Recently, the Miami Heat have had success taking on reclamation projects. Here are five potential candidates who will be available this offseason.
After LeBron James went back to Northeast Ohio, the Miami Heat had to somewhat adapt on the fly. Chris Bosh‘s issues with blood clotting, unfortunate as they were, didn’t help matters either.
The Heat were left reeling, no longer the hot-spot free agent destination, and without the money (because so much was tied up to one inactive player in Bosh) to convince big names otherwise. So Pat Riley and co. had to go with a slightly different strategy: Finding unwanted players and turning them into reclamation projects.
In some instances, their efforts were rewarded tenfold.
This past season, James Johnson became a poor man’s Draymond Green, and Dion Waiters had a stretch where it felt like he was hitting a game-winner every other night. Other times, though, it didn’t work out as well. (Sorry, Derrick Williams.)
Now, with both Waiters and Johnson set to receive relatively big paydays, it’s time for Miami to find more bargain types — players with obvious talent but either stuck in poor form, or still trying to grasp at the potential they showed in college.
After perusing the extremely helpful free agent tracker on Spotrac, we found five such names that the Heat could target this offseason — some familiar, others less so. Let’s get to it.