Miami Heat: 5 biggest NBA Draft mistakes under Pat Riley

Under Pat Riley‘s watchful eye, the Miami Heat have been of the NBA’s most successful franchises. Regardless, here are his five biggest NBA Draft mistakes.

Before we get started, I’d like to lead off by saying: This is not a Pat Riley hate piece. Under his leadership, which began in 1995-96, the Miami Heat have been one of the sport’s elite franchises. An average of nearly 46 wins per season, three championships, three separate eras of dominance make it safe to say Riley has done his job and then some.

Throughout his time in South Florida, he has instilled a culture built around hard work, topnotch physical conditioning and playing with the utmost effort on a nightly basis. With Riley at the helm, Miami has pulled off brilliant trades, landed unfathomably talented free agents and turned undesirable college prospects into 10-year vets.

However, there’s also that pesky draft we just can’t fail to mention.

Sure, the Heat haven’t been terrible at selecting which prep prospects to acquire during the yearly postseason tradition. For starters, the best player in the team’s history did come through the draft. So did other serviceable role players like Mario Chalmers and Rasual Butler.

Nonetheless, when compared to how well Miami has done in the other facets of team building, it’s hard to argue that their work in the NBA Draft has been up to par.

So as a sort of macabre exercise, we decided to rank the Heat’s five biggest draft flubs in the Riley era. This should be fun, right?