If the Miami Heat are serious about making a meaningful playoff run again anytime soon, they need to fill a void that’s now existed for a few years.
And yes, we are talking about the point guard spot.
There is no overstating the importance of finding the one player capable of driving your entire offense. The 2025 NBA Finals showdown between the Oklahoma City Thunder and Indiana Pacers is living, breathing, inarguable proof. Both teams found their floor generals, and then proceeded to flesh out the bones of a viable championship contender.
Miami is now tasked with doing the same. It has long been tasked with doing the same. Yet, years later, it isn’t any closer to finding a solution.
The Heat do not have their floor general of the future on the roster
Nobody currently on the roster comes close to fitting this bill.
Davion Mitchell is essentially a defense-first off-guard. He showed some on-ball pizazz with the Heat, but the sample size isn’t large enough to consider it a new normal, and then pay him accordingly in restricted free agency.
Terry Rozier might not be an NBA player anymore. Pelle Larsson isn’t that dude. Tyler Herro comes closest, and has made legitimate playmaking strides. But he’s not wired to be both the primary table-setter and scorer.
Even if we recognize that the offensive engine doesn’t need to be a point guard, Miami still doesn’t have the answer. Bam Adebayo falls under the Tyler Herro umbrella, an incredibly useful player not good enough to be the nerve center of an entire system.
The numbers in recent years bear this out. The Heat just finished inside the bottom 10 of offensive efficiency for a third consecutive season, and their performance has generally cratered without the since-traded Jimmy Butler.
Not even minutes with both Adebayo and Herro have delivered the required results. Look at how the offense has fared in recent years when they play without Butler, according to Cleaning The Glass:
- 2024-25: 112.3 points per 100 possessions (37th percentile)
- 2023-24: 112.2 points per 100 possessions (33rd percentile)
- 2022-23: 115.4 points per 100 possessions (56th percentile)
These returns fluctuate from bad to barely average. That’s not going to get you anywhere special—particularly when you don’t have Prime Butler minutes to buoy other lineups.
Can Miami find a point of the future this offseason?
Fixing this issue may not be in the cards this offseason. The Heat will not have the bigger mid-level exception of $14.1 million available in free agency if they bring back Duncan Robinson (partially guaranteed contract) and Terry Rozier (almost entirely guaranteed contract), and then re-sign Mitchell. At this rate, Miami may actually need to shed salary just to duck the luxury tax.
Drafting a floor general who’s ready to contribute is probably out of the question, too. The Heat won’t be on the clock until No. 20, and learning curves for a first-year playmaker tends to be pretty steep.
That leaves the trade route. Miami is no stranger to this, and it can dangle up to three first-round picks in any deal. But the Heat better be sure they’re landing the right target, because depleting their tradeable firsts would make this the last big move they can strike as a buyer.
And this presumes they even have enough to outbid other suitors for to-be-determined names. They may not have the best package if Ja Morant, Trae Young, LaMelo Ball or somebody else becomes available. There’s also no guarantee the Heat will have a strong enough supporting cast in place for one of those names to vault them back into contention.
Miami may find slogging through a gap year makes the most sense. The team controls its own first-round pick in 2026, when it can also have over $30 million in cap space. Taking a deliberate step back this year, and then gearing up for an immediate turnaround in 2026-27 might be the smartest move.
Do the Heat have the stomach to wait that long? If their track record is any indication, probably not. But their point guard situation is dire enough that everything needs to be on the table.