Five reasons the Heat won't contend
Winning Giannis, losing the trade
A reader just sent me a TrueHoop article from three years ago. Hindsight is 20/20, but hell yeah the Bucks should have started the rebuild three years ago. But as we’ll discuss soon, it’s the Bucks who won the Giannis trade. Here are five reasons the Heat won’t make a deep playoff run with Giannis.
1. GIANNIS’S AGE and INJURY HISTORY
Giannis, at this age, is often a top-five NBA player. But even when he’s really rolling, he’s no longer the best player in the NBA, and he’s not likely to be at an age when production, even of the best players, tends to decline sharply.
2. THE CROWDED FIELD OF ELITE TEAMS
That competition’s between Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Victor Wembanyama, and Nikola Jokić. Two of those studs have FAR better supporting casts than Giannis in Miami.
The death star of Victor’s Spurs will be fully operational for the first time.
The Thunder will be even better, somehow.
That’s the real problem for any team trying to win a title anytime soon. You won’t beat the Thunder or Spurs.
Before this trade, Vegas suggested the Heat had about a 2.5 percent chance to win the title. Maybe it has moved up a little, but … so what?
But maybe you’re hoping to luck into facing one of those teams with an injured star. Even worse news for the Heat is that the knot of teams behind those epic ones is far better positioned than the Heat to succeed in today’s crazy-intense NBA.
The Knicks, duh.
The Pacers will have Tyrese Haliburton back, now with Ivika Zubac.
The Pistons won the regular season in the East.
The Celtics will make noise.
The Cavaliers were in the conference finals.
Would you rate the Heat above the Wolves?
The Jalen Johnson Hawks won’t get worse.
Nikola Jokić and the Nuggets get to retool.
Who knows what the 76ers will look like, but they have a potential future MVP in Tyrese Maxey and a second-year guard in V.J. Edgecombe who’s poised to make a big jump.
The Raptors are perfectly built for today’s crazy-intense modern NBA.
3. SALARY HELL
The starter set of contracts are for Giannis ($58M), Bam Adebayo ($50M) Andrew Wiggins ($30M), Bobby Portis ($15M), Davion Mitchell ($12M). That adds up to 165 million, which IS the salary cap level for the upcoming season.
But to have any shot at being good, the Heat will want to bring back all-star Norman Powell, who is an unrestricted free agent, but whose Bird rights the Heat hold. So they can bring him back at what, three years and $100M? But then the team would then be hard-capped at the first apron, which is $209M. There’s VERY little wiggle room to improve.
It would make a ton of sense for the Bucks to trade Andrew Wiggins, and his expiring deal, for two or three rotation players. But who wants Andrew Wiggins?
4. LACK OF DEPTH
The Heat lack depth and it’s hard to see how they’ll add it. If the past is any guide, the Heat will fill their roster with older players willing to take a pay cut for a chance to be part of something special one last time. It would not surprise me one bit if the Heat already had plans involving players like Khris Middleton, Andre Drummond, or Bradley Beal. That’s not a formula to win in the playoffs against mega-intense teams like the Pacers or Thunder.
5. LACK OF SHOOTING
When Giannis and the Bucks were pretty good for a stretch last season, the Bucks were the best 3-point shooting team in the NBA. That’s a formula the Heat can not recreate with this roster. The Heat were the 11th best 3-point shooting team last season, thanks to eight players who shot better than 37 percent from 3. They just traded three of those players to Milwaukee, including the highest volume shooter (Tyler Herro) and the most accurate (Kasparas Jakučionis).
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