So I got curious about Bulls vs Heat games, wanted to know who comes out on top more often. Grabbed my coffee, opened the laptop, and dove into NBA stats pages. First step was hunting down head-to-head records between these teams over the past five seasons.
Started scribbling notes about player performances – Butler and Adebayo for Heat, DeRozan and LaVine for Bulls. Weirdly found way more stats on starters than bench players. Had to cross-reference three different stats sites cause each had gaps in their data. Total headache when some sites listed “points in paint” while others called it “points inside”. Same damn thing!
Tossed all the raw numbers into Excel next. Made columns for FG%, rebounds, turnovers, plus-minus for each matchup. Nearly threw my coffee when Excel crashed halfway through sorting 2021 data. Learned the hard way: save every ten minutes!
Noticed patterns jumping out once the spreadsheet behaved. Heat absolutely own turnovers – they force way more steals. Bulls? Higher free throw percentages but fewer attempts. Also obvious how Jimmy Butler turns into a monster against his old team every single time. Man drops 25+ points like clockwork in these games.
Biggest surprise? Heat reserves outscore Bulls bench by 8-10 points consistently. Guys like Caleb Martin just kill Chicago’s second unit. Oh and that Bam Adebayo vs Vucevic matchup? Embarrassingly one-sided for Miami in almost every category.
Plugged all findings into my stats software later. Ran correlations between individual stats and final scores. Two things slapped me in the face:
- Turnover differential predicts winner 78% of time
- When Miami’s 3-point % tops 36%, they win 19 out of 20 games
Final verdict: Miami takes about 70% of these matchups recently. Bulls only win when DeRozan goes nuclear AND Miami has cold shooting night. Honestly thought Chicago would fare better before crunching these numbers.
Nearly forgot my cat jumped on the keyboard halfway through and typed “TTTHHHPPPTTT” across my PPG column. Couldn’t even get mad at him – stats work does that to you. Anyway, this settled a bar argument with my brother too. He owes me beer now.