5 Moves Miami Heat Should Make Between Now and Start of Next Season
Get well soon, Chris Bosh.
There's really not much more you can say after something like this happens. Hopefully, Bosh will make a full recovery soon.
From a basketball standpoint, Bosh's injury has all but derailed the Miami Heat's season. The Heat were poised to have perhaps the best starting lineup in the entire league. Now, they're scrambling to reinvent themselves with Bosh out and Goran Dragic in.
Miami no longer has any chance to make a playoff run this season. But it can use the rest of this year to figure out how its players (or at least most of its players) best fit and start building toward 2015-16. Let's take a look at five moves the Heat should make before the start of next season and how they might affect Miami.
Find Minutes for Young Players
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There's one minuscule silver lining to Bosh missing the rest of the season. Now that Miami has no real shot at making noise in the playoffs, it can hand its young players more responsibility with few repercussions.
James Ennis in particular should be getting a hard look from the Heat coaches. The Heat will almost have to slide Luol Deng to the 4 for long periods of time (something he's apparently ready for, per the Sun Sentinel's Ira Winderman), leaving a lot of open wing minutes for Ennis.
Ennis has struggled with his shot this season (he's hitting 40 percent from the floor and 30 percent from deep), but he's doing a lot of good things on the court.
Despite rarely handling the ball, he gets to the rim and free-throw line a lot via run-outs and heady cuts to the basket. Unlike most young players, he's also managed to resist the allure of deep two-point jumpers. Over 72 percent of his shots have come directly at the rim or behind the three-point line.
It'll be interesting to see if the Heat make any effort to give him minutes alongside Dragic. Miami has played uptempo basketball with Dragic on the court (in a very small sample), and Ennis is a perfect fit for a run-and-gun style. He's an athletic freak and very dangerous in transition, assets that Dragic could take full advantage of.
Ennis isn't the only young player who should start seeing more floor time, however. Shabazz Napier also deserves some steady minutes, even with Dragic now in the fold.
Napier has a decent outside stroke (he's knocking down 36.5 percent of his threes this season), and he's made incremental steps in the pick-and-roll as the year has progressed.
He still fires up too many deep jumpers when he turns the corner on picks. He also needs to learn how to finish over NBA length. But he's getting to the rim and distributing a bit more often now. He's even flashed some really nuanced passing—slick interior dimes to bigs and drive-and-kicks to open shooters.
Sign Michael Beasley
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This one might rub some Heat fans the wrong way. But Michael Beasley is searching for a team, and Miami desperately needs depth at power forward. Another reunion would make a lot of sense right now.
Beasley is a combo 3/4 and maybe the only player available who could provide the Heat with some facsimile of Bosh's offensive production.
For all his flaws, Beasley is a versatile scorer, and he's coming off the most efficient offensive year of his career. Last season, he averaged 18.9 points and 7.5 rebounds per 36 minutes on 56 percent true shooting. That's great off-the-bench production.
He's a career 35 percent shooter from deep, but he hit 39 percent of his triples last season. He's also historically been a great spot-up shooter and could function as a dangerous pick-and-pop threat for Dragic or Mario Chalmers. The Heat need that.
Right now, Miami has one (one!!) wing capable of hitting from deep: Luol Deng.
Dwyane Wade is the team's second-best wing shooter, and he's connecting on 31 percent of his threes. That's unbelievable. The Heat need someone else to provide Dragic and Hassan Whiteside a little room to breathe on pick-and-rolls. Beasley could be that guy when Deng needs a break.
He would also give Miami another player who can create his own shot. He's a nifty ball-handler for a 4, and he actually scored a lot at the rim last season.
It would be a mistake to turn over too much of the offense to him. His possessions sometimes devolve into a series of bricky mid-range jumpers, which is fun for no one. But if Erik Spoelstra gives him a short leash, he could be a real plus offensively.
Defense is an issue. Beasley is inattentive and sometimes indifferent on the defensive end. ESPN's real plus-minus system pegs him as one of the worst defenders in the league, and his teams have always been gouged defensively when he's on the court, per 82games.com.
That's obviously problematic. But given Miami's pressing need for shooting, it's worth looking past.
Take It Easy on Dwyane Wade
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This goes hand in hand with giving young players more minutes and even with signing Beasley. At a certain point, the Heat need to make a concerted effort to preserve Wade's health.
Wade is only playing 32 minutes per game, a career low. But his usage percentage has jumped to 34.3, the highest it's been since the 2009-10 season (when he led the league in the category).
That's not ideal. Only three players in NBA history have had to bear that kind of load at Wade's age—Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan and Bernard King. None of the three were able to remain productive long after those seasons.
To make matters worse, Wade's offense is less jumper-centric than the three players mentioned above. His game has always revolved around getting to the rim and to the free-throw line. Once his ability to do that goes out the window, it's hard to see him being a very effective player.
Heck, look at what's happened to Tony Parker. Just last June, he was helping to lead an unstoppable San Antonio Spurs offense to a championship. Eight months later, he's ranked as one of the worst players in the league by some advanced metrics, and articles like this ("Examining Tony Parker's Curious Decline") are being written about him. When players like Wade decline, they decline fast.
That, in part, is why trading for Dragic was such a great move by Miami. He should be able to take a ton of pressure off Wade by acting as the Heat's primary ball-handler moving forward.
It'll be interesting to see what kind of sets Spoelstra draws up when Miami has both Wade and Dragic on the floor, but hopefully things get put in place soon. Wade has actually taken on a bigger role in the offense since Dragic arrived, and that can't keep happening in future games.
Re-Sign Goran Dragic
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Oh, boy. This is the big one.
Dragic is certain to opt out of his player option this summer and become an unrestricted free agent. And while the Heat can offer him the most money, he hasn't firmly committed anywhere. According to the Los Angeles Daily News' Mark Medina, Dragic still considers the Los Angeles Lakers to be a potential destination.
Medina recently wrote: "A person familiar with Dragic’s thinking said he 'loves the opportunity' to join the Lakers and sees them as a 'perfect fit' when he becomes an unrestricted free agent this summer."
Will Dragic really leave Miami to join a terrible Lakers team in the middle of a huge rebuild? Probably not. But there are a whole host of teams lining up to offer him max money. If the Heat aren't the ones who end up signing him, they could be in big trouble down the road.
Dragic is a super-efficient scoring guard, and he gives Miami some much-needed transition punch.
The Heat play at the league's slowest pace by far, grinding out most possessions in the half court. They have a few good half-court weapons (Wade-Whiteside pick-and-rolls are particularly scary) but don't have the shooting or defense to be really good in that sense.
And that's where Dragic comes in. The Suns played at blistering speeds with him at the helm, and he seems to have brought that with him to Miami. In the two games he's played with the Heat, Miami has played at a significantly higher pace and upped its fast-break scoring as well. He's lethal in transition and semi-transition and is also one of the best finishers in the league.
Dragic is shooting 69.4 percent at the rim this season on a massive number of attempts. That's a few ticks better than players like LeBron James and Marc Gasol and one of the reasons that he'll partner well with Whiteside and Bosh (when healthy). With those two guys clearing out space via hard cuts or pick-and-pops, he should get to the rim more or less at will.
The Heat simply can't let a player of Dragic's caliber go for nothing, especially after surrendering so many future draft picks to land him. Even if Miami does nothing else on this list, it needs to re-sign Dragic. It can't afford to let him get away.
Find Some Shooting Guard Depth
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Miami's future cap situation is a bit hazy, as it has three players armed with 2015 player options on the roster, per HoopsHype.
However, regardless of what those players choose to do, the Heat will at least have room to make a few small signings. And they should use that room to add depth to what is a very flimsy shooting guard rotation.
Dragic's arrival makes the need for a 2 who can create a lot of offense unnecessary (so long as Dragic stays in Miami, anyway). So what the Heat really need to focus on is three-point shooting, specifically a knockdown shooter who can play the 2 or 3 interchangeably.
The absolute best option here would be the Suns' Gerald Green. Green is admittedly a one-way player (he's a horrid defender), but he's also connecting on 40 percent of his catch-and-shoot jumpers this season.
That number looks even more impressive when you consider just how often he bombs away from deep. He's taking 9.6 threes per 36 minutes (!!), more than any player in the league this season.
That gives Green a sort of magnetic pull on opponents—defenders will almost never willingly leave him to provide weak-side help. That goes a long way toward opening up the lane for driving guards or hard cuts from bigs. He also has experience playing with Dragic, and the Suns were an offensive powerhouse (though weak defensively) when the two shared the court this season.
Two other names to watch are the Washington Wizards' Rasual Butler and the Lakers' Wayne Ellington.
Butler has come out of nowhere to hit 41 percent from outside and is a smart cutter who would fit well next to Dragic and Wade. Ellington hasn't shot the ball quite as well as Butler this season (37 percent from three). However, he's a solid defender and could be a part of a lot of different lineup combinations due to that fact.
All statistics accurate as of 2/25/2015 and courtesy of Basketball-Reference or NBA.com/Stats unless stated otherwise.
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