When LeBron James chose to return to the Cleveland Cavaliers in free agency this summer, just about every NBA watcher in the known world wondered how the heck the Miami Heat would cope with the loss of the best basketball player in the world. We should know better by now than to doubt Pat Riley, but even after re-upping Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade, and importing Luol Deng and Josh McRoberts, Miami still seemed more likely to tumble toward the East's second tier than to stay near the top of the conference.

A funny thing's happened on the way to the middle of the pack, though. While LeBron and his new mates are scuffling and, um, "sharpening," the Heat have hit the ground running, going 5-2 through seven games and boasting the league's fourth most-potent offense, scoring an average of 108.3 points per 100 possessions.

After spending four years as a third option, Bosh has thrived as Miami's top gun, and the 32-year-old Wade is back to serving as Erik Spoelstra's primary table-setter. The results have been encouraging, and Wade's happy as a clam for a pretty simple reason, according to Joseph Goodman of the Miami Herald:

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For a basketball player such as Wade, one of the game’s greatest playmakers of all time, happiness can be boiled down and distilled into a much simpler formula.

“I got the ball in my hands,” Wade said. [...]

“It’s my job to put pressure on the defense and try to make plays for the other guys,” Wade said.

“It makes me feel good that the other guys are feeling good about themselves by me drawing two guys, kicking it to them and them hitting shots and getting into that rhythm and flow.”

As is the case whenever we take a look under the hood at this stage in the season, it remains to be seen whether the numbers hold up over the course of a full campaign. In the early going, though, Wade certainly has seen more of the ball this year with James out of the picture, and he's been doing plenty with it.

He's averaging about 10 more front-court touches per game this season than last, and hanging onto the ball about a half-minute longer (a 3.9 minutes-per-game average time of possession) than last season (3.4 minutes per game), according to the NBA's SportVU player tracking data. But he's not just pounding the rock. He's driving to the basket more often (8.3 drives per game, tied with LeBron for 14th in the league and up from 6.9 per game last year) and, once he draws the defense's attention with his penetration, looking to dump off more often, too.

Wade's assisting on a whopping 40.5 percent of his teammates' buckets during his time on the floor this season, the sixth-highest share in the NBA (behind only point guards Ricky Rubio, Chris Paul, Rajon Rondo, John Wall and Jeff Teague) and Wade's best such mark since the 2006-07 season. He's ninth in the league in points created by assist per game (16.4), a quantum leap up from 47th last year (10.7).

The impact of Wade's facilitating extends beyond just the impressive number of dimes he's dropping, too. Per SportVU, Wade's third in the league in "free throw assists," or passes leading to a trip to the line where the shooter made at least one freebie (1.3 per game) and 19th in secondary, or "hockey," assists (1.4 per game). It's great that Wade's happy to have the ball in his hands, but we're betting Spoelstra's more excited by how his increased willingness to get it out of them has bolstered Miami's attack.

While Spoelstra has limited his star shooting guard to fewer minutes per game than he did last season, Wade has yet to miss a contest after playing just 54 of Miami's 82 games last year as part of a season-long "maintenance plan" designed to keep his balky knees in good working order for a long postseason run. Whether he can continue producing at this level without needing extended rest figures to be the biggest question facing Miami this season.

Then again, should Wade need a bit more of a breather, the Heat look like they'll be able to rely more heavily on Bosh, who's spent the first two weeks of this season alternately reminding folks what he used to be in Toronto and forcing naysayers to acknowledge what he's become over the past four years.

The 30-year-old big man has been a revelation in the early going, ranking eighth in the league in scoring (23.6 points per game) and 13th in rebounding (10.3 caroms a night). And despite a significant increase in his workload — Bosh is finishing 28.4 percent of Miami's possessions with a field goal attempt (15.9 per game, up from 12.1 last year), a foul drawn (only James Harden, DeMar DeRozan, DeMarcus Cousins and Rudy Gay have taken more free throws than Bosh's 59) or a turnover (only 16 cough-ups through seven games), which would be the highest usage rate of his career — he's continued to score efficiently. Bosh is shooting 48.6 percent from the field and 36 percent from 3-point land on a career-high 3.6 long-range tries per game, helping fuel a career-best 26.8 PER that ranks fourth in the NBA behind only young monsters Anthony Davis and DeMarcus Cousins, and phenomenally effective part-time pogo stick Brandan Wright.

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