The Miami Heat return most of their team from last season, including a few breakout players. How should their five starters be ranked?
The Miami Heat had a luxury last season that few teams get to enjoy. A deep roster stocked with wings and forwards allowed head coach Erik Spoelstra to deploy a variety of starting lineups to fit the goals of that point in the season. The regular season moved Bam Adebayo to power forward to save his body and brought Goran Dragic off the bench to manage his minutes as he ages.
Things changed in the postseason, with Dragic starting and Adebayo moving to center to bring in another wing. At any given time Spoelstra had four guards, five forwards and two bigs he could trust to work into his rotation, and he mixed-and-matched different combinations as part of a strong run to the NBA Finals.
This season things look to be very similar, as the bulk of the rotation has been preserved. The biggest change will be the loss of forwards Jae Crowder and Derrick Jones Jr. The team replaced them with first-round pick Previous Achiuwa and free agent signing Maurice Harkless. While that forward depth gives the Heat options when the chips are down, the most likely regular season rotation is the same conservative approach they took a season ago.
Earlier we looked at the candidates for the Heat’s starting lineup; the locks, fringe options and break-in candidates. From those give we can draw the most likely candidates to start for this team. Every team has a hierarchy, an ordering from stars to starters to role players to scrubs. How should we rank the starting five for the Miami Heat in the 2020-21 season?