FanSided expansion Draft: Who should the Miami Heat protect?

If the NBA decided to do an expansion draft, a team is allowed to protect some of their players. Now, what three players would the Miami Heat protect?

Just recently, the staff at FanSided experimented with their NBA expansion draft. The rules were simple. Firstly, each team site expert protected three players that are still under contract for the next season and you can only select one player from each team. Then the two teams simply had a draft. The Miami Heat had protected Duncan Robinson, Bam Adebayo, and Jimmy Butler.

There are five total players that are worth protecting; the three players listed above and two other rookies in Tyler Herro and Kendrick Nunn.

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Only one player from that list is a definite lock to be protected at any cost and that is Bam Adebayo. Who would have thought that these two undrafted players would be considered to be protected?

Things get interesting when you take age and contracts into consideration. Apart from Butler, all those players that can be protected are 25 years old or younger including Adebayo who is still only 23 years old.

Butler, on the other hand, is 30 years old and will be making over 35 million dollars in a couple of years. But we all have seen what he has done for this team so far. He has been exceptional this season and is performing like a top-10 player.

However, is that enough to protect him over one of the other younger pieces? Well, let’s first pick the three players and go in detail why they should be protected.