The Miami Heat needed help in the middle and at the rim coming into the season. They drafted Precious Achiuwa out of Memphis and perhaps, thought that Chris Silva would come along further than he did.
Neither of those options wound up being suitable for that particular role for the Heat, as they still seemed to need a certain kind of mmph in their big man rotation. Somehow and miraculously, based on his performance for the Miami Heat thus far, Dewayne Dedmon was sitting there and waiting to be plucked.
You say “waiting to be plucked” as he’s come into the fold with the Heat ready to contribute and with great energy. He’s a spark plug and all over the place when he’s on the floor, in the best kind of way, of course.
“Best” is a very appropriate word when describing Dedmon, thus far, though. Not only does it describe that particular instance or aspect of his play, but it also might describe him, as a whole, at the moment.
The Miami Heat needed a big man to add to their rotation and they seem to have found a pretty good one on the scrap heap.
Since joining the Miami Heat, Dewayne Dedmon has been one of their best players. When you look at it from a statistical standpoint, he’s been one of the best players in the league across his six-game stint.
When you look at his numbers for the Heat so far, he’s averaging 6.8 points, 5.5 rebounds, and 0.7 blocks across only 13.3 minutes per game. While the points aren’t a massive figure, if you look at how he’s getting his buckets for the Miami Heat, they are the most effective kind.
He’s capitalizing on the easy looks. He’s making it so that even when Bam Adebayo isn’t in the game, you can’t leave the paint to crowd the shooters, while he’s also a threat as a roll man on the pick and roll.
The other stuff is where he shines though. The top rebounder in the league, Clint Capela, averages 14.7 boards per contest across 30.5 minutes per game.
If you extrapolate out to an equal amount of minutes for Dedmon and to be fair yet conservative, say you even double it to just 23.6 minutes per contest, the math and the logic says that Dedmon pulls down 11 rebounds per contest himself. That figure would put Dedmon in ninth place, alone, on the top rebounders per game list.
Running the same exercise for his blocks, if you doubled it, he would be at 1.4 per game. That number would put him in a tie for the 10th and 11th spot, where either would take one or the other.
The Miami Heat may have the most underrated grab of the year with Dewayne Dedmon.
If you look to points in his career where he has played around 25 minutes or so, those numbers actually tend to show a pretty close result as well and although perhaps not as high as seeing the totals doubled, he’s also never quite averaged twice the 13.3 minutes (26.6) per game that he plays for Miami either.
There is also another stat worth mentioning. That would be his current Player Efficiency Rating.
While there is a chance that this stat would start to take a hit as his minutes grew, there is a chance that it wouldn’t, a small one at the least bit. His PER right now is 26.5 across his six games with Miami.
Though it isn’t fair to only use his short sample size, for the sake of conversation and comparison, Steph Curry is currently ranked fifth there at 26.39 while the fourth ranked guy is Kawhi Leonard at 26.92. Again, you have to assume that Dedmon wouldn’t be ranked up there if he had played a whole season and as many minutes as those guys have, however, you have to take it for what it’s worth across his short stint in Miami thus far.
You don’t know what Dedmon will or would look like in extended minutes. There is no telling if he’ll get that opportunity, though if you were gambling, you probably choose “yes he does at some point”.
If he can be anywhere nearly as effective in say, 20 minutes or so per game, then you are really are taking about a Miami Heat difference maker. Thus far though and relative to the amount of time he’s seen the floor, he’s absolutely been one of the Miami Heat’s best players and one of the best players in the league across his six games played.