Dwyane Wade is shooting 29.2 percent from three in the playoffs. Which is better than he shot during the regular season. It is not what he does well.
So the fact Miami’s final play of overtime devolved into a Wade pull-up three to win it was poor. Bad design, not great execution, just not putting their best player in a position to play to his strengths. Of course, Wade missed the three, Boston won 93-91 and this series is knotted up 2-2 heading back to South Beach.
Look at that last play in detail.
Before it, Miami had made a good play. They knew Boston had a foul to give so Wade attacked hard a couple times to force the Celtics to use it. He drew a reach in foul and the result was Miami had 14 seconds to make something work — if you go early and not late you have time for an offensive rebound or to reset if needed (the risk is you score and your opponent gets the last shot, but I’d rather defend a last shot than try to make one).
Wade pops out off a down screen and gets the ball out high, and the first option was for Mario Chalmers, winding from the weak side off a couple picks, to try and pop free out by the arc on the right side, but Keyon Dooling read it well and cut the pass off. Friend of this blog Sebastian Pruiti points out at Grantland that Wade blew this by not coming back over hard to create the proper angle.
Then Wade waits for Shane Battier to set a pick, which switches Marquis Daniels on to him as a defender. Miami isolates Wade with shooters around the arc. Wade drives hard to his left, stops up and leans back right, watches Daniel go by on the fly-by block attempt, then takes the three that misses.
So many questions. First, should Wade shooting a three rather than attacking be in the script? It’s a clean look, but not what he does well. The Heat offense improved this season in part because Wade and LeBron James stopped shooing so many threes. (LeBron was fouled out at this point and couldn’t take, or pass off, the last shot).
Why doesn’t Wade just lean in on the Daniels fly-by and draw the foul? Well, trusting the officials in this game might have been a mistake. Why the three to win when he had to twist his body a little to get it off, leading to that awkward leg-kick shot?
It’s all moot. He got a look that the Heat will say they can live with. He missed it. Frankly, that was better than the disaster of a LeBron iso that they ran at the end of regulation, one that resulted into an ill-fated jump off to Haslem. But that doesn’t make it good.
But maybe Doc Rivers was right anyway, “Red wasn’t going to let that go in.”
