The Miami Heat added depth around buyout time, bringing in Kevin Love from the Cleveland Cavaliers and adding Cody Zeller off the free agent market. With both coming in to have a good impact for the Miami Heat, they immediately began to acclimate themselves to what the Miami Heat want to do on a night-to-night basis.
However, recently, Zeller would suffer a facial fracture that has kept him out for the last several games, since the Miami Heat lost to their in-state rivals, the Orlando Magic. Well, at the time, nobody could’ve known just how much they would miss Zeller.
With Omer Yurtseven returning around the same time as Zeller went down, it wasn’t thought to be that big of a loss, actually providing a convenient opportunity for the Miami Heat to insert Yurtseven into those minutes that had been occupied by Zeller.
The Miami Heat split a back-to-back on Saturday and Sunday but there was, at least, one constant. Coach Spo went away from Omer Yurtseven later in both.
However, in the last few games, Coach Spoelstra has chosen to go a different direction after giving Yurtseven the early opportunities. For example, if you take their recent game against the Chicago Bulls on Saturday night, Haywood Highsmith would receive the minutes at the backup center spot in favor of Yurtseven in the later part of the game.
If you move forward just one day to the Detroit Pistons game at Little Caesars Arena, Yurtseven would receive the early minutes at the backup spot, while he would surrender minutes to Love and Highsmith as the game moved forward. It’s a three-layered question at this point though.
The first one is this. Is Yurtseven fully recovered from the injury that kept him out so long before making his recent return?
Secondly, if he is fully healthy, what does the lack of ability to play him at this moment mean, especially without the backup center they’ve been going with for the last several games in Zeller? And lastly, in accordance with the previous two questions, what would it all mean for his future with the Miami Heat?
While all of these are still just what they are—questions, it’s a situation worth monitoring, as the inability to play him late in the last two games when his opportunity should’ve been at its maximum isn’t a very good sign at all.