This summer, compared to the Lakers' big spending in the offseason, the Heat quietly completed the reinforcement. Recently, heat star Jimmy Butler in an interview with GQ magazine reporter Christopher Cason, mentioned the ultimate goal of this season, Butler replied without hesitation: it is in the spirit of the championship. Looking at the Heat's roster, potential rookies and powerful veterans are all in the lineup: Taylor Hiero, Duncan Robinson, Adebayo, Kyle Lowry, PJ Tucker, Oladipo and Jimmy Butler, making the Heat's combat strength several notches higher than in previous years. In particular, the addition of small steel cannon Lowry and Shoe King Tucker has made the Heat's defense one of the strongest in the league. Even the Bucks, who have the alphabet brother, and the Nets of the Big Three, do not dare to play a guarantee against the Heat.
But some people rejoice and some people are sad, and with the arrival of Lowry, dragic, a 35-year-old veteran who has played for the Heat for 6 years, was sent to the Toronto Raptors. He dedicated his most precious time to the Heat, having scored in double figures in 28 consecutive playoff games, third in team history, behind Dwyane Wade and LeBron James. Later in his career, Dragic accepted the team's arrangement to bring a substitute line-up. Although he no longer has the speed and vitality of his youth, he still uses his valuable experience on the field to help the team win and help the young people in the team grow up early. Today we will talk about the various aspects of Dragic's ability in the Heat.
<h3>Stable score</h3>
Looking back at the 2014-15 season, Dragic had just moved from the Suns to the Miami Heat, and although his run-in with the team was not enough, he averaged 34.8 minutes in the 26 regular season games he played for the Heat, contributing 16.6 points, 3.4 rebounds, 5.4 assists and 1.1 steals. Among them, the shooting, three-point and free throw shooting rates were 50.2%, 32.9%, and 80.8%, respectively. Although the outside shot is somewhat unsatisfactory, it is fair to say that Dragic's performance is among all the point guards in the league, which is at the upper middle level. In the following seasons, Dragic's offensive firepower continued to rise, and by the 2016-17 season, his average score per game exceeded the 20-point mark, and the skill of three-point shooting was also practiced, from less than 33% to 40.5%, an increase of nearly 8 percentage points. To know that there is a well-established rule in the league, to measure whether a player is a good shooter, is to see if his three-point shooting rate has exceeded 40%, it is clear that Dragic has done it through his own perseverance outside the field.
But with the passage of time, Dragic's athleticism and competitive level have declined, and he can no longer play at a very high level. But as a decades-old veteran of the league, he was still able to bring some help to the team last season. He responded to the call of the coaching staff and retired to the second line with a substitute line-up. Averaging 26.7 minutes per game, he can still deliver a record of 13.4 points, 3.4 rebounds, 4.4 assists and 0.7 steals per game. He's shooting 57.1 percent from the field and can average 2.2 three-pointers per game with a 37.1 percent shooting percentage.
<h3>Scoring mode parsing</h3>
Fans who like to watch Heat games will notice Dragic's importance to the team. He can often use his superb dribbling skills and very agile rhythmic changes, and a single acceleration can pass the defender and impact the inside line to complete the finish. Or use the teammate's blocking and dismantling, between the human seams, the ball is accurately delivered to the hands of the teammates. You can also quickly complete the conversion offense with the speed advantage under the defensive rebound. Let's analyze Dragic's usual scoring method in turn.
As a good point guard, Dragic is also a scoring master who is good at using blocking and dismantling. At that time, the Heat had a big man with a high quality of blocking and dismantling like Adebayor and Meyers Leonard, and the ball blocking and dismantling became one of the conventional arsenals, according to high-level statistics, 39.4% of Dragic's offense came from holding the ball to block the demolition, which was converted into an average of 6.1 attacks per game that relied on teammates to block and dismantle, and its round gain was 0.94 points, and the shooting rate reached 50.4%, which exceeded the 73.3% of players in the league. In the fight with his teammates, he can not only complete the shot with the block, but also accelerate into the inside line.
The second is fixed-point shooting, as a guard, and is an NBA-level player, his shooting ability must be excellent. Of course, Ben Simmons is a special case. More than a decade into the league, Dragic has already engraved the shooting in the DNA, thousands of shooting practice, is the biggest guarantee that he put the ball into the basket. His 15.7 percent offense came from point-and-shoot shots, his round gain was 1.06 points, and his true shooting percentage was 54.5 percent, two figures that outpaced the 69.2 percent of players in the league.
Finally, hand-to-hand, Dragic, as one of the best ball handlers in the league, is also very good at no-ball skills. 12.7 percent of his offense is done by hand-to-hand, with a true shooting percentage of 44.6 percent and a round gain of 0.97 points, which is also more than the 64.4 percent of players in the league. Taking advantage of the speed advantage and rich experience on the field, Dragic can always tear apart the opponent's defense and complete the finish between hand passes.
<h3>Master of Control</h3>
After Saying that Dragic's excellent scoring ability, his ability to connect teams is even more powerful. During his time at the Sun, he was given the title of "Little Nash", which shows from the side that his organizational ability is also excellent. Although Dragic averaged only 4.4 assists per game last season, it is not bad to have such a performance considering that he is a substitute for the team and the limitation of playing time. His pass is not as aggressive and ornamental as White Chocolate's, more of a breakthrough score, a long pass and a quick attack. He had an assist rate of 29.1% last season, in other words, Dragic gave 30% of the ball to his teammates while holding the ball and completed the finish. Every time you pass the ball, you have one more chance to make a mistake, but as the experienced number one, his assist-to-turnover ratio is well controlled at around 2.0.
He often uses his teammates to block and dismantle, the first time is not to think about scoring, but to watch the running position of his teammates, thinking about how to pass the ball comfortably to the hands of his teammates. People like Duncan Robinson and Taylor Hiro can often receive a breakthrough from Dragic from outside the three-point line to complete a very comfortable shot. In the previous Heat's defensive line, Hiro and Nunn were biased towards scoring, and in the team's decisive moment, they all moved out of Dragic to control the situation on the court.