Remember when Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra visited Chip Kelly at the University of Oregon and came back preaching "pace and space?" He made that trip in the summer of 2011, a couple of months after the Heat fell apart in the Finals against the Dallas Mavericks . As transformative it was for that version of the team, though, recent ones have had a decidedly different style. From 2019-20 (i.e. Year 1 of the Jimmy Butler era) to last season, Miami ranked 29th, 26th, 24th, 27th, 29th and 28th in offensive pace, per Inpredictable .
Now that the Butler era is over, Spoelstra and his staff are once again thinking quick. "We had some rules during the practice, like you got to get the ball over half-court in four seconds or it's a turnover and stuff like that," Miami forward Nikola Jo