5 free agents the Miami Heat should target in 2017 free agency

3. Paul Millsap, PF, Atlanta Hawks

You’d be hard-pressed to find a player as underrated as Paul Millsap is on a yearly basis. His numbers have taken a slight dip this season, but he’s still a favorite of most basketball nerds.

Millsap’s raw numbers are impressive enough. He’s averaging 18 a game, to go with eight boards and four assists. Not many power forwards are putting up numbers as well-rounded as that. Although he’s never been a great three-point shooter, his shot is still good enough to warrant respect. He makes threes at a 33 percent rate, and averages over one per contest.

Where you can really see Millsap’s brilliance is through his advanced stats. Last season, he finished the season with the NBA’s 13th-highest Win Shares (metric for number of wins contributed by a player), ahead of guys like Paul George, Jimmy Butler and Damian Lilliard.

This year, his Win Shares rank 44th in the league, which is still impressive. His Value Over Replacement Player (a stat for how much better a player is than a replacement-level guy, like a D-League call-up) is 27th. That’s higher than two other stud power forwards in Kevin Love and Blake Griffin. So yeah, basically, Millsap is really freaking good.

One downside to going after Millsap, however, is his age; he’s about to turn 32. But if you were to look for a guy to be a stopgap at the four until the team could find a long-term solution, he’s the perfect candidate. Millsap’s good enough to fit on any roster, and I get giddy at the notion of him tossing lobs like this to Whiteside.

Imagine the role Johnson currently plays for the Heat, and pretend he could also efficiently score 18 every night. That’s who Millsap is. Supremely talented and a great option for Miami.