Why the Miami Heat shouldn’t even consider doing business with San Antonio
The Miami Heat are doing well, but you know what that means, the base wants to trade them. Here’s why dealing with one team should totally be off the table.
The Miami Heat are off to a 13-5 record, which would signify that through almost a fourth of the season, they are doing pretty good. With success comes a great deal of problems, or as elegantly articulately by The Notorious B.I.G. when he said “Mo Money, Mo Problems”, but the Miami Heat faithful have a very extra special way that they deal with success.
When the Miami Heat faithful see a semblance of hope or prosperity, instead of “nurture it” or “let’s watch it blossom”, their immediate reaction is to “trade it” or “let’s see what we can get for it”. While to argue would be fruitless, my perspective is simply this. Why mess with a good thing?
While there is also no earthly way for us to know what will occur moving forward, as we are not in the brain of Pat Riley and thank god because as we know, it must be an endless maze of radioactive neural receptors up there with the way he has been prone and shown to operate, there is one set of rumors floating around out there in the Heat Rumor-sphere.
For the last usage of “while”, while it mentions no specific indications as to what the Miami Heat would be looking to send back, these rumors revolve around LaMarcus Aldridge and DeMar DeRozan of the San Antonio Spurs. Plainly put, and while we won’t even consider the ramifications associated with what the Heat might lose in the process, these would be awful moves for the Miami Heat and here’s why.
When thinking about LA or Aldridge, he is still a good player. In today’s NBA, superstars or stars depending on what you want to classify Aldridge as, can play at a high level for a greater period of time than they used to, so his age doesn’t bother me so much. What would be my issue here is how he plays the game and where he is most effective.
LA operates best when he has free reign around the painted area and inside the painted area, extending up to a step or so above the free-throw line and the short corner baseline area. When thinking about the Miami Heat and how they could put him in positions to succeed, it shouldn’t be that hard to visualize, but that is also the issue here.
It isn’t that hard because you already have a model or body there that operates in those areas. His name is Bam Adebayo. To bring in Aldridge would be doubling down on what you already have in Adebayo.
He and Meyers Leonard work perfectly with each other, with Bam being capable of stretching to wherever but wanting to play more in those LaMarcus Aldridge described areas from above, while Leonard wants to do the complete opposite. He can play in the paint when you need him to, I mean he is seven feet tall, but he wants to be sliding around the perimeter for open shots from deep. You also have to consider the fact that their relationship seems perfectly symbiotic and genuine from all angles, so there is real chemistry there betwixt the two.
Interestingly enough, this is sort of the same phenomenon when you go to talk about why pursuing DeMar DeRozan would be a bad idea for the Miami Heat. DeRozan isn’t a shooter or a true penetrator. He is more of what I refer to as a plotting or plodding tactician.
He can shoot from deep when he needs to, although you would rather him get something more efficient on his way to the basket, but he excels in the midrange area as well. When thinking about what he would look like in the Miami Heat system, you already have a model there as well. His name is Jimmy Butler, except for where I would dare to say they are about even offensively, Butler is the far superior defender.
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That is the reason why the Miami Heat shouldn’t even consider doing business with the Spurs when it comes to LA or DeRozan. They already have guys that are better, have more potential, and/or simply do what they do. To try and add either would be an exercise in redundancy that will only cost you assets and/or resources along the way.