NBA Free Agency: Grading all 30 teams on trades and signings

NBA Free Agency Grades: Miami Heat

Signings: Caleb Martin (3 years, $20.41 million); Victor Oladipo (2 years, $18.2 million); Dewayne Dedmon (2 years, $9.02 million)

Trades: None

The Miami Heat are a franchise that always goes big-game hunting. It brought them Shaquille O’Neale for their first title and LeBron James and Chris Bosh for the next two. They made the NBA Finals three seasons ago on the backs of Jimmy Butler, a player they went after in a sign-and-trade move. They want to win now and position themselves to add the next big piece.

That’s the context for their offseason. On the surface, it’s incredibly vanilla. They re-signed Caleb Martin to the maximum they could given their cap situation, brought back Dewayne Dedmon as center depth – a questionable move given the number of centers available and the emergence of Omer Yurtseven last year – and enticed Victor Oladipo to stick around as one of their better bench players with a chance to start.

They also lost P.J. Tucker, a starter and crucial piece for them last season, as they couldn’t pay him as much as the Philadelphia 76ers without triggering the hard cap. That limit to their spending power may have made a trade for a disgruntled star, be that Kevin Durant or Donovan Mitchell, a tricky or even impossible proposition. Their need to keep that flexibility, however, made them a worse team coming out of the summer. This grade changes dramatically if they swing a trade, but for now, it’s rather tepid.

Grade: C