The Heat Are Dumb Now

It was like three years ago that the Miami Heat were the class of the league, right?

After LeBron leaves, a team gets worse, I get it. But the Heat are supposed to be different from the Cavaliers. Sure, the Heat made the playoffs in 2016, and only missed out on the party in 2017 due to a tiebreaker (more due to the fact they were one of the worst teams in the league for 41 games).

After what they’ve done this offseason, though? This team is fucking doomed. It’s like Pat Riley — a guy who is supposed to be smart — looked at what the Portland Trail Blazers did last Summer and thought, “What if we did that same thing… but with worse players?”

Their core is locked in. Best-case scenario: the second half of last year was a better indicator of their future success than the season as a whole. The potential their team showed was real, and they will surprise people next year in a terrible Eastern Conference. (This scenario never involves them being a legitimate threat to the Cavs, or the Celtics, the Wizards, or the Raptors, by the way — but whatever.)

The worst-case scenario: The second-half of 2017 was more flukey than the first half, and guys like James Johnson and Dion Waiters turn back into the players they had been for their whole careers previous to last year.

Let’s take the Heat’s offseason deal-by-deal and try and figure out what the hell is going on.

Dion Waiters, SG. estimated 4 years, $52 million:

Okay, so, I actually like this deal. Dion is good. Not in a funny way or an ironic way, not because he is exciting and likeable and a pretty fucking good writer: he’s just good. He was good in Oklahoma City, and I think it was a major oversight to just let him walk when he was available for minimum salary and that team was so starved for talent. There is a chance he regresses now that he finally got paid, I guess, but I think having Dion at around $13 million per year should look pretty good.

If this was the only deal they signed this Summer, I would be pretty happy.

James Johnson, SF. 4 years, $60 million.

James Johnson is probably not good. Maybe he is, but he probably isn’t. The fact that he got more money than Dion is absurd and everyone involved should be ashamed.

He had never been good for an extended period of time before last season, so chances are he is going to go back to being that player eventually. He lost 30 pounds before last season, which is definitely a big part of why he was so good. Optimistically, you could say that was the turning point in his career and this is the player he is going to be now because he lost that weight. Pessimistically, you could say it’s pretty unlikely he will keep that weight off, especially after just signing what he probably knows will be his last big deal in the NBA. That isn’t meant to be a judgement on his character — it would just be a natural human reaction. Honestly, I just imagine it would be pretty difficult to keep 30 pounds off.

Most importantly, he was 29 last season. How many players have their breakout season at 29, get paid and then actually stay that good? You’re going to be paying James Johnson $15 million when he’s 34 and Pat Riley will probably be sipping pina coladas on a private island or running the Knicks or something. This was a bad decision. No offense to James Johnson, I’m sure he is a lovely person.

Kelly Olynyk, C. Estimated 4 years, $50 million.

No, guys. No.

Look at the avatar I chose for this blog. Kelly is my mascot. Kelly is my motherfucking man. There is no bigger Kelly fan in the world than the person frantically hitting these keys right now. But you can’t sign Kelly for 4 years/50. That’s really stupid.

This guy is good. He helps. If the Spurs, or the Cavs, or the Rockets signed him to something like this deal (obviously ignoring the fact that none of those teams could reasonably offer that contract) then I would like it! Because those teams are close. Those teams have their top guy.

You can’t give Kelly $50 million when you don’t already have a guy who is going to be the best guy on your championship team. Or the second best guy. Or…well… the third best guy either. There’s just no point.

Coach Spo is going to get the best out of Kelly (though it’s not like some scrub was coaching him in Boston), but his best isn’t going to be all that much better than Patrick Patterson, who only got $16 million from the Thunder. Or Omri Casspi, who took a huge paycut to play with the Warriors.

When you’re already paying big money to non-All-Stars like Hassan Whiteside, Goran Dragic, and Dion Waiters, you should be taking fliers on guys with potential. People you can get for short contracts with small guaranteed money. Guys like Bojan Bogdanovic, Justin Holiday — every team in the league should have signed Justin Holiday if we are keeping it one thousand — Damjan Rudez, or K.J. McDaniels. You’re going to miss on most of these guys. But that will be okay, because you won’t owe them $50 million. Sometimes, you will be like the Mavs and find a Seth Curry, or, as much as I’m not a big fan of the guy, a Hassan Whiteside!

Even more than that, when you have a coach as good as Spo, you should be taking advantage of other teams’ mistakes by scooping up undervalued and misused guys like Jonas Jerebko and Nikola Mirotic.

Or, just do nothing!!!! You’ve got a decent team for next year, and you have no moves to take you from a bottom-tier playoff team to a top-tier playoff team. So just chill. The rest of the conference made you a mid-tier playoff team just by shipping all of their talent West.

This was a really bad and weird offseason from Pat Riley and the Heat. It seems like Riley might be on the path to joining fellow legend Phil Jackson in NBA Jail. Or maybe he will turn things around. If LeBron decides he wants to come back next year for some reason or KD or Isaiah or Boogie or any of the other stars available next year decide they want to come to Miami, Riley has an advantage in the fact that there are multiple awful teams around the league looking to take on bad contracts if you package assets with them.

Generally, there are just a lot of dumb teams in the league right now that Pat Riley — a guy who is supposed to be smart — should be taking advantage of. But when I was making my list of the dumb teams in the league in my head the other day, I felt inclined to include Miami. Because it wasn’t just this year. This team has been pretty dumb since 2013.

They did a god awful job of filling out the roster to support their Big Three — even worse than the Cavs, who are definitively on the dumb teams list — and since then, they have lost LeBron, Chris Bosh, and the best player in the history of their franchise, Dwyane Wade, all for nothing in return. While the Bosh thing has some complicated behind-the-scenes stuff that keeps me from passing judgement, that doesn’t seem good.

Something is up in Miami. Now, they owe James Johnson, Dion, Kelly, Whiteside, Dragic, and Tyler Johnson something in the ballpark of $333 million over the next four years. So, it isn’t getting better anytime soon. Pat Riley was once the guy you would want to get you out of a mess like this. But he is the one who got you into it. Can you count on him to get you out? I wouldn’t, but we’ll see.