When did Wade become so good off ball?

[Fire Colangelo]

Was watching a couple Heat clips from 2012-2014 last night, amazed me how the defender almost never doubled off of Wade, even outside of the three point line. Every time they did, Wade cut backdoor and LeBron found him wide open in the paint.

I have honestly NEVER seen a perimeter player get so many open shots in the paint off of cuts.

When did Wade get so good off the ball? Was he always a good off ball player? I remember him being very ball dominant before LeBron went to Miami, did he learn to be effective off the ball when playing with Shaq? Or did he adjust to LeBron's play style?

I'd put Wade on the same tier as Ray Allen or Rip as off ball players tbh, dude's amazing.

[lilteapot]

Just another case of Lebron making his teammates better. Makes Bosh add 3pt range to his game, and makes Wade a great off-ball player.

[Real14]

By LeQuit leaving the team

[riseagainst]

Just another case of Lebron making his teammates better. Makes Bosh add 3pt range to his game, and makes Wade a great off-ball player.

so many implications to this. Well done, intentional or not.
:roll:
:applause:

[lilteapot]

so many implications to this. Well done, intentional or not.
:roll:
:applause:
No implication. I'm not a poor sap that wants to slight Lebron at any chance he gets. Lebron legitimately made them improve their games so now they're more complete ball players.

[Fire Colangelo]

Just another case of Lebron making his teammates better. Makes Bosh add 3pt range to his game, and makes Wade a great off-ball player.

That just means they adapted to LeBron's game. LeBron didn't teach Wade how to play off ball, LeBron didn't teach Bosh how to shoot 3's. Bosh learned to shoot 3's for the benefit of the team, same with Wade. That's greatness on their part, has absolutely nothing to do with LeBron.

[lilteapot]

That just means they adapted to LeBron's game. LeBron didn't teach Wade how to play off ball, LeBron didn't teach Bosh how to shoot 3's. Bosh learned to shoot 3's for the benefit of the team, same with Wade. That's greatness on their part, has absolutely nothing to do with LeBron.

How are you so sure? My sources tell me Lebron spent hours last season in the gym with Bosh having 3pt shooting drills.

I'm obviously kidding, but how are you going to say it has nothing to do with Lebron if they adapted to his game? It made them get better in those areas, obviously Lebron didn't sit down with them and teach them.

[Smoke117]

He's always been good off the ball. He was even vocal about wanting to play off the ball more before Bron/Bosh showed up. He always had to run the offense (like he is basically back to doing again now that Bron is gone) as he was the teams only playmaker. Were not going to see a lot of his off the ball prowess this season since neither Chalmers or Cole can be counted on to run the offense for very long.

[Mass Debator]

Lebrand of basketball forces you to adapt to him because Bron doesn't know how or doesn't want to modify his own game. When he doesn't have the ball, he puts up a 2011 fit. Obviously someone had to change their game for the sake of winning and not for the stats.

On the other hand, Wade always preferred playing off-ball. He didn't like the point guard duties even though he was highly capable of demonstrating that skill-set of his. IMO, he's more dangerous off-ball anyway because he can pick his spots easily and be in triple threat position or cuts to the basket where he can finish like the best of them.

[f0und]

ive been watching him since college. he played alot of off ball then. for most of his nba career he was the primary playmaker. when lebron joined miami, it was an easy adjustment. it also helps that he's a smart player. and one thing is for sure, wade was the only one that could adjust. thank goodness his iq isnt as limited as bron's.

[GrapeApe]

Someone posted an article recently about how Wade is given defensive attention and shadowed off the ball as if he was a deadly 3 point shooter. He has remarkable cutting instincts and knows how to exploit any little crease in the defense. He's become more adept over the last few years but he's been doing it his whole career.

[SamuraiSWISH]

He was always decent but conceding to LeBron ball in 2012 really cemented it as a necessity or staple of his game in order to be productive at a championship level for the Heat.

[dubeta]

LeBron ball helped boost Wade's stats these last few years

So the stats about Wade's off ball game may deceive you

[sportjames23]

No implication. I'm not a poor sap that wants to slight Lebron at any chance he gets. Lebron legitimately made them improve their games so now they're more complete ball players.


dubeta's alt confirmed. :oldlol:

[aj1987]

http://www.insidehoops.com/forum/showthread.php?t=356532

It's a bit long, but definitely worth the read.


"And I'm just like, 'Damn, did I just start shooting 3s and I didn't know about it?'"

What Wade was describing was the dynamic of a floor-spacer who spreads the defense thin, a characteristic almost exclusively held by 3-point sharpshooters. Ask an NBA coach to name the best floor-spacers in the league and chances are you'll hear names like Kyle Korver, Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson. You do not leave these guys on the perimeter and live to tell about it. In the domain of floor-spacing, shooters rule the day.

Wade, however, is the quirk in the system. The statisticians at STATS LLC have crunched the SportVU data to come up with two advanced metrics which they've called "gravity score" and "distraction score." By tracking how the defense shifts at every instance in the game, gravity score attempts to quantify how much defensive attention a player receives when he's off the ball. In other words, a player's gravitational pull on the opposing defense.
Warning: Spoiler! (Click to hide)

Dwyane Wade has been great at many things on the basketball court. But one skill has always escaped him: 3-point shooting.

This isn't breaking news to anyone who has followed his tenure in the NBA. Wade is a career 29 percent 3-point shooter, a sorry figure that places him 311th among the 315 players in NBA history who have shot at least 1,000 3-pointers.

But Wade has adjusted. Starting in the lockout-shortened 2011-12 season, Wade kicked the habit for the most part and generally expelled the 3-point shot from his regular jump-shooting diet. In 2013-14, Wade's propensity for shooting (and making) the 3 hit a career nadir; he took only 32 trifectas and made only nine during the entire regular season. Five years ago, he might have stumbled into making nine treys in a single week. Those days are long gone.

But here's the crazy thing about all that: Opposing defenses still glued themselves to Wade off the ball like he's the next Steve Kerr.

This isn't just a theory; there is quantifiable evidence of this phenomenon. According to exclusive STATS LLC data provided to ESPN Insider from cutting-edge SportVU cameras that track the movement of the ball and every player last season, defenses stuck to Wade on the perimeter as if he were an elite 3-point shooter.

The question is, why?

During one of last week's practices, Wade was on the Miami Heat's practice court upstairs at AmericanAirlines Arena. The team has been struggling to find its identity in the wake of LeBron James' sudden departure this summer, and Wade had just wrapped up a long, arduous practice meticulously going over coach Erik Spoelstra's defensive principles. Wade and his teammates are tired, and the general mood feels grim after a string of hard losses.

But in this moment, Wade is laughing. He's giggling because for so long he thought he was going crazy, seeing something on the court that had to be a figment of his imagination. Opposing defenses just won't leave him alone off the ball. To him, this didn't make any sense. He's not a 3-point shooter.

"Lately, I've been seeing everybody start doing this more," Wade said as he turned his back pretending to be a defender gluing himself to a perimeter shooter. "And I'm just like, 'Damn, did I just start shooting 3s and I didn't know about it?'"

To Wade's elation, the data from SportVU cameras corroborated his story. He wasn't seeing things; defenses were really playing him that way.

What Wade was describing was the dynamic of a floor-spacer who spreads the defense thin, a characteristic almost exclusively held by 3-point sharpshooters. Ask an NBA coach to name the best floor-spacers in the league and chances are you'll hear names like Kyle Korver, Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson. You do not leave these guys on the perimeter and live to tell about it. In the domain of floor-spacing, shooters rule the day.

Wade, however, is the quirk in the system. The statisticians at STATS LLC have crunched the SportVU data to come up with two advanced metrics which they've called "gravity score" and "distraction score." By tracking how the defense shifts at every instance in the game, gravity score attempts to quantify how much defensive attention a player receives when he's off the ball. In other words, a player's gravitational pull on the opposing defense.

Distraction score takes this one step further and quantifies how much a player's defender is willing to help off him to stop the ball handler. If a lights-out shooter is standing in the corner, his defender will rarely leave him to stop a penetrating point guard. Coaches have noticed this, but SportVU quantifies it, through comprehensive optical tracking and innovative algorithms.

http://i.imgur.com/Fe0hKSn.jpg
I wanted to examine which players performed strongly in both metrics so I could identify the NBA's true floor-spacers. So I blended the two metrics together to create a composite metric, which I've called "respect rating."

Now, this is where it gets interesting. Flipping through the leaders in respect rating is like glancing at a list of 3-point contest candidates. There's Kevin Durant. Predictably, Korver's name shows up high on the list. So do Curry and Thompson. Ray Allen. J.J. Redick. You name the sharpshooter ... he's there.

But oddly enough, so is Wade. He is the anomaly, the lone floor-spacer who ignores 3s altogether.

Dwyane WadeCourtesy of Tom HaberstrohThe newly created "respect rating" metric.

As illustrated above, Wade converted 0.2 3-pointers every 36 minutes on the court last season, which is remarkably low for someone ranked in the top 25 of respect rating. On average, the other 24 players made far more trifectas than Wade, about 2.2 3s every 36 minutes. Wade was unique in this sense. In fact, no wing player with fewer than 0.5 3-pointers every 36 minutes even cracked the top 100 in respect rating. Tyreke Evans, Shaun Livingston and Tony Allen? All nowhere near the upper echelon.

But then there's Wade.

"I don't think anybody has ever called me that term -- a floor-spacer -- before," Wade says. "But honestly I've always known that I'm a floor-spacer, just in a different way."

So what makes Wade different? Why do defenses treat Wade like he's an elite 3-point shooter even though he's not?

"They're always up on me," Wade says. "I always wonder why."

The answer to this riddle is not simply that Wade scores a lot of points. It's how he gets his points that matters. More specifically, he's a deadly off-ball threat not because he's a 3-point shooter, but because he's a lethal cutter.

The mystery starts to reveal itself when you look at the Synergy numbers. Since losing the 2011 Finals, Wade says he has dedicated himself to cutting off the ball more for easy buckets. Not surprisingly, the data backs this up. According to Synergy's video tracking, Wade has accumulated 497 points on cuts off the ball, which is 100 more points than anyone else in the league over that time.
Dwyane WadeCourtesy of Tom Haberstroh

What's clear is that Wade is indeed a floor-spacer, but he does it by cutting, not shooting.

And SportVU has detected that defenses are programming against it. Through their algorithms, SportVU has found that Wade pulls his defender away from the ball handler. Last season, Wade ranked 21st in the league in respect rating, which, interestingly enough, places him even higher than James. Part of the reason: James is not quite the same cutter off the ball as Wade.

"I think once I became a dynamic cutter, then it became a part of the scouting report," Wade says. "If you turn your head and go help ... boom, I'm cutting backdoor."

On the practice floor, Wade put on an impromptu demonstration all by himself. He acted like a coach, moving around the perimeter and angling himself in different ways to demonstrate how defenses used to guard him compared to how they've guarded him more recently. Before he developed his off-ball cutting game, his defender used to shade off of him on the perimeter, sinking into the paint and keeping a close eye on the ball. "Now," Wade shouted as he slid from the paint to the 3-point arc, "they will guard me like this."

Wade's gravitational pull has gotten so impactful that he began to use it against his opposition.

"There have been a lot of times where I tell my teammates, 'Just drive on my side! They're not leaving me!'" Wade said, laughing.

Wade then backtracked a bit.

"Well, it's not like 'Ray Allen not leaving me,'" he says, "but it's my version of not leaving me."



Cont..

[aj1987]

Indeed, Allen placed higher than Wade in respect rating last season. Evidently, Wade's remarkable cutting abilities have not gone unnoticed. Heat.com writer Couper Moorhead has chronicled Wade's now-you-see-me-now-you-don't routine, dubbing it "ghost cuts." Last season, Wade scored 147 points on 97 plays ending in a cut, which translates to a ridiculously good payoff of 1.52 points per play. Only Dwight Howard was more efficient. By comparison, leaving Allen open for a catch-and-shoot play last season -- a defensive cardinal sin -- resulted in a 1.2-point average payoff. Wade's move was more deadly.

Wade stood in the corner and described how he works his magic. He preys on his defender as soon as he drifts away and loses focus.

"It's a feeling, but I'm watching my guy's eyes," Wade said. "I'm looking at the ball and where it's going, because sometimes my job is to run to the top of the key, but if I see he's out of position and he's just looking [toward the ball] ..."

Wade darted to the basket.

"... I'm gone."

But that was then, this is now. Can Wade be effective on cuts without James around anymore?

This is the elephant in the room. James is a passing virtuoso who can see above the defenses like he's observing from an air traffic control tower. Wade was always one pass away, and no player assisted Wade's field goals more than James last season.

It remains to be seen whether teams will be willing to pack the paint more when Wade is off the ball. Why respect his cutting game so much if James isn't around to deliver the pass? It turns out Wade would welcome the extra breathing room.

"That'd be great, fine by me," Wade says. "It'd give me a chance to get my 3 off."

Uh-oh. The career 29 percent 3-point shooter wants to shoot more 3s? Teams may be rooting for that counterpunch.

Wade has indeed taken more 3-pointers this preseason. He's shot 2.7 3-pointers every 36 minutes thus far in five games, which would be his highest rate since 2009-10. He made just 30 percent from deep that season.

"It's funny," he says, "because in the last couple games, I've hit a couple 3s and the guys who are guarding me have looked at me like, 'What?'"

The look typically comes from younger players who only know the James-era Wade.

"Y'all forgot that I did shoot 3s," Wade says. "Last three years I just haven't done it."

And that discipline worked in the Heat's favor. Oftentimes, there were better shots available thanks to James' presence. But now the exchange rate has been disrupted with James gone.

The Heat may have lost James' passing abilities, but they hope that free-agent signee Josh McRoberts can fill some of the void. McRoberts, who has missed the preseason with a toe injury, averaged 4.5 assists per game last season in Charlotte, which marks one of the highest rates in the league among big men. And much of those went to Gerald Henderson and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, two players who like to cut off the ball, like Wade.

This introduces an interesting wrinkle for Wade's season, and really the rest of his NBA career. Will he need to start shooting 3-pointers to maintain his gravitational pull as he ages? Or has the attention derived from his cutting game made the 3-pointer irrelevant?

Nonetheless, get ready for more 3-pointers from Wade.

"I'm going to shoot 'em more," Wade says, which sounds a little like a warning than a prediction. "It is what it is."

You have our full attention, Dwyane. Let's see how long it lasts.

now back to your regularly schduled Kobe talk.
..

[Fire Colangelo]

Oh wow ^

That was a really great read. :cheers:

[Dresta]

ive been watching him since college. he played alot of off ball then. for most of his nba career he was the primary playmaker. when lebron joined miami, it was an easy adjustment. it also helps that he's a smart player. and one thing is for sure, wade was the only one that could adjust. thank goodness his iq isnt as limited as bron's.
This.

He's just got great basketball instincts and natural feel for the game, is able to read and react to what defenses are throwing at him, but also to improvise and make decisions on the fly. Lebron knows one way of playing basketball and that's it - i'm not surprised he's struggling to adjust to playing with another guy who wants to run the offense, because he has literally never adjusted his game to accomadate others

[3ball]

this is one of the main reasons kyrie and lebron are unlikely to ever work it out - in reality, wade DID HAVE OFF-BALL capability...

while his bread-and-butter was still as the primary ballhandler - at least that was where he was the most dominant - the off-ball capability has always been there.

this is why lebron and wade DID END UP being able to work it out to the tune of two championships.

but i can't see kyrie ever doing what Wade did, because the same off-ball capability isn't there... you know who COULD pull a wade and play off-ball though?

[Bandito]

How are you so sure? My sources tell me Lebron spent hours last season in the gym with Bosh having 3pt shooting drills.

I'm obviously kidding, but how are you going to say it has nothing to do with Lebron if they adapted to his game? It made them get better in those areas, obviously Lebron didn't sit down with them and teach them.
What sources?:roll: