Former Miami Heat ‘big guard’, Justise Winslow, left the Miami Heat on what appeared to be shaky grounds from the outside. The plot has thickened.
The Miami Heat are a beast when it comes to scouting, development, and drafting. They miss, just like every other team around the league but in comparison to how much they hit, it’s not even fair.
While some thought for a while that 2015 first-round pick, Justise Winslow, would be one of those misses, he started to really come into his own last season as the Miami Heat’s pseudo point guard.
He actually had a really good year last season for the Heat. He put up career-high numbers in points per contest, assists per contest, and with his field goal percentage. Although his 37.5 percent three-point shooting percentage was just a little bit off his career-high of 38 percent, he more than doubled his attempts, so to practically not lose efficiency was a massive win for Winslow and the Miami Heat.
Then came this year. With the Heat making quite a few changes to their team, it was unknown what Justise’s role would be on this year’s team and especially since the fans, his teammates, he himself, and some of the people around the organization seemed to like him in that ‘big guard’ role.
It ultimately didn’t turn out in Winslow’s favor there, especially when you consider the fact that he only suited up in 11 games for the Miami Heat this season and then… he was traded.
The Miami Heat traded Justise Winslow to Memphis earlier this season. It, unfortunately, turns out that he still won’t suit up for them either.
With quite a bit of different chatter surrounding Justise’s status with the Heat, his displeasure with the handling of his injury, and how his trade was handled, we were all left to figure out what went wrong. Perhaps it was nothing, but perhaps there was more to the story.
Either way, Justise Winslow seemed happy in his new home and had recently just made it known that he was looking forward to facing off against his former team. Unfortunately, that won’t happen this season for the former Miami Heat player. Here is what we mean, in this tweet from Sharon Brown of The Memphis Flyer.
Per the @memgrizz @IAmJustise is out for the rest of the season due to a hip injury
— Shy (#1 Gigi)🏀🗣🎙 (@SharonShyBrown) July 21, 2020
What a bummer. Although some Miami Heat fans might be in “I told you so” mode, it is very unfortunate.
As a Miami Heat fan, you should still want the best for Justise as he did nothing but give his all while in Miami. While the breakup was a confounding and mysterious one, you have to appreciate his time with the ball club.
It was injury that kept him from playing a ton at all before being traded from the Miami Heat though, so there is something to keep an eye out for there, the actual severity of the injury or injuries he has. However, that does lead to this.
It wasn’t just the Heat training staff being brash or overbearing that kept him off the floor, regardless of what anyone thinks because the Memphis Grizzlies medical staff also feels something is off. All in all, let’s hope for speedy healing for the former Miami Heat first-rounder as seeing him the court playing is the only thing that matters at this point.