Riley says Heat’s fun on the run might need to be reconsidered, hints at Spoelstra summit

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May 3, 2026 - 14:38

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Riley says Heat’s fun on the run might need to be reconsidered, hints at Spoelstra summit

MIAMI — The novelty of playing at a league-leading pace undeniably added juice to the Miami Heat’s 2025-26 season. And yet, at the end, Erik Spoelstra’s team seemingly was running on fumes when it came to results in the win column.

So as the Heat reset, with the draft lottery up next on Sunday in Chicago, the question is whether to build on what was installed last season or whether to reset to something more traditional on offense.

On one hand, the Heat closed the season first in pace and second in scoring to the Denver Nuggets (a team that then went out in the first round of the playoffs). On the other hand, even in closing the season No. 12 in offensive rating, the Heat were No. 17 in offensive rating in fourth quarters, No. 17 in overall offensive rating after the All-Star break and No. 20 in offensive rating over their final 15 games of the regular season.

For his part, Heat President Pat Riley last week indicated a middle ground might be required, citing end-of-clock situations when the Heat’s best scorers need to have the ball in their hands.

“For the most part with this pace-and-space game, you run it up in four or five seconds,” Riley said. “You’re trying to get a shot in the first eight seconds of the shot clock. And then you got the middle eight seconds to try to create something for anybody and everybody. And then you got the last eight seconds of the shot clock, and I think there should be a little more caution there as to who gets the ball, who gets the shot, and all that stuff.

“And so, when you develop a philosophy about how you’re going to play, and Spo has, and I have done this many times . . . the players that you paid, you’ve got to create value for them.”

As in get them the ball. As in utilize them to attack the opposition’s weakest defenders, just as opposing teams have gone at the Heat’s Tyler Herro and Norman Powell.

While the offense adopted this past season attacked mismatches, it wasn’t always the Heat’s primary scorers doing the attacking.

“It’s just in a different way than the traditional call up the weakest defender and exploit it that way,” Spoelstra said the final week of the season. “That’s not really a strength of this roster, anyway. That’s kind of why we went to this. But we still can get to matchups just in a different way.”

The approach allowed the Heat to close with 10 different players as leading scorers over the regular season’s 82 games, with 11 scoring 20 or more points in games.

But equal opportunity didn’t necessarily equate to best opportunity, with the Heat finishing in 10th place in the East for a second consecutive season, missing the playoffs for the first time in seven years.

“So when you get on that road as a coach and develop a philosophy about how you’re going to play,” Riley said, “then you’ve got to be committed to it. And then the plan and the system whereby you set up to execute that philosophy, if it’s not working, you’ve got to tweak it, you’ve got to change it, whatever those changes are.”

To Riley, in his metaphorical manner, it comes down to seeing the light.

“I always use the analogy of a traffic light,” he said. “And if you look at the traffic light, it’s red, it’s caution, it’s green. And I’ve always believed in the red, caution, and then green — which red is, OK, this is how we’re going to play. I’ve got to be cautionary in the middle of the offense. And then green is you let it fly, you let it run. That’s the traffic light turned upside down — green, caution, and red. It’s turned upside down. And that’s how we play.

“If we turn the traffic light upside down, and we are running at pace at the beginning of the season, it was great. But you have to make adjustments to that with the players that you have and be a little more cautionary. And then at the end of the shot clock, you’ve got to be almost red and make sure that Bam (Adebayo) gets it, Tyler gets it, Powell gets it, whatever.”

So, no, not equal opportunity at moments of truth, no matter how constant the movement, how stressed the pace.

“American free-enterprise basketball in the last eight seconds is BS,” Riley said. “You get it to your guy. You’ve got to get it to your guys. And so that’s my philosophy.

“So Spo and I have talked about this throughout the course of the season, and I think you’ve got to make some adjustments.”