Miami Heat Three-Point Shooters Complain They’re Too Open

The Miami Heat have an abundance of long-distance marksmen, and thanks to LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, those guys will have plenty of open looks. Which, it turns out, could be a slight problem. Reports the Sun-Sentinel: “Got to get used to it,’ Rashard Lewis said. ‘Because that’s the hardest shot in basketball. I may have to hold it for a couple of seconds, so I can get somebody closing out to me.’ […] ‘When you’re playing a game, you’re so used to playing instinctively,’ Shane Battier said. ‘When you get a wide-, wide-open three, you’re naked. You have time to think and rationalize, and that’s counterintuitive to how we normally play. We normally play instinctively — time to think and time to react only. But when you have time to think in basketball, calculation often leads to miscalculation.’ With so many scorers elsewhere on the court, there is plenty of time for calculation for the Heat’s 3-point shooters. As a rookie last season, point guard Norris Cole couldn’t believe how open he was at times. ‘Sometimes you’re surprised that you’re that wide open,’ he said. ‘Normally, when you shoot shots, you just shoot in repetition. But in a game, when you find yourself just wide open, it kinds of shocks you.’ […] ‘I think if you’re waiting on the 3-point line, that’s probably the toughest shot,’ Ray Allen said. ‘You’re waiting, you’re waiting, you’re waiting, and then you have to kind of reposition your feet. That to me is probably the toughest shot, because there’s not really a rhythm shot. When you catch in a rhythm, you’re learning forward. So if you don’t get it, you got to make sure you kind of get your momentum going back into that shot.”