtime, where Miami’s half-court offense looked much as did during its lowest moments early last season. With about 4:30 left in overtime, Wade and Bosh ran a pick-and-roll on the left side as James stood, stationary, in the right corner, far from the play in which Wade missed a long, ill-advised two-point jumper. Then came the LeBron jumper over Billups/near shot-clock violation.

And then on two of Miami’s final possessions, James again stood passively in the right corner, out of the play, as Wade and Bosh ran high-speed pick-and-rolls that produced a Wade missed three and then (with about 50 seconds to go) a Bosh jump-hook Jordan rejected.

A Wade/Bosh pick-and-roll is a powerful thing. Ditto for a Wade/James pick-and-roll, a James post-up or any action that gets Bosh deep position against Griffin. The Heat did all of those things, but they rarely had a secondary action ready to go behind them or along with them. And it’s the second action that can make the Heat so powerful, even when the tempo is slow — the James backdoor cut, Bosh setting an off-ball screen for James on the weak side as Wade and Haslem run a pick-and-roll elsewhere, anything like that.

The Heat’s offense is better than this — we’ve all seen it, and Erik Spoelstra, as I’ve written before, did well last year to gradually introduce new sets involving all three stars and creative movement as the season went on. That stuff vanished Wednesday night, and that’s a problem that goes far beyond James missing a few free throws in Los Angeles or looking tentative against Golden State.

Let’s be clear: That version of James is a problem. But the Heat are so talented they can compensate for a so-so James by working a crisp half-court offense on those possessions when they can’t run out on one of their crushing fast breaks.

The Heat are killing it in transition so far, playing at the league’s second-fastest pace and generally destroying and demoralizing overwhelmed opponents in transition. But they sport “only” the league’s ninth-best offense in terms of points per possession, and they should be better — they have been better. The compressed schedule and Wade’s nagging foot problems surely explain some of this ho-hum offense, and at least one of those issues will disappear in the playoffs.

But those crunch-time possessions will always be there, and there will come a time when the Heat must produce in an ultra-pressurized half-court possession or two in order to win the title. They did it earlier this season in Minnesota and Charlotte (don’t laugh), and they blew away Chicago and Boston in crunch time during very competitive playoff moments last season.

It’s in there, somewhere, but the sort of stagnancy Miami displayed on offense last night will cost them a possession, a quarter or a game in June if they’re not careful.