At center of Heat offensive issues this season? What’s happening and what’s not happening at rim

The Miami Heat is not where it wants to be after the first 50 games of the season.

At the 50-game mark, the Heat is in eight place in the Eastern Conference with a 26-24 record and has dropped eight of its last 10 games. As Thursday’s NBA trade deadline looms, the Heat is also just 8-16 this season in games against teams that entered Monday with a winning record.

That’s not where the Heat expected to be after advancing to the NBA Finals last season with essentially the same core. But that’s where the Heat is.

Heat falls to Clippers for eighth loss in 10 games. Takeaways and details from the home defeat

A big reason for the Heat’s, so far, underwhelming season has been its inefficient offense. And a big reason for the Heat’s inefficient offense has been its struggles around the rim.

“It’s tough to say,” Heat veteran Kevin Love said following the Heat’s 103-95 loss to the Los Angeles Clippers to open a four-game homestand on Sunday night, when asked why scoring points has been hard for the team. “… I think that’s something that we’re searching for right now. I can’t really put a finger on why that is happening because we do have an explosive team, we do have that capability.”

Following Sunday’s 95-point performance against the Clippers while playing without Tyler Herro (migraine) and Duncan Robinson (concussion protocol), the Heat has scored fewer than 100 points in 12 games this season for the third-most such games in the NBA ahead of only the floundering Charlotte Hornets (14 such games) and Portland Trail Blazers (13 games). Miami is 2-10 in those games.

As a result of its inability to consistently put up a lot of points, the Heat entered Monday with the NBA’s 23rd-ranked offensive rating this season at 112.8 points scored per 100 possessions.

“I think you look at our lineup, you would think that we should be scoring in the 110s, in the 120s, maybe even the 130s on certain nights when a number of guys have been ignitable and putting up big numbers,” Love continued ahead of Tuesday night’s matchup against the Orlando Magic at Kaseya Center (7:30 p.m., Bally Sports Sun).

“I think that we’re searching and trying to find it. It’s not for the lack of intent or trying to make the right play, but something just needs to break the seal. It feels like some nights, you got to knock something off of the rim and just open it up.”

The Heat’s three-point shooting has been shaky lately, but it still owns the NBA’s 10th-best team three-point percentage this season at 37.3 percent.

Instead, the bigger issue has been the Heat’s inability to generate enough shots at the rim (one of the most efficient shots in the sport) and the Heat’s struggles to convert on the shots at the rim that it does create.

The Heat is attempting 28.5 percent of its field-goal attempts from around the rim this season (third-fewest in the NBA), according to Cleaning the Glass. And the Heat is shooting just 62.3 percent from within the restricted area this season (fifth-worst in the NBA), according to NBA tracking stats.

Among the seven teams in the league who have generated fewer than 25 shots from within the restricted area per game this season, only the Memphis Grizzlies have shot a worst percentage from that area of the court than the Heat. That’s not good company for the Heat, considering the Grizzlies entered Monday with the NBA’s seventh-worst record at 18-32 this season.

The Heat closed Sunday’s loss to the Clippers just 16 of 27 (59.3 percent) at the rim, well below the league average for the season of 66.2 percent.

“We have to figure out how to make it flow, at the end of the day,” Heat center Bam Adebayo said of the team’s offense following Sunday’s defeat. “You have to make it flow or it’s not going to work. So for us, it’s just trying to figure out that flow and I feel like we’ll figure that out.”

The problem is the Heat’s roster doesn’t include many great finishers at the rim. That’s why the Heat also finished last regular season among the teams with the fewest shot attempts at the rim, but was a little better at finishing with the 18th-ranked shooting percentage from that area of the court at 65.7 percent.

This season, the only Heat rotation players who rank in the top half of the league at their position in terms of percentage of field-goal attempts that have come at the rim, according to Cleaning the Glass, are Jaime Jaquez Jr., Jimmy Butler, Caleb Martin and Terry Rozier.

And the only Heat rotation players who rank in the top of the league at their position in terms of shooting percentage at the rim this season, according to Cleaning the Glass, are Kevin Love, Josh Richardson, Robinson and Jaquez. And no Heat rotation player is ranked in the top fourth of the league at their position in this category.

“You can’t control that, whether the ball is going in,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said when asked about the team’s overall shooting struggles this season. “You control whether you’re getting shots in your wheelhouse. There are some things offensively we can do with better pace and better intention. That’s not exclusive to us, and we’ll work on that and we’ll get better.”

If the Heat needs a source of hope that it can still turn things around on offense this late in the season, it only has to look back at last season.

The Heat finished last regular season with the NBA’s 25th-ranked offensive rating and needed to qualify for the playoffs through the league’s play-in tournament. The Heat was still able to find enough solutions that postseason to become just the second No. 8 seed in league history to advance to the NBA Finals before losing to the Denver Nuggets in the championship series.

“You go back to that and you be like, ‘We were in a worst position last year,’” Adebayo said. “For the whole season, guys were out [with injuries] and not just half [the season]. So at this point, we’re better than we were last year and we just need to get in the film, really lock in and keep having communication and keep figuring out how we can win these games even if it’s in the mud.”