Scouting one-pager: Miami Heat (MIA)
2025-26 regular season · 82 games · 7,648 FGA. Auto-generated by scouting/build_onepager.py from public data; every number traceable to a gated pipeline in this repo. Shot pricing uses the 2023-24 shot-quality model, whose season-out transfer was validated in the backtest; shot-making is empirical-Bayes shrunk before it is allowed to drive a conclusion.
Terms
- PPS: Points per shot: total points on field-goal attempts divided by attempts. Free throws excluded.
- xPPS: Expected points per shot - the model's fair price of a shot diet: what an average shooter would score on the same attempts, judged from location and shot type alone, before knowing what went in.
- shot-making: Actual minus expected points per 100 shots: conversion above or below what the shot diet itself explains. Positive means making shots the model prices as hard.
- EB making: A player's shot-making after empirical-Bayes shrinkage: the observed number pulled toward the league mean in proportion to its sampling noise. The number to trust for projection.
- FGA: Field-goal attempts.
- RAPM: Regularized adjusted plus-minus: a ridge regression crediting each player with net points per 100 possessions while adjusting for the other nine players on the floor.
- net_100: Net points per 100 possessions: 100 x plus-minus / possessions; sits on the same scale as the NBA's published net rating.
- rush: Shots in the final four seconds of a period - the desperation window where both shot selection and execution collapse.
- empirical Bayes: Estimate the spread of true skill across the league from the data, then pull each individual's noisy estimate toward the league mean in proportion to its noise.
- shrinkage weight: The fraction of an observed number that survives empirical-Bayes regression: 1 means fully trusted, 0 means replaced by the league mean.
- CI: Confidence interval.
Keys
- Tyler Herro is a genuine shot-maker: +7.2 pts/100 above expectation after empirical-Bayes shrinkage; contest even the bad shots.
- Best shot diet: Kel'el Ware (1.24 xPPS on 649 FGA). The value is where the shots come from; deny the spot, not the release.
- Their most-used five that wins its minutes: A. Wiggins - N. Powell - B. Adebayo - T. Herro - D. Mitchell (+4.2/100 over 287 possessions).
Shot profile vs league
| MIA | League | Δ |
|---|
| PPS (points per shot) | 1.084 | 1.091 | -0.008 |
| xPPS, the shot-diet price* | 1.091 | 1.097 | -0.005 |
| Shot-making, pts/100 vs model | -0.8 | -0.5 | -0.2 |
| Rim share | 28.8% | 28.4% | +0.4 pp |
| Mid-range share | 7.5% | 10.0% | -2.5 pp |
| Three share | 40.6% | 41.5% | -0.9 pp |
| Corner share of threes | 25.8% | 25.9% | -0.1 pp |
| Final-4s (rush) shot share | 1.6% | 1.8% | -0.3 pp |
* xPPS prices where they shoot from, independent of whether shots fell: the stable, scoutable part of the profile (year-over-year r ≈ .9).
Personnel (top 8 by volume)
| Player | FGA | PPS | xPPS (diet) | Making/100 | EB making | RAPM/100 |
|---|
| Bam Adebayo | 1,145 | 0.995 | 1.090 | -9.5 | -7.8 | +4.2 |
| Jaime Jaquez Jr. | 915 | 1.078 | 1.046 | +3.2 | +2.4 | +1.9 |
| Norman Powell | 895 | 1.115 | 1.059 | +5.6 | +4.0 | -0.6 |
| Andrew Wiggins | 821 | 1.118 | 1.074 | +4.4 | +3.0 | -1.4 |
| Kel'el Ware | 649 | 1.202 | 1.241 | -3.9 | -2.9 | -1.6 |
| Pelle Larsson | 559 | 1.102 | 1.118 | -1.6 | -1.3 | +0.4 |
| Davion Mitchell | 533 | 1.148 | 1.053 | +9.5 | +5.7 | +2.4 |
| Tyler Herro | 515 | 1.122 | 1.003 | +11.9 | +7.2 | -1.9 |
EB making = shot-making regressed to league mean by reliability: the number to trust. RAPM from the opponent-adjusted 2025-26 lineup model (±≈3/100 CI at a season of minutes; treat as descriptive).
Most-used lineups
| Lineup | Min | Poss | Net/100 |
|---|
| A. Wiggins - B. Adebayo - T. Herro - D. Mitchell - P. Larsson | 182 | 391 | +2.8 |
| A. Wiggins - N. Powell - B. Adebayo - D. Mitchell - K. Ware | 142 | 310 | -0.3 |
| A. Wiggins - N. Powell - B. Adebayo - T. Herro - D. Mitchell | 126 | 287 | +4.2 |