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THE DEFENDING CHAMPION Miami Heat officially signed sharpshooters Ray Allen and Rashard Lewis to contracts yesterday, which could be really bad news for the rest of the league.
In Allen and Lewis, the Heat add two 3-point marksmen who can stretch the floor and open up driving lanes for Dwyane Wade and LeBron James on the interior.
In fact, if the Heat run an undersized lineup featuring Chris Bosh as the center, along with James, Wade, Lewis and Allen, they might just be untouchable. Tom Haberstroh of ESPN crunched the numbers from the last two seasons, and when Miami employed a two wing lineup, the Heat were shockingly effective.
The Heat played a two wing lineup for just 86 minutes the past two seasons, but Miami outscored its opponents by 89 points using such a lineup. Most alarming is just how efficient the small lineup was. In those 86 minutes, the Heat had an offensive efficiency of 127.4 (league average was 103) and a defensive efficiency of 79.9 (league average was 103).
Simply put, the Heat were unstoppable. 83 minutes is a very small sample size, of course, but Erik Spoelstra is a stats-oriented coach, so will surely be looking to experiment with Chris Bosh at center more often in the future.
You can read Haberstroh’s full report here.
