Miami Heat: Best Move They Did And Didn’t Make
The Miami Heat said goodbye to Dwyane Wade this offseason after 13 seasons. Was that the best move of their offseason … or their worst?
Climbing a mountain isn’t as simple as going straight to the top. Climbers often have to go sideways around the slope to find passage up, avoiding sheer cliffs, spires, or avalanche zones. While their ultimate goal is reaching the pinnacle, they aren’t always moving straight up.
In the NBA, teams often follow a similar pattern, making sideways moves to work towards their goal of winning a championship. Mixed in are missteps that send a team moving backwards, as no offseason is perfect.
Today we look at one team’s steps, the Miami Heat, to see how they are moving up the mountain.
The Heat lost their franchise’s biggest star when Dwyane Wade left for Chicago, the biggest name in a host of veteran departures. Hassan Whiteside stayed around and was joined by a number of short-term signings. What was the best move for the Heat? And where did Miami miss out?
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Best Move They Made: Letting Dwyane Wade Walk
The success of basketball franchises is often evaluated on a single level — wins and losses, ultimately resulting in the number of trophies lifted. But as businesses, their true worth is the bottom line and that opens up a myriad of different angles with which to measure a team.
By means of those other angles, it may have been the right move to pay Dwyane Wade whatever he asked for. The greatest player in Miami Heat history, Wade was a part of bringing three championships to South Beach.
One day a statue of him will adorn a plaza near the arena, and his number will hang from the rafters.
Having Wade on the court wearing his trademark No. 3 in red and white would have generated fan interest no matter the team’s record. Wade is an entertainment icon in a way bigger than basketball, and he would have continued to sell jerseys and tickets by being on the roster.
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But from a basketball perspective, Wade’s departure is an overall positive for the Heat. At 33 years old, last season Wade played more games (74) than he had since 2010-11. Now a year older, Wade’s knees and back were unlikely to provide even that much availability.
When Wade was on the court, he wasn’t blowing opponents away. While he did have some heroic playoff performances, during the regular season he put up a number of empty-calorie stats.
Only three shooting guards put up more points per 36 minutes than Wade (22.5), but he did so on a career-low .517 true shooting percentage. The rare times he let got from beyond the arc, he missed badly, shooting only 15.9 percent from long range.
Next season, Wade will make $23.2 million, the eighth-largest salary in the league. According to ESPN’s Real Plus-Minus stat, Wade was the 229th-best player in the league last season.
Wade isn’t completely done as a player; he can still score at a reasonable rate, he was top-10 in blocked shots from his position and in the playoffs he showed the old Flash is still in there.
But paying a top-10 salary to a player who may no longer be top 50 is concerning for any franchise, but especially one as committed to on-court success as Pat Riley’s Miami Heat.
Wade’s decline only exacerbates the issues with his on-court fit in Miami. Goran Dragic, the Heat’s starting point guard, simply does not play well with Wade.
Dragic is a run-first point guard who excels with the ball in his hands and he was lashed to one of the slowest shooting guards in the league who commands the ball in the half court.
The same is true of Wade’s fit with Hassan Whiteside. When Whiteside and Wade shared the floor, the Heat’s center put up a 23.9 PER, a strong number.
But when Wade went to the bench, Whiteside’s PER leapt to 30.3, which would have ranked second only to Stephen Curry last season and top-20 all time.
Likewise, when Wade sat Whiteside shot 60.6 percent from the field, aiding by the increased spacing of Josh Richardson or Tyler Johnson on offense over Wade.
In the end, the overall costs of letting Wade walk may make this a poor business move for the Miami Heat. But on the court, letting go of Dwyane Wade raises both the floor and the ceiling for this team.
The Chicago Bulls now have the pleasure of paying him as he ages while the Miami Heat can develop young talent to take his place.
Best Move They Didn’t Make: Adding A Starter-Level Player
This offseason saw Miami lose a host of veteran players, as Luol Deng and Joe Johnson joined Wade in leaving South Beach.
With their first-round pick going to Philadelphia as the last remnants of the LeBron James deal (no tears shed for that pick), the Heat had limited options for replacing their production on the wing.
The Heat had a sitdown with Kevin Durant, but that was the longest of shots from the beginning. Players such as Chandler Parsons and Nicolas Batum quickly signed elsewhere and even lower-tiered options such as Evan Turner were scooped up almost immediately.
Without the cap space to make a real run at guys such as Kent Bazemore or Harrison Barnes, the Heat elected to sign a bevy of players to shorter deals and keep the flexibility open for 2017 and beyond. On the surface, that seems a reasonable response to their situation, and it is.
But the implications are that the Miami Heat will want to prove themselves still a contender this year and will be rotating Dion Waiters, Wayne Ellington, James Johnson and Luke Babbitt on the wing.
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The Heat certainly have some pieces in place, with Josh Richardson looking like a steal in the second round and Justise Winslow being an immediate impact defender out of college.
If Chris Bosh returns healthy, then Winslow would slide to small forward in the starting lineup and play power forward alongside Bosh on the second unit.
But if Bosh doesn’t play, the Heat will struggle again with spacing around Hassan Whiteside. Ellington can shoot the basketball, but little else, and Erik Spoelstra won’t give him minutes if he isn’t playing defense.
Dion Waiters has put together one Rookie-Sophomore game and one playoff series where he looked like an above-average NBA player, and 289 career regular season games where he has looked like the opposite.
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The Miami Heat weren’t flush with options when Wade left town, but instead of making a run at someone they settled for mediocrity in quantity. Spoelstra is a talented coach, and perhaps he can build a tower out of these uneven blocks.
More likely, the Heat will struggle to make the postseason and stay relevant leading into 2017 free agency.