A Scintillating Summer Awaits On South Beach For The Miami Heat
After a long, circuitous path to get there, the Miami Heat are sitting in a spot where few expected them to be before the season. The Heat are battling for a playoff spot in the Eastern Conference and, as of this writing, currently sit in seventh place. How they got there is far stranger than the fact that they are there at all.
On January 13th, Miami was 11–30 and looked like a long shot to make any sort of noise. Many a pundit pontificated that it was time for the Heat to trade any piece that wasn’t nailed down and tank for a draft pick this summer. Injuries had sunk the season and things looked as bleak as rain on a beach day in southern Florida.
The Heat had other plans though. Erik Spoelstra and a crew of castoffs put together one of the most improbable runs the NBA has seen in years, perhaps ever. Things started with an upset win over the visiting Rockets to kick off a four game home stand. Then Miami upended the similarly injury-ravaged Mavericks. That was followed by a win over mediocre Milwaukee. Then the Heat pulled another stunner and upset the Warriors. All of a sudden we had a four game winning streak in Magic City.
It didn’t end there. Miami ripped off nine more wins for a total of 13 in a row and was, without warning, squarely in a playoff race that only they and the most diehard of Heat fans could have ever imagined. Since the losing streak ended, Miami has kept up a winning pace, going 10–5 over their last 15 games. With less than a month left in the regular season, the Heat are right in the middle of the playoff picture and aren’t going away anytime soon.
Perhaps the most amazing part is that Miami has continued to work around injuries all year to get to this point. No member of the Heat has played in every game this year. Rookie wing Rodney McGruder and Hassan Whiteside lead the way with 65 and 64 games played respectively. They’ve played all year without Chris Bosh, most of the season without Justise Winslow and large chunks without Dion Waiters, Josh Richardson and Wayne Ellington. And the power forward spot has been a “power” forward in name only, as the decidedly non-powerful Luke Babbitt has held the spot down for most of the year with Josh McRoberts also on the shelf.
Building around Goran Dragic and Whiteside is a nice start for any team to have. But to be competitive, you need other pieces and/or excellent coaching. Spoelstra fills the second one just fine. He’s a Coach of the Year candidate and would probably win it, if it weren’t for Mike D’Antoni working such magic in Houston.
But what about those other pieces? When you looked at Miami’s roster to start the year it looked like they had just a bunch of “guys”. Solid bench players, a few guys with some limited upside and veteran role players. Nothing about the roster screamed playoff team. And when the injuries hit, most wrote Miami off. But that uninspiring group behind Dragic and Whiteside played inspired ball and has Miami on the cusp of an unexpected playoff berth.
While making the playoffs is an admirable result for this group, they aren’t likely to make much noise once they get there. With the right matchup, they could pull of an upset in the first round. They’ll certainly make things tough on whoever they play, because no team plays harder. But the Heat aren’t really contenders and their playoff appearance is probably going to be a short one.
And that leaves the Heat in a complicated spot this summer. They built a roster that was never intended to stay together long term. The contracts they gave out this past summer were the type of deals that could be easily moved in-season in a trade to recoup additional assets that might help more long term. Instead, as the improbable has happened, the coming offseason for Miami has taken on an entirely different tone.
Let’s start right at the top: Miami is eligible at any time now to apply to have Chris Bosh’s salary wiped off the books via the injury exclusion. As Bosh has not played in over a year and his career is generally assumed to be over due to recurring blood clots, the Heat will eventually apply for this exclusion. Once they do so, their entire salary cap outlook changes.
In the spirit of full disclosure: Bosh could attempt a return to the NBA. If he makes it back for 25 games in any one season, the salary he is owed from Miami is returned to the Heat cap sheet. The prevailing belief is that Miami will take their chances, go the exclusion route and deal with the consequences later if/when Bosh returns to play.
By removing Bosh, Miami can get to as much as a whopping $46 million dollars in cap space. Now, that isn’t their likely amount, because Josh McRoberts is a virtual certainty to opt in to his Player Option for just over $6 million for 2017–18, due to his continued injuries. A more reasonable projection for Miami is about $37.5 million dollars in cap space. Still a ridiculous amount and one that trails just Philadelphia in terms of cap space projections for this coming offseason.
How do the Heat get there? Essentially they gut almost the entire roster. They keep Goran Dragic and Hassan Whiteside, who are both signed long term. Same with Tyler Johnson, for whom they matched an offer from Brooklyn on last summer, and Justise Winslow who is still on his Rookie Scale contract. They would also have McRoberts and three players on partial or non-guaranteed contracts in Rodney McGruder, Josh Richardson and Okaro White, all of whom Miami like quite a bit.
That means the Heat need to move on from approximately half of their roster. We covered Bosh above, so that leaves decisions on Luke Babbitt, Wayne Ellington, Udonis Haslem, James Johnson, Willie Reed and Dion Waiters. All of these players have different situations, but are all likely to face a similar outcome.
Babbitt and Haslem are both unrestricted free agents and Miami has Bird Rights for both players. Babbitt has been, and is going forward, a minimum, or maybe a touch above, player for years now. Haslem is either retiring or can be brought back for whatever the Heat have left after they handle all of their other business. He’s beloved in Miami and a great locker room presence.
James Johnson is the Heat’s other unrestricted free agents and they do not have Bird or even Early Bird Rights for Johnson after signing him to a one year contract this past summer. Johnson has had a tremendous season off the Miami bench and is looking at a healthy pay day this July from the Heat or someone else.
Ellington is under contract on a fully non-guaranteed contract for just over $6 million dollars. Miami can move on from Ellington via waivers to free up cap room and then try to bring him back longer term if nothing else develops.
Reed and Waiters both have Player Options and both are likely to opt out. The big and his agents undoubtedly know that big men get paid every summer. Reed has proven to be, at worst, a quality backup big man and that should get him offers this summer.
Waiters is a different story altogether. He’s been the Heat’s third best player this year after Dragic and Whiteside and has blossomed in a role where he’s a primary offensive weapon. He’s the most irrational of all irrational confidence guys and truly believes he’s the best player on the court at all times. For a scorer, that isn’t the worst attitude to have. He’s scored almost 16 points per game this season on solid shooting percentages. He’s also hit several big shots and has property values on Waiters Island at an all-time high.
Because of all of the above, Waiters is opting out and going to look to cash in as a free agent. And he’s going to cash in, as almost every team in the league can use a scorer with an unconscious mindset, either as a starter or leading a bench unit. Waiters’ impending free agency is just one of many that makes this a tricky summer for the Heat.
Miami will add a mid-round, first round draft pick to the mix this summer, in addition to holding over eight players mentioned previously, but that leaves a lot of roster spots to fill. Pat Riley will obviously have designs on using his cap space to attract a max player. Looking at the free agent list this summer, there are a few players you can expect Riley and Spoelstra to target.
Kevin Durant would obviously be at the top of the list, but he’s unlikely to leave the Warriors. That leaves Gordon Hayward as the most logical mark and he would fit in wonderfully with Dragic and Whiteside. Failing that, Miami could make a max offer to restricted free agents like Otto Porter or Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and force their incumbent teams to match. Think of this as flipping the script on what Brooklyn did to the Heat with Tyler Johnson this past July.
What if the Heat don’t add any max free agents? Is that the worst thing? Probably not. We’ve already seen what Spoelstra can do with a roster full of second and third tier players. With oodles of cap space, Miami can still improve the roster, even if they miss out on the best free agents. They can bump up a couple of those third tier guys to second tier guys and continue to build around Dragic, Whiteside and a healthy Winslow. Maybe they can work out new deals for Waiters and James Johnson and bring both of them back into the fold.
The important thing is that Miami doesn’t overreact to this fun, unexpected season and start handing out big contracts to keep this limited squad together. Sure, they can spend their space on Waiters, Johnson, Babbitt and Ellington and run it back. But is that the smart route? Why not just roll it over? Go a similar route as last year and identify undervalued veterans and sign them to under market contracts. That makes them trade chips and motivated to perform for their next contract.
One other thing to consider this summer is keeping one eye on the summer of 2018 as well. That summer Tyler Johnson’s contract spikes from $5.8 million in 2017–18 to just over $19 million for 2018–19, due to the unique deal structure he signed as an Arenas Rule restricted free agent. Having nearly $63 million committed to only Dragic, Whiteside and Tyler Johnson for 2018–19 makes things a little complicated as far as putting a team on the floor around them. The Heat could view this summer as their last chance to spend big before things gets messy in 2018.
The Heat played the market last year and won, with a mismatched group putting together a season that was highly unlikely. This summer, things will look similar in terms of cap space and the ability to make moves. But instead of making a choice between maxing out an up-and-coming big man to a long term max deal and re-signing an aging, limited veteran to a big money contract, Miami has flexibility.
And flexibility in the summer is almost as good as an improbable playoff run. Flexibility gets things done. And we’ve all seen what Pat Riley can do when he has cap space and a piece or two to build around. As Will Smith said “Miami the city that keeps roof blazing. Welcome to Miami”.
