The Miami Heat are thin at the moment but will have a glutton after everyone’s back. This is amazing considering where they were over the past few years.
The Miami Heat are one of the best teams in the NBA, fact. The Miami Heat are the best home team in the NBA right now, also a fact. It is also of the utmost factualness that the Miami Heat have rarely been at full strength at any point this season.
While the lack of depth, predominantly due to injury, has reared it’s ugly head at moments this season, the Heat have overcome for the most part across this NBA year. The silver lining in it all though is that once this Miami Heat team is at full health, they will be as deep as they have been over the past few seasons. That is where we start to wonder how they went from seemingly not having enough, to overloaded with talent and mostly all across one offseason.
Over the past few seasons, we have seen Head Coach Erik Spoelstra have to patch lineups together. We’ve seen Rodney McGruder, Tyler Johnson, Wayne Ellington, and even Dion Waiters slotted in as small forwards and although more than capable, we have seen James Johnson, Derrick Jones Jr., and even Justise Winslow slot in regularly as the power forwards. It was this same phenomenon that birthed the Justise Better movement, that was based primarily on Justise Winslow’s emergence and sustained excellence as the point guard, main ball handler, or big guard as Pat Riley and Spo like to call it.
The phenomenon here though is how they have seemingly gone from those times and situations over the past few seasons to the position that they find themselves in now. While it has seemed at times this season that the Heat were deadly thin, mostly injury-related as mentioned, they are probably at their deepest as they have been over the past few years as a total and fully healthy unit.
Whether it be legit scorers, shooters, wing defenders, bigs, ball handlers, or simply bodies, the Miami Heat have someone for every role, and even two or three when everyone is at full health. While the only possible explanation can be the great work of the Miami Heat’s scouting and development people, looking at the emergence of players like Derrick Jones Jr, Chris Silva, Kendrick Nunn, Duncan Robinson, and Tyler Herro, it is still a sight to behold.
The “why” and “how” aren’t the most important things here though, the fact that their outlook is what it currently is means the most. While we are surely fascinated and amazed at how Pat Riley and company continuously finds these guys, we aren’t complaining. It is still simply amazing at how the Miami Heat went from a lack of bodies to a ton of talented bodies, in a seeming blink of the eye.