It’s been five years since Chris Bosh found himself in a truly competitive race for a playoff spot. The 2009-2010 season, his last as Toronto’s franchise player and his last before having LeBron James as a teammate, saw his team finish 40-42 and a game behind Chicago for the 8th seed in the Eastern Conference.
In his first year without James since that ’09-’10 season, Bosh and his teammates will now compete in a tight playoff race for the first time in half a decade.
“We’re in a 30-game sprint now,” Bosh told SheridanHoops after Sunday’s All-Star Game at Madison Square Garden. “So now that we’ve gotten this out of the way, we can have a couple more days off and now we can kinda just really focus in and lock in what we need to lock in on, get healthy, get out there and compete.”
It’s been a year of transition for Miami after James’ departure. Stylistically, the Heat transformed themselves into a plodding team offensively that’s relied on strong scoring defense, Dwyane Wade’s inconsistent health, and, above all else, Bosh’s versatile selflessness that made him so highly regarded as Toronto’s lead dog five years ago.
Aside from Mario Chalmers and Hassan Whiteside (who didn’t begin the season on the team), every Miami player that has started at least five games has missed at least five games due to injury, contributing to the team’s 22-30 start. So keeping the team on the floor together is something Bosh homed in on for what can improve for Miami.
“Just continue to build continuity, that’s very important,” Bosh said, “and really sharpen up what we’re good at and drop the things that we’re not good at.”
Miami’s pace, its estimated number of possessions per 48 minutes, is the lowest in the NBA, according to Basketball-Reference, which implies a slow style of play. This is the fourth straight season that Miami’s league pace ranking has been lower than the season before, from 16th in 2011-2012 down to last now.
Bosh is averaging more than 21 points and seven rebounds per game with this pace, but a byproduct has been the team’s lack of scoring offense. Its 92.8 points per game ranks 28th in the NBA. Last year, Miami had the fourth slowest pace in the NBA but the 12th ranked scoring offense. The team’s efficiency has dropped, according to ESPN.com, from 1.34 points per shot last year (first in the NBA) to 1.23 this year, still good for 8th.
“I don’t care about pace, it’s more so about winning games, rebounding and defense,” Bosh said. “Pace to me means you’re shooting quick shots. You can’t really zero in on that, we’re going to have to zero in on what we’re good at.”
Miami’s strong defense, it ranks second in the league in scoring defense, has been sort of a mirage. Its defensive rating ranks 24th in the league with nearly 108 points allowed per 100 possessions in large part because of its rebounding, which is last in the NBA for the third straight season.
Even with Whiteside, who’s been a revelation for the team with his 8.6 rebounds per game and 64.2 percent shooting, Miami was still 23rd in the NBA in rebounds per game in January and is currently 28th in February.
“We’re really relying on our whole team,” Bosh said. He mentioned Luol Deng, the team’s most consistent 3-point shooter, Chalmers and Norris Cole as players the team will really count on down the stretch.
“We’re counting on those guys to play at a really high level all the time,” Bosh said.
Miami is just one game clear of the Brooklyn Nets for the final playoff spot in the East, and Bosh said the team should be playing loose despite how tight the race is.
“We don’t have anything to lose, so moving forward we should just go out there relaxed with no pressure and just play ball,” Bosh said. “Everybody is going to have to play at a very high level and we’re going to have to do that together.”
With injuries costing Wade 17 games already- he’s expected to return for the team’s first game after the All-Star break on Friday against New York- Miami hasn’t played especially well with Bosh trying to do most of the heavy lifting by himself.
If the Heat can shore up their scoring and rebounding with a healthy Wade and improved continuity, they can shrug off the slow start during this “30-game sprint” and Bosh can accomplish what he could not in his most recent full season without James: A trip to the playoffs in a closely contested race for the final spot.
Shlomo Sprung is a national columnist for SheridanHoops who focuses on analytics, profiles and features. He is also the web editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. A 2011 graduate of Columbia University’s Journalism School, he has previously worked for the New York Knicks, The Sporting News, Business Insider and other publications. You should follow him on Twitter.