It’s still very early, but Miami Heat guard Norman Powell has been a revelation through three games, so much so that he’s been the primary engine to the NBA’s 10th-best offense through nearly one week of action.
But the fun doesn’t stop there.
While it may not seem so on the surface, Powell’s Heat tenure is off to a record-breaking start. The 32-year-old, who the Heat acquired in a lopsided three-team trade in exchange for Kyle Anderson and Kevin Love in July, did something LeBron James, Shaquille O’Neale, Jimmy Butler nor Chris Bosh at the start of their respective Heat tenures: Score 70-plus points in their first three games with the team.
Norman Powell, like many others, has greatly benefitted from the Heat’s new up-tempo offense:
Before the season, I opined that the Miami Heat is more suited to play quicker than it has over the last half-decade. Norman Powell’s addition was one of the biggest reasons why.
Yet, even he’s surpassed expectations, albeit through a microscopic three-game sample. Powell’s averaged 24.0 points on 47.7 percent shooting, including 50.0 percent from 3-point range (9-18) and 91.3 percent from the free-throw line (21-23). He’s also been one of the Heat’s most productive rebounders (7.3 REB; 11.6 RED%) and one of their better team defenders.
“This pace — and even when I was playing against the Heat, when they tried to play fast, especially early on in my career — I always had a great game against them because of my style of play: Getting up and down the floor, attacking the rim, looking for opportunities for catch-and-shoots in transition in the flow of the game,” he said after Sunday’s 115-107 win against the New York Knicks. “I read and take what the defense is giving me. I’ve worked really hard on my game to be a three-level scorer, three-level threat, where they have to focus on me when they’re scrambling around on defense.
“This up-tempo play-style plays directly into my strengths and I was taking what the defense is giving — reading the second-level and third-level of defenders and making the right play.”
Powell’s quick decision-making, ability to consistently generate rim pressure (and, thus, free throws) and knockdown shooting have been a huge boost for the Heat offense — especially against two quality defenses in the Orlando Magic and Knicks. Miami will be in good shape if they can not only get this level of production, but overall impact, from their new 6-foot-4 guard.
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Hopefully, this will be the “Norm” all season.
This isn’t just HHH, but man, my least favorite part of this sport is how often people make up bullshit statistics to be proud of. At some point in any game, an announcer will be like “this is the first time since 1994 that any player has scored at least 25 points all with their left hand,” or “Only Michael Jordan, Kevin Durant, and [random bench player in current game] have ever had this exact, arbitrary stat line on a Tuesday.”
Like, I understand advanced stats, and they can often give you good information. But as a rule of thumb, if you’ve got any statistic where Kendrick Nunn and Kevin Willis rank higher than Lebron James, then it’s probably a meaningless statistic.
Powell has been fantastic. But there are enough real reasons to praise him, we don’t need to make up fake ones.
This post had me giggling. I concur and will add things like all-in-one stats that give you a rough idea but usually lack context. And on top of it, they always add some new advanced metric that has you scratching your head and saying, “WTF is this?”