Heat need more offseason commitment from Goran Dragic
MIAMI — No matter how well he was playing at the end of the season, including an unforgettable Game 7 explosion against the Hornets, Goran Dragic knows he fell short of the massive contract he signed with
the Heat a year ago.
And he knows that’s his fault, starting with showing up to training camp out of shape. That was eight months ago, but it lingered in his brain all year and sent him into the offseason determined not to let that happen again.
“I was not concentrating enough to put the work in,” he acknowledged. “This summer, everything has calmed down and I can finally enjoy it and put a lot of work in on basketball and my body to get in good shape.”
It was clear from the onset he hadn’t maintained his conditioning and that problem bled into the start of the season. That issue, combined with the adjustment of functioning in a half-court offense centered around
Dwyane Wade and
Chris Bosh, led to a dismal
first 27 games in which he averaged 11.1 points and shot 43.5 percent from the field.
He eventually turned that around and got reasonably close to the previous year’s numbers, sparking Miami to a strong second half when it shifted to an uptempo offense, but it didn’t erase the self-inflicted frustration of the first few months.
For Dragic’s part, his life was teeming with distractions at the time. He was still looking for a home in Miami after being traded mid-season from Phoenix, and
his wife endured complications with her pregnancy. His boss tolerated that explanation once, but he won’t do it again.
“Now he’s settled,” Pat Riley said at the end of the season. “I said to him, ‘You can’t use that excuse next year. That’s over. We already gave you the ‘I wasn’t settled and I wasn’t in shape and all of this.’ He’s got a free summer. He’s happy and healthy. His No. 1 objective is to come back in October in better shape and a better player.”
That’s nothing short of a demand, and the Heat are intent on making sure he meets it. Dragic and coach Erik Spoelstra mapped out an offseason training program last season, and the team will enhance its $85 million investment by occasionally sending staffers to Slovenia to conduct workouts. Dragic also will train with his national team, a staple of his offseason that he bypassed last year.
What he accomplishes over the next few months will have a major impact on the upcoming season, especially with Riley and Spoelstra sounding increasingly inclined to make him the focal point of a fast-paced attack. While that is far from solidified and won’t be until free agency wraps up — no need to make concrete plans
when the hope of signing Kevin Durant still flickers — it looks like the obvious approach after watching Dragic run once Bosh went down.
“If Goran Dragic is on your basketball team, you want to leverage his strengths as much as possible,” Spoelstra said.
The Heat’s post-Bosh success was diluted slightly by a lighter schedule, but their net efficiency rating went from plus-0.8 to plus-5.8 points per 100 possessions and they ran the sixth-best offense in the league. Dragic thrived at 17.3 points and 6.7 assists per game while shooting 48.5 percent.
He showed serious improvement defensively, too, after many people assumed that wasn’t a priority based off his years with Phoenix. Coaches and teammates praised his progress all year, and, on average, he held the man he guarded 3.6 percentage points below what he normally shot.
“When you play for some team that people think isn’t good defensively, they put you in that basket, too,” he said, referring to the Suns. “I always had the same desire to play defense, but here it’s more team defense, and the players are more accountable and help each other. The teams I played previously for, we never worked so hard on that end of the floor. I want to get better defensively and I still think next year I can.”
The only facets that never fully came around for Dragic were his 3-pointers and his half-court proficiency.
He came into the season as a 36.1 percent 3-point shooter, but shot a career-low 31.2. He was at 25 percent (third-worst in the NBA) through Christmas.
There was a stretch in January when he looked more comfortable operating in the half-court, but his issues resurfaced when the pace slowed in the playoffs as it almost always does. He had three games of 25 points or more and three of 11 or fewer.
“He’s got to improve certain areas of his game,” Riley said. “He’s 30, and I’ve seen players at 32 or 33 get better at certain parts of their game… He’s gotta be a player that can create and score when there’s no space. That’s part of the game also.”
