Grading Terry Rozier, Kyle Lowry Trade for Miami Heat, Charlotte Hornets

Several NBA teams appear keen to do their trade business well in advance of this year's February 8 deadline, and that trend continued with the Miami Heat's acquisition of Terry Rozier on Tuesday.

ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski broke the news on X:

In today's league, multiplayer, multiteam trades with complex pick protections and swaps have sort of become the norm. Tuesday's deal is refreshingly straightforward.

The Heat are in a win-now window. Rozier's former team, the Charlotte Hornets, certainly isn't. Sending one of their veterans out for an expiring contract and a future first-rounder is about as obvious as it gets.

That doesn't get either squad out of receiving its grades, though. Scroll below to see how each team did on the tried-and-true A-F scale.

Charlotte Hornets: A (with a Chance at A+)

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Kyle Lowry

Kyle Lowry is eight years older than Rozier. So, he clearly doesn't fit Charlotte's rebuilding timeline any better. But even if this is the end of the deal for the Hornets, it's a clear win.

Lowry's deal expires after this season, while Rozier's runs through 2025-26. That alone gives the Hornets a bunch of flexibility they didn't have 24 hours ago, but this trade could have sort of a rollover effect like the Damian Lillard trade this past summer.

One of the benefits of making a move like this weeks ahead of the deadline is that Charlotte has time to flip Lowry in another deal.

According to Wojnarowski, that's exactly what the Hornets are looking to do:

Of course, finding a taker for a soon-to-be-38-year-old point guard averaging 8.2 points per game is far from a given, but Lowry has started 35 games this season and is shooting 38.5 percent from deep.

Some contender looking to boost its experience off the bench might be willing to give something up to get him. And if that happens, this trade will feel like a home run for Charlotte.

But even if the Hornets do end up having to buy Lowry out, this was a fairly easy call for them to make. The only potential nitpick is based entirely on a hypothetical. If Charlotte had waited till the deadline, would some other team have felt enough pressure to offer two firsts for Rozier?

That's possible, but again, entirely hypothetical. In reality, the rebuilding Hornets added a rebuild-ready asset, which is all the front office should be thinking about right now.

Miami Heat: A

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Terry Rozier

Rozier has been a lot better than most probably realize this season.

The 29-year-old combo guard is averaging career highs in points (23.2) and assists (6.6) while scoring with right-around-league-average efficiency.

In a one-to-one comparison with Lowry's scoring volume, that's a massive upgrade. Rozier is almost tripling Lowry's points-per-game output.

While Rozier's numbers (at least in terms of volume) will come down a bit on a team with Jimmy Butler, Bam Adebayo and Tyler Herro, he should still be able to put at least a little bit of a charge into an attack that's currently 21st in points per 100 possessions.

That's especially true when you consider all the time missed by the aforementioned trio of Heat players. When one or more of them misses a game now, Rozier will presumably be there to pick up some of the slack (though he's missed 11 games himself this season).

Rozier can also help a bit on the playmaking front. He hasn't had a ton of opportunities to do that on a team with LaMelo Ball, but he is averaging a career high in assists, is almost three per game above Lowry in that category and averaged 7.3 per 75 possessions when he played without Ball this season.

On a team that already gets plenty of creation and distribution from Butler, Adebayo and Herro, Rozier will bring another layer of dynamism and unpredictability for opposing defenses to deal with.

Finally, there's the defensive end, where Dunks and Threes' estimated plus-minus (one of the most trusted catch-all metrics in NBA front offices) says Rozier has been far worse than Lowry.

And while that number and the loss of Lowry's craftiness and experience may be causes for concern, you can bet that Rozier will be more motivated to defend on a title contender than he was in Charlotte. His 6'8" wingspan makes him a much better theoretical fit in Miami's defensive schemes than Lowry, who has a 6'2" wingspan.

If you want to nitpick this deal, you could maybe say that Miami could've held onto that pick and made an aggressive push for someone slightly better (like, perhaps, Dejounte Murray), but now we're into hypotheticals again.

Miami needs a boost on offense now. Rozier should give that to them, and this really wasn't a huge price to pay for him.