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2011 NBA Playoffs: How the Miami Heat, Chicago Bulls and Oklahoma City Thunder can return to the conference finals next season - ESPN

This too plz.
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Given the youth of their cores, we can expect to see the Chicago Bulls, Oklahoma City Thunder and Miami Heat back here in the conference finals next year, right?



Think again.



According to the brilliant work of ESPN Insider Kevin Pelton, we see that young teams that make the conference finals aren't exactly locks to get there again the following year. Here's Pelton's big takeaway:



Of the 10 youngest conference finalists, as many (four) failed to return to the conference finals during the ensuing five years as made multiple trips.



So what do the Thunder, Bulls and Heat need to do to ensure this run isn't a one-hit wonder? Let's outline three areas of long-term improvement for each of the teams:



Oklahoma City Thunder


1. Find an offensive coordinator
As we're finding out with Kevin Durant, it's easier to elevate from a good player to a great player than it is to elevate from a great player to an elite player. He's still just 22 years old, but statistically he took a step backward in 2010-11 when we all thought he'd continue on his meteoric rise.




Part of that stunted growth is due in no small part to the lack of creativity in the offense. We saw a very concentrated version of this issue in the closing minutes of the Thunder's Game 4 meltdown against the Dallas Mavericks. Once James Harden fouled out of the game, both the play design and the execution of the play design was torturous to watch.



The Thunder have two of the league's most potent scoring weapons in Durant and Russell Westbrook, but having them on the floor is one thing, and deploying them effectively is another.



2. Continue to develop James Harden
Harden's hearty beard obscures his youth. The former Sun Devil is just 21 years old and averaged 15.8 points per game after the All-Star break. Here in the playoffs, he's struggling with his 3-point shot, but he's proved this season that he can create off the dribble and provide that third scoring option the Thunder desperately need.



No different than Westbrook or Durant, there's room for Harden to grow. For one, he needs to cut down on his fouling. No, this isn't a wild overreaction to Game 4's disqualification. Harden is one of the most whistle-prone guards in the game. (Among regular shooting guards, only C.J. Miles, Tony Allen and Vince Carter fouled more per minute this season than Harden.) He needs to work on his quickness and defend with his feet, not with his hands.



Secondly, he needs to get his 3-point shot back to where it was in his rookie season. However many jumpers Durant shoots this offseason, Harden needs to match that -- and then some.



3. Get back to defense
Few departures were more damaging this offseason than when Thunder assistant coach Ron Adams left Oklahoma City to join Tom Thibodeau on the Chicago staff. Adams was the defensive architect behind the Thunder's ascension last season from 21st to eighth in defensive efficiency.



And Adams' absence is also largely responsible for their drop this season from eighth to 13th. Ideally, Kendrick Perkins would anchor that back line, but he hasn't been able to make any sort of impact defensively in the postseason. In fact, the Thunder are 3.9 points worse defensively per 100 possessions with him on the court than with him on the bench in the playoffs. Is he completely healthy? Probably not, but his troublesome knees may keep barking long-term.



It's doubtful that the Thunder will get Adams back in the fold after he already left Chicago once before, but the Thunder could use another defensive guru on the bench. As we learned from the young Suns in the late 2000s, a supreme offense can only get you so far.



Chicago Bulls


1. Get a shooting guard
It's a testament to Derrick Rose and the Bulls' defense that they were able to win 60-plus games with Keith Bogans starting at the 2. Sure, Bogans played fewer minutes this season than Kyle Korver and Ronnie Brewer, so Bogans was merely a nominal starter, but a swivel desk chair could create a shot more effectively than that trio.



Few teams could use a positional upgrade more than the Bulls right now. Think about this: The Bulls had just the 12th-best offense in the NBA this season, and they still had the best record in the league.



With $62 million already invested in 2011-12, the Bulls will likely need to acquire a shooting guard via trade, unless it frees up some cap space or the next CBA features some form of a midlevel exception. Memphis Grizzlies backup 2-guard O.J. Mayo would be a nice fit if he's still on the market.



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Dennis Wierzbicki/US Presswire
Joakim Noah's rebounding and defense are solid. But his post-up game needs work.

2. Work on Joakim Noah's post game
If he's not delivering a put-back or receiving a pass at the rim, Noah struggles to get points. According to Synergy Sports data, just 63 of Noah's 561 points were scored as a result of a post-up play. For a five-year, $60 million investment, the Bulls need a larger return on that end of the floor.



Noah has the youth, work ethic, and the frame to be an effective scorer around the rim, so the potential is there. The Bulls have essentially decided to build around the core of Carlos Boozer, Luol Deng, Noah and Rose, but it's Noah who is the rawest of the bunch.



In Omer Asik, the Bulls already have a stifling defensive anchor, but the Turkish big man makes pennies compared to Noah. If Noah wants to stay on the floor over Asik at the end of critical games, he needs to take his offensive game to the next level.



3. Dupe someone into trading for Boozer
The Bulls are in a tough position when it comes to Boozer. On one hand, they need offense. On the other, Boozer is so porous defensively that they can't depend on him down the stretch.



The numbers are staggering. The Bulls were better off this season with Boozer on the bench, according to plus-minus data from basketballvalue.com (minus-1.8 net rating). The Utah Jazz were better off in 2009-10 with Boozer on the bench (minus-2.0 net rating). Same thing in 2008-09: The Jazz were better off with Boozer riding pine (minus-6.6 net rating). That's three years running in which Boozer's defensive liabilities outsized his offensive exploits.



So what do they do? Well, they could use him to net a legitimate shooting guard, but this is the second postseason in a row in which he's floundered underneath the bright lights of the playoffs. He can't hide anymore. The Bulls may be better off lighting $60 million on fire than playing him 30 minutes a night into his 30s.



Miami Heat


1. Embrace the "pointless" lineup
ESPN Insider David Thorpe wrote a terrific column detailing how the Heat can upgrade at the point guard position next season. His suggestion? Don't upgrade with a point guard.



The Heat could be better off playing a combo guard or smaller 3 who can rain from downtown and defend opposing 1s. With Mario Chalmers and Mike Miller on the roster, the Heat already have two players who partially fill that role already, but each of them have their shortcomings. Chalmers isn't sharp enough from downtown (and he's a free agent this offseason), and Miller isn't quick enough to stay in front of the league's orchestrators.



Thorpe suggests targeting players like Toney Douglas, Gary Neal and Courtney Lee, but the Heat have their hands tied with likely no cap room and a void of tradeable assets. They'd be better off investing in the draft (and Thorpe has a target there, too).



2. Get Mike Miller healthy and flip him at the 2011-12 deadline
The Heat aren't going to be able to sign a long-term solution at center this offseason unless they can convince Nene or Tyson Chandler to take the veteran minimum (not happening, Heat fans). They don't need to spend whatever little money they'll have on a point guard (see above), so the long-term focus should be upgrading at the 5.



Question is, how do they do that? Trading Miller would be their only option if they want to keep the Big Three intact. But Miller has next to zero value after he lost full function of both thumbs this season, which ripped away his premium skill: knockdown shooting.



It's not the most realistic option, but Miami can hope that Miller rebuilds his stock high enough to net a legitimate big at the deadline next season.



3. Step on the gas
The Heat don't have the flexibility to revamp their roster around the Big Three, so their only avenue may be to tweak their playing style. Here's a tip: run like mad.



Teams under the helm of Pat Riley have never played uptempo, so this would be a new wrinkle in his book. And the firepower on this team may demand it. The Heat are nearly unstoppable in transition yet were one of the league's slowest teams in the league according to pace factor. Synergy Sports tells us that the Heat scored 1.22 points per transition play, which was tops for the league (average was 1.17).



No surprise there, considering they wield Dwyane Wade and LeBron James. The surprising part? Just 13.1 percent of the Heat's offense was generated out of transition, which was the 13th-biggest share in the league in 2010-11. Of course, you can't get out in transition without a trigger, so the Heat need to use their athleticism to create more turnovers. Heat coach Erik Spoelstra has maintained all season that they're a running team, but they've only been in third gear compared to the rest of the league.



Tom Haberstroh covers the NBA for ESPN Insider and ESPN The Magazine. He is also writing about the Miami Heat this season for the ESPN.com Heat Index and contributes to Insider's college basketball, college football and baseball coverage. He contributes to ESPN The Magazine and ESPNNewYork.com and previously worked as a consultant for ESPN Stats & Information and as an analyst for Hoopdata.com. You can find his ESPN archives here, and follow him on Twitter here.
 
Dirk Nowitzki's performance in the 2011 NBA playoffs has been nothing short of remarkable. However, before we delve into unbridled praise, it's both informative and fun to recognize some areas in which his widely celebrated playoff performance isn't very close to historical records.

In terms of overall per-minute efficiency (as measured by the player efficiency rating, which incorporates both offensive and defensive metrics), dating back to 1976, Nowitzki's performance so far in the 2011 postseason puts him in the top 50 of players who played at least eight games in a given playoffs and averaged at least 25 minutes a game. That result puts him in the company of many all-time greats, but he's far from No. 1, a distinction held by LeBron James (2009). In fact, Dirk's PER in this year's playoffs is lower than it was in his 2009 postseason, although not by much.

Nor has Nowitzki been the best playoff scorer we've ever seen. Depending on your cutoff for minimum games played during a single postseason, that honor belongs to Jerry West in 1965 (40.6 points/game), Elgin Baylor in 1962 (38.6), or one of the various vintages of Michael Jordan.

Still, Nowitzki has been extremely efficient on the offensive end, while shouldering a disproportionately large share of the Mavericks' offensive burden. And by those metrics, he's absolutely crushing it.

German precision

True shooting percentage (TS%) is a measure of how successful a player has been at turning scoring opportunities into points. It's on the same scale as field goal percentage, but includes adjustments for 3-pointers and free throws. Using TS% as a gauge, it's not farfetched to say that Nowitzki is putting on an all-time great performance.

So far in the playoffs, Dirk has averaged 28.4 points per game, with a TS% of 64.0 percent. Where does that stack up historically? Among players who scored at least 25 points per game and played in at least two postseason series, Dirk's 2011 playoffs TS% ranks fourth, only bested by 1988 Kevin McHale, 1987 Hakeem Olajuwon and 1977 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar -- pretty good company.

Carrying the load

True shooting percentage is only part of the story, though. So far this postseason, Nowitzki's usage percentage (USG%) -- the percentage of a team's possessions used by a given player while he is on the floor -- currently stands at 31.7 percent. That performance would have been good for fourth place in the league during the 2010-11 regular season. Without a doubt, Dirk is Dallas' go-to guy on offense in the 2011 playoffs.

McHale, Olajuwon and Abdul-Jabbar had usage percentages of only 22.8 percent, 28.1 percent and 27 percent, respectively, during their stellar shooting playoffs mentioned above. (The stats required to calculate USG% weren't available for Abdul-Jabbar in 1977, so we've done some fudging based on future years and his shot attempts that season.) Playing a proportionally smaller role in their teams' offenses could well have afforded these players more favorable shot selection than Nowitzki is getting in 2011.

The bottom line, though, is that in the past 24 years of the NBA playoffs, if we only consider players who were forced to carry a similar portion of their team's scoring load, nobody has put points on the board more efficiently than Nowitzki. He's put the Dallas offense on his back more so than during the regular season, yet somehow managed to improve his scoring efficiency at the same time.

Just the fact that the Mavericks have reached the Finals while relying so much on one player is impressive in its own right. Only seven other players since the NBA/ABA merger in the mid-'70s have matched Nowitzki's combination of usage percentage, minutes per game and playoff series wins: Jordan (six times), Kobe Bryant (three), Karl Malone (two), Allen Iverson, Shaquille O'Neal, Olajuwon and Dwyane Wade.
Automatic from the line

A large part of Nowitzki's phenomenal true shooting percentage can be chalked up to his free-throw accuracy. He is currently in the midst of one of the greatest stretches of playoff free throw shooting in NBA history. Dirk's 24-of-24 night in Game 1 of the Western Conference finals received a lot of attention from the media and fans alike, but fewer noticed his 92.9 percent free throw shooting for these playoffs as a whole, which puts him second all time behind Reggie Miller's 93.8 percent in the 2000 playoffs, if we only consider players with 100-plus free throw attempts in a postseason.

What's even more impressive is that Nowitzki has been doing this for three straight years. Last season, he was 40-of-42 (95.2 percent) from the charity stripe in the playoffs, and in 2009 he made 86 of 93 attempts (92.5 percent). Those results make him only the second player in NBA history to shoot over 90 percent from the line in three consecutive postseasons, given a minimum of 40 attempts per year. (In case you're wondering, the first player to do it was Bill Sharman from 1957 to 1959.)

Broadening the scope of our analysis, over his entire playoff career, Nowitzki has made 88.8 percent of his 1,040 free throw attempts. That's the third highest among players with at least 500 career playoff attempts, behind only Miller (89.3 percent) and Larry Bird (89.0 percent). However, Dirk has gotten to the line more often than Miller or Bird did, so his performance is arguably the best of the three.

Finally, Dirk's accuracy from the line has generated 141 more points in the playoffs than an average NBA free throw shooter would be expected to score, given the same number of attempts. Nowitzki is now No. 1 all time by that measure, narrowly edging out Bird, who closed his career at plus-139.

One can poke several holes in the argument that Nowitzki's performance in the 2011 NBA playoffs qualifies as the best of all time. His impact hasn't been nearly as multidimensional as several of the game's other elite playoff performers. But if we limit the scope of our historical comparison just to Nowitzki's level of success in his primary role as a Dallas Maverick -- to carry the team's offense on his shoulders and to score as efficiently as possible in doing so -- his performance this year is nearly unmatched in NBA playoff history.

David Hess analyzes data and writes for TeamRankings.com, which also produces a range of data-driven NBA playoffs predictions and contributes other predictive-oriented content for Insider.
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