Raise The Roof or Raise The… Floor?

The FTX Arena is a loud place to be when the Heat are playing well and everything is rocking, and as we tick over into the second half of the season, the Heat are about to spend a lot of time playing at home. Playing at home in front of a rampant crowd gives the guys on the court a boost of intensity, and when the atmosphere is at its most raucous, the ceiling comes off.

But what about the Heat’s metaphorical ceiling?

As we hit the halfway mark in the Heat’s season, they sit with a 26-15 record. Good enough for second in the East, two games behind the leading Chicago Bulls. It’s important to note that Miami has played 25 of their first 41 games on the road, and many of them without their two best players; Bam Adebayo and Jimmy Butler. Victor Oladipo hasn’t even touched the hardwood this season. Before the season started, the majority of NBA fans and experts saw the Heat as a lock for the playoffs. Many would have bet that the Heat would seed in the top 4, and some would have claimed that they’d win the East outright. Whichever way you choose to look at it, Miami are a solid team specifically manufactured for playoff basketball. They’re filled from top to bottom with players who will compete and contribute every night, without fail. It’s safe to assume then that Miami’s ceiling is fairly lofty.

Every team in the NBA - and every team in any sport around the world for that matter - will want to have at least a few ceiling raisers on their roster. These are the players who move the needle, and can elevate a team from a good one, into a great one. Think about all those ‘One-Man Teams’ of the past, and how they were spearheaded by one talisman (Robin van Persie at Manchester United is one for the football [soccer] fans!). Players like that are worth their weight in gold; Jordan, Kobe, LeBron, to name a few. It’s probably fairly obvious then, that these are the players who make the headlines and take home the big bucks. And rightly so. Who better to take the game-winning buzzer-beater than your star? It’s what they’re paid to do.

While the Heat don’t have anyone on the same level as the three names mentioned above, they do have their own ceiling raisers. Jimmy Butler takes the team to another level when he’s on song, as does Bam Adebayo. So too does Tyler Herro when he’s scoring with as much ease as he has done of late.

But the most under-appreciated and underrated role on any sports team is that of the floor raiser. The ceiling raiser heightens the peak of a team. The floor raiser ensures the base level is as high as can be, as consistently as can be. Miami has not one, but two of these players.

The recent injury/covid crisis that has swept through the Heat locker room left a depleted squad; missing stars, important role players, and relying on two-way and 10-day players to be impactful. Miami have gone 13-8 since Adebayo, Butler and Lowry last played a game together in late November, and went 10-5 in December while they navigated through multiple injuries and covid-related absences to key rotation players. This period that could have derailed the Heat’s season, actually worked to give it a strong foundation, and that is thanks to the work of their floor raisers: Kyle Lowry and P.J. Tucker.

The floor raisers make everyone around them better, despite not necessarily lighting up the box score themselves. Kyle and P.J. embody this perfectly. Other than the occasional one game explosion, the stat-lines for Lowry (13.6 PPG, 4.5 RPG, 8.3 APG) and Tucker (8.2 PPG, 5.7 RPG, 2.2 APG) are never unbelievably noteworthy. The work they do in raising the bar of the team around them is almost impossible to quantify with numbers or stats. But consider this:

Does Caleb Martin go off for a career high against the champions if not for Kyle Lowry’s leadership? Does Max Strus hit 32 off the bench against the Magic, or Gabe Vincent set a new career high without Kyle and P.J.’s selflessness? No.

Star players are star players because they’re the ones that get you 30 a night. Floor raisers are the ones whose work might go unnoticed to the casual fan, but in a team gunning for a championship, having more than one floor raiser is just as, if not more, important than having more than one star.

It seems almost unfair of me to label Kyle Lowry as solely a floor raiser. Of course, his game is not pigeon-holed into that, but it’s what he’s best at. Over the course of his illustrious career he has shown many times he can be the first option, but his value comes when making those around him play above their level on a regular basis. Now in the twilight of his career, his experience and IQ of the game makes him the perfect man to play that role alongside P.J. Tucker who is the league’s most accurate 3-point shooter this year.

Having players like Lowry and Tucker who are actively unselfish, allows the ‘stars’ to do what they do best. It’s not to say that the likes of Butler, Adebayo, and Herro don’t impact the game in similar ways, because of course they do, it’s engrained into Heat culture. But the role of Lowry and Tucker is to make sure the supporting cast are playing to the best of their abilities every time they set foot on the floor, so when one of the stars has an off night, there are a number of options ready to step forward and pick up the gauntlet.

One-man-teams are often successful in professional sports, but rarely sustainable. To have a squad full of options you can trust on a nightly basis lead by two unselfish and intelligent former champions, is a winning formula.