Miami Heat Minutes Battle: Dewayne Dedmon vs. Omer Yurtseven

When Dedmon was signed by Miami last season, the eight-year veteran big man immediately embraced his role and helped strengthen the team’s defensive core.

Dewayne Dedmon

This season, Dedmon has continued to key into his role, while also correcting an interesting aspect of his game. The seven-footer is having the best shooting year of his career—across the board.

With his shooting percentage from behind the arc sitting at 52 percent—a career-high—Dedmon can help space the floor for Jimmy Butler, Kyle Lowry, and of course, Tyler Herro. This allows them to be able to better penetrate the paint and make star-type plays.

Dedmon has been his usual tough and physical self everywhere else. He makes a strong case, but let’s look at the other guy.

Omer Yurtseven

This 23-year-old Turkish native has shown flashes of greatness, at points, during his rookie campaign. With season averages of 6.1 points and six rebounds per game, nearly the same as Dedmon (6.6 points and 6.1 rebounds), the question has, again, come up if Yurtseven should begin to eat into Dedmon’s minutes.

During a 13-game stretch early in the season, the rookie averaged a double-double of 12 points and 13 rebounds per game—while shooting over 50 percent from the field. Yet, since his career-high 22 point outing versus Philadelphia over a month ago, the big man has almost literally fallen completely out of the rotation.

Since that January 15th matchup with Philly, the big man has logged only 40 minutes across 15 games, with nearly half of those coming in Tuesday’s loss against Dallas. So, with all this information to consider, who should be the guy?