How Duncan Robinson's mid-career renaissance is buoying the Heat
Every year, we see a bunch of NBAers take significant steps forward in their development, and in some cases change the shape of who they are as players. The majority of those big changes happen early in their careers, when they're still mostly unmolded lumps of clay.
Rarer and more compelling are players who remodel their games after years of stylistic constancy, showing a capacity for adaptation and growth long after the case appeared settled on what they were capable of. There's perhaps been no better example of that this season than Duncan Robinson, the movement shooting specialist who's evolved into a much more complete player less than a year after being banished to the fringes of the Miami Heat rotation.
Since he first broke out in 2019-20, Robinson's been one of the very best in the league at arguably the most important skill in today's game. But it's tough to stick in the NBA as a one-dimensional player nowadays, no matter how potent that one dimension might be. Last year, his vaunted 3-point shot deserted him for long stretches, and he didn't provide enough value to justify significant playing time without it. He barely saw the court in the second half of the season, and was DNP-CD'd in Miami's two play-in games. It wasn't until Tyler Herro broke his hand in Game 1 of the first round that Robinson was pressed back into regular duty.
Once he reclaimed his rotation spot, though, he didn't relinquish it, rediscovering his jumper in time to help key another improbable Finals run. And more than just sustain his postseason level, Robinson's come back in his age-30 season as a more multifaceted scorer, a more confident ball-handler, a better and more willing playmaker, and a stronger defender - all while returning to his career baseline as a shooter: hitting over 41% on nearly seven 3-point attempts per game.
"Just staying the course, building resolve, understanding fluctuations," Robinson says of his mindset during the months he spent at the end of the bench. "Control what you can control, and when an opportunity does come around, try to make the most of it. Not to say that you're going to make the most of every single one, but just be prepared to put your best foot forward. I think last year's playoffs, with guys going out and giving me that opportunity, were a good springboard going into this year."
Opportunity knocked again for Robinson when Max Strus and Gabe Vincent, two of the team's playoff starters and most important shooters, departed in the summer. Robinson sensed he had a good chance to regain the playing time he lost in 2022-23, but didn't want to take those minutes for granted, or have his role be so dependent on the whims of his jump shot. He wanted to find new ways to contribute. Heat coach Erik Spoelstra has a knack for empowering role players and putting them in positions to succeed, but Robinson says the changes to his game this year came about "kind of organically," as the result of a self-directed challenge.
"Obviously my role has kind of fluctuated, especially the last season-and-a-half. I felt like I was on more stable footing going into this season," he explains. "Like, alright, I might be in the rotation, have a chunk of minutes to work with. And from there it was just kind of internal conversations with myself. Like, how do I want to maximize those minutes? I'm always going to play off of my ability to shoot, but I wanted to do other things as well, try to be a little bit more dynamic."
As Robinson points out, everything he does still flows from his one standout skill. The way defenses react to the threat of his jumper - with aggressive fly-by closeouts and two-on-the-ball coverages - opens up all kinds of avenues to efficient shots elsewhere. He "creates overreactions," in Spoelstra's words. But Robinson never explored those avenues or took advantage of those overreactions to nearly the extent he's doing so this season. He's become a genuine inside-the-arc threat, as both a scorer and a drive-and-kick playmaker. If he gets run off the arc, it's a decent bet he's either going to score at the rim or sling the ball to an open teammate on the perimeter:
Coming into this season, 86% of Robinson's NBA field-goal attempts were from behind the 3-point line. That's down to 68% this year, and all but six of his 2-point shots have come inside the paint. He's averaging 5.1 drives per game, a huge leap from his previous high of 2.1. The ability to tap into different options when he puts the ball on the deck has him running career highs - by a wide margin - in usage rate, assist rate, free-throw attempt rate, per-possession scoring average, and rate of self-created baskets.
More than anything, we've seen Robinson expand his capabilities as a pick-and-roll ball-handler. He's always had incredible synergy with Bam Adebayo, but their two-man game in the past mainly revolved around dribble-handoffs, which didn't require Robinson to do much except rise and fire with the ball in his hands. He'd often extend those actions out into one-dribble pull-ups, and he'd slip the odd pocket pass to Adebayo when defenses showed or blitzed, but the scope of his responsibilities was fairly narrow. This season, he's running 11.9 pick-and-rolls per 100 possessions - not a huge number by any means, but nearly double his previous career high (6.5), according to a source with access to Second Spectrum data.
Miami's been beset by injuries and other absences, especially to its typical off-the-dribble creators; Jimmy Butler's missed 18 games, Herro 20, and Kyle Lowry missed a bunch of time before being traded for Terry Rozier, who's now on the shelf with a knee injury, along with Butler (out for personal reasons) and Josh Richardson (recovering from a dislocated shoulder). As the team leader in games played, Robinson's been asked to shoulder a good amount of that creation load, and he's acquitted himself extremely well.
The Heat have scored 1.12 points per possession on any trip featuring a Robinson pick-and-roll (they average 0.998 points per half-court possession overall), and most impressively, 1.2 points per possession when he passes out of the pick-and-roll. That latter number ranks him fourth out of 158 players who've run at least 100 pick-and-rolls this season, per my Second Spectrum source.
Part of that success owes to his ability to draw bigs up to the level and create four-on-threes on the back side, but his newfound patience has added another dimension to those actions. Trusting his handle more means he's using probe dribbles to break the paint - in some cases even jailing defenders on his back - rather than looking to get off the ball at the first opportunity:
"I think I was always capable to some extent," Robinson says of his playmaking development. "I feel like in very small sample sizes, I've shown little flashes of it. This year it's just being more in touch with that.
"As I've started to do it more throughout the course of the season, I've gotten better at it - making reads, just (getting) more familiar playing that way. A big part of it is just a mindset shift. Not just settling for threes, being more aggressive in other areas, and being a bit more of a basketball player."
Interestingly, the Heat as a team have been steadily moving away from handoff-centric offense since 2019-20. That year, they averaged 27 dribble-handoffs per 100 possessions, but they're down to 21 this season, their fewest since 2016-17 (the year before Adebayo was drafted). It's hard to pinpoint the rationale for that shift, but it helps that Robinson has proven he can be as effective running standard pick-and-roll as he is flying off of DHOs. He's finished the exact same number of possessions as a pick-and-roll ball-handler and as a handoff receiver this year, whereas in his first five seasons he used more than four times as many handoff possessions as pick-and-roll possessions.
To be clear, Miami's offense has not been good this season. It currently ranks 22nd in the league, worse than any team currently in a playoff or play-in spot apart from the Orlando Magic. But make no mistake: it would be a lot worse without Robinson, who ranks second behind Butler in true shooting and second to Adebayo in fourth-quarter scoring. With all three of them on the floor, the Heat have scored at a borderline top-10 rate. And Robinson's ability to pick up the slack is a big reason the team is 11-7 in the games Butler's missed.
The defensive end is where Miami continues to butter its bread, and while Robinson isn't a driver of success on that side of the ball, he isn't a deterrent to it, either. He may not be the strongest or most physically imposing defender, but he works his tail off, has good instincts, and possesses great positional size at 6-8 with a 7-1 wingspan. He's a better team defender than he gets credit for; he always understands the scheme and his role within it, which is particularly important for a team that mixes things up as much as the Heat do. Whether they're in zone, man, or a hybrid of the two, Robinson tends to be in the right place at the right time, and he's particularly attuned to weak-side cuts. Watch him snuff out Al Horford's here (bottom left):
He has limitations as an individual defender, which leads to him getting targeted and to the Heat having him show and recover to stay out of bad matchups. But when they do concede switches in those situations, Robinson is holding up better than he has in years past.
Miami's defense ranks eighth in the league, and is slightly better with Robinson on court than off.
So, while it hasn't exactly been a dream season for the defending Eastern Conference champs, who are treading water at 30-25, Robinson's contributions have been instrumental to them staying in the hunt for a top-six seed. His renaissance has revitalized his career at a crucial inflection point, and it's helped keep the Heat's choppy, injury-marred campaign from going off the rails.