Brian Windhorst, Special to The Plain Dealer

Miami, Florida — These days, LeBron James and members of the Miami Heat shake fingers at those who dared suggest that their new mega team wasn’t going to work. The pleasure of hindsight never ends, especially when some important details are dismissed.

One of the reasons the Heat, and James himself, are playing toward their potential after a shaky start is because James is going back to the way he played as a Cavalier.

Wednesday night, the Heat won in Houston to finish off a 15-1 December and became the first team ever to go 10-0 on the road in a calendar month. Their run of success started in Cleveland on what has now become a key date in the NBA season, James’ Dec. 2 return to The Q.

So they’re hot, there’s no doubt. Some of it has been time together, which is the issue Heat players and coach Erik Spoelstra point toward when they shame those who questioned their future after they started the season an underwhelming 9-8. But a huge adjustment, which wasn’t announced, was to get James, who celebrated his 26th birthday on Thursday, back to his roots.

“At the start, we weren’t playing our games,” James said of himself, Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade. “We were being too unselfish. We had to forget that and go back to being ourselves.”
During the Heat’s ragged November, James’ scoring and shooting numbers plunged while his turnovers shot up to totals not seen since his rookie season. He was throwing wild passes, taking 3-pointers out of the offense, and Spoelstra was playing him at point guard the most since Paul Silas tried it as an experiment in the fall of 2003.

Then something happened in Cleveland. The Heat committed themselves to featuring James for that game, an obvious strategy with James carrying so much personal meaning into the game. Then James went out and played his best game of the season, scoring 38 points.

Part of it was because of some abnormal great shooting, which James has done on the road off and on during most of his career. But the other part was it created a comfort zone for James to play in a familiar role.
Seeing the impact, Spoelstra changed his rotation to allow James six to 10 minutes a game as the featured player. Usually, it happens at the end of the first and third quarters, when James is given the green light. The result: Lots of shots, lots of freedom, lots of scoring.

“It has been a process for both the players and coaches to find a comfort level,” Spoelstra said. “We knew it would take some time but that these players were too talented not to be successful.”

James has used these moments to feed his desire to build his statistics, something he may not admit publicly but it always has been a driver for him, and the Heat seems to benefit from it. In December, by getting his bursts of freedom, James’ scoring average jumped two points a game and his shooting jumped nearly seven percentage points.

He had several games where he squeezed off 10 points or more in his allotted freedom minutes and the Heat usually experienced a surge. On Wednesday night in Houston, for example, the Heat outscored the Rockets, 16-2, when James was on the floor without Bosh and Wade.

In turn, Spoelstra has reduced James’ minutes at point guard by inserting Mario Chalmers into the rotation, allowing James to play more point forward, the position he played in Cleveland. As a result, the turnovers have dropped and the Heat’s offense has gotten stronger.

Wade, who now gets his exclusive scoring time on the floor without James, has seen his scoring average jump six points a game in December over November and his shooting percentage soar nearly 10 percent.
Though he usually plays with Bosh on the floor, the changes allow Wade to play more like he was accustomed to before James arrived.

Whether this dual-star role will work under the pressure of the playoffs remains to be seen. The Heat have had mixed success at the end of games, sometimes barely hanging on to leads with Wade and James on the court together. But they have also been able to carry the Heat to some victories by their individual play.

What seems certain is that finding a balance and putting together wins has come partially by going back to some old ways.

“We’ve all had to sacrifice things from our games to make this work,” James said. “This is why we came together, to be able to play together and win together.”

Former Plain Dealer writer Brian Windhorst is a reporter for ESPN.com, focusing on the Miami Heat.