Miami Heat Roundtable On Trading Into Round 1 Of NBA Draft: Kenneth’s Take
The Miami Heat aren’t in the business of making moot or equivalent moves, at least, not if they can help it. With that, you also have to take into account Pat Riley’s history of wanting veterans over draft picks.
Kenneth’s Take (@K_Said_Que)
Juan said it best here. Why would you want to trade back into a draft, to land a young talented guy, when you would, likely, be moving a young talented guy to do so?
While there are those that think that this draft has the potential to be special, that isn’t quite the opinion on this side. Perhaps it could be one of those special drafts, as far as the depth or spreader out amount of quality talent that manages to have long and lengthy NBA careers but as far as the top-end talent stands, Cade Cunningham is in a class of his own.
The next three players behind him, Evan Mobley, Jalen Green, and Jalen Suggs, are nice little players, however, they aren’t the franchise-changers that Cunningham could be. The value isn’t there to make a move that would require you to, surely, relinquish assets and assets that you don’t currently hold a lot of.
Precious Achiuwa still has a ton of developing to do, the most of it actually and appears to be doing so with Team Nigeria, so he’s definitely worth holding on to. Tyler Herro is already, at worst, a very good rotational guy that can get you buckets when you need them.
So, being that one or both of those guys are the likely moved pieces, what would you get in this draft that would help you now more than they could? The answer is probably nothing… outside of Cunningham… with a slight slight maybe to Mobley or Suggs.
Outside of Cunningham, which of the following three players have ceilings that seem as if they may be that much more explosively high than either Achiuwa or Herro? Can you rightfully say that about any of them?
That is the strength of this draft, is the point, so whatever the Heat might be able to nab with a mid-first won’t be worth the hassle of doing the deal. That’s why I think they should totally stay out of it.
It’ll all be interesting to see play out and it isn’t that far off. The NBA Draft happens on July 29th and there will surely be fireworks.