The Miami Heat will enter the season with their most talented roster in quite some time. There is something very mercurial about this team though.
The Miami Heat will open training camp for this season at the end of September, just like every other team, except those six that will be participating in the NBA’s Global Games marketing ploy. Heading into this season’s camp, they have arguably their most talented roster since the last year of the Big 3 era.
While an argument could be made for the two years following the end of the Big 3 era, in hindsight, Chris Bosh‘s career-ending blood clot disorder has to be accounted for there. In any event, what this means is that the expectations for this version of the Miami Heat are as high as they’ve been in a while.
While we don’t know the exact distance that this team is capable of going, what we do know is that they will need to be better shooting the three and scoring in general. Over the past few seasons and last season especially, that has been a major issue for the team. With that also being a key part of the NBA game in 2019, it would serve the Heat well to ensure that a heavy dose of long-range shots is in the game plan every night.
They seemingly moved towards this notion in this past NBA draft, where their selection saw them take a sharpshooter in Tyler Herro out of Kentucky. Herro is a guard that can flat out shoot it, no matter the situation he’s asked to shoot it from. That begs a question though, what other definite three-point threats do they currently have on this roster?
The answer to that question is quite a few, but they aren’t who you might think they’d be. While most three-point shooters have traditionally been guards and occasionally a heat-seeking small forward or two, the Miami Heat have a very interesting yet inverted scenario on their hands. Most of their absolute best shooters from distance are either forwards or centers.
Outside of Herro, there really isn’t another guard that makes you think knockdown shooter. Dragic can shoot the three and so can Jimmy Butler, but neither are elite in that area or for their positions. Dion Waiters is a really good shooter from the outside, but he and Herro might be the only two Heat guards with above-average deep shooting for their positions.
When looking at which Miami Heat players are the best at shooting from the outside for their positions, the names you come up with are Kelly Olynyk, Meyers Leonard, Justise Winslow, and Duncan Robinson. Although Winslow was the main ball-handler last season and should be this year as well, he is traditionally a small forward and a four-man in today’s league.
Meyers Leonard and KO can flat out stroke it from a big man’s perspective and while Bam Adebayo hasn’t shown us that during the season yet, he looks like he’s becoming a threat from the area as well. Duncan Robinson could slide as high as the two-guard in some scenarios, but he will more than likely be a forward, either of the three-man or small ball four-man variety.
While it doesn’t matter where the long-range shots come from as long as they go in, that is just a very interesting tidbit that pops out at you when analyzing this roster. That is something you probably had never even thought about.