Miami Heat: Most Interesting Storylines Of The Preseason

James Ennis’ Debut NBA season.

The Miami Heat, eager to get younger and more athletic during the offseason, managed to secure the rights to James Ennis during a trade with the Atlanta Hawks on draft night last season. However, because the Heat were looking to assign him to the Sioux Falls Skyforce, their D-League affiliate team, and weren’t able to offer him the $490,180 minimum level NBA salary, the most he could have earned was just $25,000. As such, Ennis decided to play overseas in order to take care of his father, disabled mother and five siblings – and boy did he dominate.

In his first game overseas, the swingman scored 25 points for the Perth Wildcats, which actually set a team record for the most points scored on a debut. His stellar play didn’t end there though. Ennis would go on to pick up player of the month in October thanks to his league-leading 24 points per game.

That sort of form continued up until the end of the season as he led the Wildcats to the NBL Championship, as well as earning All-NBL first team honours after finishing third in the Most Valuable Player voting.

Not bad for a rookie campaign, right?

Now that we’ve seen what he can do against decent opposition overseas, there is a huge sense of anticipation as to what he can do against NBA-level competition. Can the 24-year-old continue to impress and be highly productive, or will he succumb to the pressure placed on him?

So far he has been great having led the Heat in scoring with 17points in the preseason opener and it’s now clear to see why coach Erik Spoelstra is happy with what he has seen so far.

"“He brings energy,” Spoelstra said. “He brings a disposition on both ends that I like. He makes you watch him, whether he’s doing the right thing or not, he’s active. “Defensively, he tends to be around the ball quite often, loose balls, rebounds, deflections, that type of thing. And offensively, he plays with a youthful exuberance of somebody his age.”"

Although looking at his summer league stats, odds are he’ll do just fine. He averaged 15.5 points and 5 rebounds and shot 51.7 percent from the field in his six starts with the Heat’s summer league team this year.

Not bad at all.