The NBA Draft lottery will determine the Miami Heat’s most important pick in years
By Wes Goldberg
The Miami Heat deserve a top-three pick in the NBA Draft. We’ll see during the lottery if the basketball universe pays them back for an honorable season.
Basketball often comes down to a lucky bounce, and the Miami Heat need one in tonight’s NBA Draft lottery. This could be the organization’s most important draft pick for the next half decade.
The Heat have a pre-draft lottery position of 14, with a 98.2 percent change of keeping that pick and a measly 1.8 percent chance of landing a top-three pick. They have a 0.5 percent chance of winning the top overall pick.
Miami missed the playoffs by a game, and will be adding a lottery talent no matter what. You could be wondering why, then, this pick is so important. If the Heat do their homework, they should be able to find a contributor even picking at 14.
But here’s the thing: Miami’s pick next year is owed to Phoenix (top seven protected) and they owe them another pick in 2021 thanks to the Goran Dragic trade. They also don’t currently have a second round pick until 2022.
So unless the Heat tank next season (yeah, right), they won’t be choosing in the first round again until 2019. By then Dragic will be 32 years old, Hassan Whiteside will have the option to bypass his final year and enter free agency, Justise Winslow and Josh Richardson will be restricted free agents and Dion Waiters will be wrapping up his first term as president.
Read More: The pre-lottery NBA Draft big board
The Heat need to add a top-end talent if they’re going to compete in the Eastern Conference, and, as Pat Riley said in his end-of-season press conference, free agency isn’t the option it once was to land an All Star. That leaves the trade market and the draft.
Not only does a top-three pick provide much better odds at finding a game-changing talent, it also has substantial more trade value than a pick in the middle of the first round.
I’m not here to argue about whether or not the Heat should have tanked, but this much is absolutely true: By not losing a bunch of games and securing a top-five pick, Miami took itself out of the running for trading for the likes of Paul George or Jimmy Butler.
There’s an argument to made that it’s not worth trading a top-three pick for either one of them. This year’s best players–Washington’s Markelle Fultz, UCLA’s Lonzo Ball, and Kansas forward Josh Jackson and Duke forward Jayson Tatum–have the potential to be better than either of those guys, and aren’t going to the Lakers or up for a pay raise any time soon. Get an All Star on a rookie-scale contract, and your chances of competing with the best teams in the league increase exponentially.
I mean, we’re talking about the difference between selecting Karl Towns or Cameron Payne. Joel Embiid or T.J. Warren. Anthony Davis or John Henson. Kyrie Irving or Marcus Morris. I could go on!
A lot has been made about how this is Miami’s last offseason for several years to sign a big free agent, given that they will have Chris Bosh’s cap relief and not much cap room for the next few seasons as their current player salaries rise. But this is also their best chance to make a difference in the draft. A top-three pick would give the Heat options, something they don’t currently have a lot of.
The last time the Heat chose in the lottery, they didn’t move at all (10th pick in 2014) and the time before that they got leapt by Chicago for the top overall pick and ended up with Michael Beasley instead of Derrick Rose.
Next: How to watch the NBA draft lottery
The Heat could have tanked this season and nearly guaranteed a top-five pick. Unlike the Suns and Lakers (whose tank jobs this season rank among the most blatant in NBA history), they chose to actually play basketball. If basketball karma exists, now’s the time for the universe to pay up. Miami needs a top-three pick, basketball gawds, make it happen.