Miami Heat column: It’s time for Pat Riley to scrap the plan and start anew
By Wes Goldberg
The Miami Heat are falling in the standings, rotation concerns are negatively impacting the players, and the team is in need of a change.
The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry. And, yes, the incomparable Pat Riley is human, and humans make mistakes. It’s time for Riley to learn from his.
Riley’s blueprint in the summer of 2017 was simple: Re-sign a motley group of quasi-veterans who busted their butts to become respectable NBA players and finish the prior season by winning 30 of their final 41 games to long-term contracts, and allow those players to develop and grow within the Miami Heat system–otherwise known as The Culture.
The Culture was real. So too were the improvements of the likes of Dion Waiters, James Johnson, Wayne Ellington, Tyler Johnson and Hassan Whiteside (the latter two were signed in the summer of 2016). But those improvements were also limited. The two Johnsons regressed. Waiters got hurt. Ellington went from shooting specialist to defensive liability. Whiteside went from an upstart underdog story to an overconfident albatross.
Now Riley has to scrap those plans and start anew.
And it has to happen now.
Why?
More from All U Can Heat
- Grade the Trade: Heat grab Trae Young in shocking proposal
- NBA 2K24 Ratings: Takeaways and reactions to Miami Heat player ratings
- 4 Teams that should trade for Tyler Herro
- Miami Heat’s Nikola Jovic gives entire world reason to love him
- 1 Advantage the Heat have over every Southeast Division team
Because if a deconstruction of the roster he built doesn’t start before the Feb .7 trade deadline, the Heat run the risk of paying the luxury tax this summer, and starting the clock on the exponentially punitive repeater tax.
You might be asking Why the hell should I care? That’s the owner’s problem, not mine. Well, Micky Arison is one of the best owners in the league–maybe in all of sports–but he’s not stupid. He hasn’t been shy of paying the tax for championship level teams, but this isn’t that. If Riley and the Heat have plans on aborting this plan in favor of one that could lead to a contending team, they don’t want to be worrying about paying a hefty repeater tax. At least not yet. Even a small move to get under the tax, such as trading Ellington, would mark the first hammer being swung.
But that wouldn’t be swinging hard enough.
The Heat also need assets. More specifically, they need draft picks. You know, those things that Riley has so liberally traded in the past for this and that. The Heat already owe the Philadelphia 76ers (a team they hope to contend with in the East) their unprotected first-round pick in 2021. They’ve also scattered their second-round picks across the league for almost every year between now and 2024. The only second-round pick Miami owns is for 2022.
Do second-round picks have value? Absolutely. Never-mind the fact that the Heat drafted Josh Richardson–one of its best players and assets–in the second round. Second-round picks are the trade sweetener du jour of the NBA. They grease the wheels of almost every trade, especially at the deadline. Don’t believe me? Watch what happens in early February.
But besides draft picks, the Heat may have to unload their vast amount of hefty contracted role players that could have new homes by the deadline, so who needs to go?