The Miami Heat are off to a great start to the season, and there may be moves available to improve the roster. We’ll look at a trade idea for Jrue Holiday and evaluate it.
The Miami Heat are off to a roaring 18-6 start to the season and are undefeated at home so far. They’ve exceeded all expectations for a team that had a projected win total in the low 40s and have statement wins over the Milwaukee Bucks and Toronto Raptors, but there may be a higher stratosphere for this team to climb to. A trade could unlock that, and Jrue Holiday has been suggested as a candidate.
In a Ringer article posted Wednesday, D.J. Foster proposed a trade for the Heat to acquire the veteran point guard from the New Orleans Pelicans as an alternative to a big splash of a deal for Chris Paul (and we agree, the Heat shouldn’t pursue a trade for Paul).
For starters to support this proposal, Holiday is an excellent defender whose abilities are being wasted on a team that has next to no interest in defending. A change of scenery would surely do him wonders and joining forces with players like Jimmy Butler, Bam Adebayo and Justise Winslow would create a juggernaut defense.
He’s not a fantastic shooter, especially this season where he’s posting his lowest true shooting percentage since 2013-14 at 51.5 percent, and availability tends to be a problem over the last few years of his career. He’s played over 67 games only once since 2013-14.
Jrue Holiday is in his 11th season and he’s in the third year of a 5-year, $126 million contract. Therein lies the issue with the viability of this trade idea.
While making a big run and challenging the Milwaukee Bucks, Boston Celtics and Philadelphia 76ers for supremacy in the Eastern Conference this season would be exciting and is surely the short term goal, it’s vital that the Miami Heat keep the summer of 2021 and maximum flexibility front of mind. That’s the summer when virtually all of the NBA’s superstars will hit the free agent market, and the Heat would love to make a max contract pitch to somebody like Giannis Antetokounmpo, complete with young shooters and a veteran Jimmy Butler.
Holiday has a player option in 2021 worth $27 million, and considering that he’ll have just turned 31 once free agency starts it’s safe to say he’ll opt into that final year without a second thought.
Another downfall in this proposal is the suggested deal itself. Foster build a deal that sends Tyler Herro, Kendrick Nunn, Dion Waiters and Meyers Leonard to New Orleans in exchange for Holiday and Jahlil Okafor.
The salaries work, but they add Holiday’s hefty salary to the 2021 books. Of the four Heat players mentioned, only Herro has salary on the books that summer. It’s just too high a price to pay, giving up that cap flexibility and both Herro and Nunn, who are surely not untouchable, but this is surely not the deal that should see them head out of Miami.