The Miami Heat are overdue for an offensive upgrade.
The 2025 NBA offseason offers ample opportunity to find one, whether that's on the trade market or with the 20th overall pick collected in the Jimmy Butler trade. Perhaps the latter would qualify as wishful thinking, but that is only five spots back from where the Heat found All-Rookie second-teamer Kel'el Ware last summer.
But what if Miami doesn't have to look that far outside the organization for help? Wouldn't things be so much easier if this call for additional firepower could be answered in-house?
Again, you might need to guzzle down a few bottles of offseason optimism to really buy the concept, but Miami does happen to have a net-shredder on the roster. It's just that said net-shredder has had a tricky time getting on track since landing in South Beach ahead of the 2024 trade deadline.
A Terry Rozier bounce-back season would solve Heat's offensive woes
The 2024-25 campaign was, admittedly, a full-on disaster for Rozier. He opened the campaign as a starter for the Heat and closed it by falling out of coach Erik Spoelstra's rotation.
When Rozier was getting minutes, they weren't good enough to buy him additional floor time. His 10.6 points per game were the fourth-fewest of his 10-year career and his lowest output since 2018-19. His 49.7 true shooting percentage was the fourth-worst of his career, per Basketball-Reference. His minus-3.7 box plus/minus plummeted lower than it had been since his rookie year.
And yet, you don't need a way-back machine to find the last time Miami really believed in him. In Jan. 2024, the Heat thought enough of Rozier to send a 2027 first-round pick to the Charlotte Hornets to acquire them. And while the selection will carry lottery-protection in that talent grab, it will be unprotected in 2028 if it hasn't conveyed, per RealGM.
Miami clearly wasn't merely a fan of his game, it actually viewed him as a potential need-filler. For a team that has too often found itself starved for support scoring, Rozier promised to scratch that itch. Between the 2020-21 and 2023-24 seasons, his nightly contributions included 20.1 points and 4.8 assists. For context, those averages aren't too far behind the marks that just made Tyler Herro a first-time All-Star (23.9 and 5.5, respectively).
To be clear, this is not to suggest that Rozier is some kind of rising star. He's a 31-year-old coming off one of his least productive seasons ever. The draft pick tied to his acquisition has already cleared the sunk-cost threshold.
This should, however, remind folks that Rozier doesn't have to be a lost cause moving forward. While he'll have to re-earn his rotation role (and probably won't "earn" the $24.9 million he's owed, per Spotrac), he shouldn't be ruled out of the race when training camp opens just because his last season was a dud.
He's been a 20-plus point scorer in this league before—and a decently efficient one at that. He's typically put a wide gap between his average assists and turnovers. He has played, frankly, like someone capable of handling third- or fourth-option duties alongside Herro, Bam Adebayo and Andrew Wiggins.
The Heat can—and probably will—poke around for higher-upside options, but they also have to ask themselves if the potential payoff would justify the cost with a club that's not guaranteed to contend. Miami could—and perhaps should—also explore options of taking a step back now to climb higher in the future, but that would be a disappointing way to bail out of the prime years of Herro and Adebayo.
A rebound season from Rozier, unlikely as it may appear, could offer the simplest solution to all of this. The Heat could feel optimistic about making noise in the suddenly wide-open Eastern Conference without risking themselves to parting with valuable assets and not seeing a positive return on investment.
Heat fans might be over Rozier, but the coaching staff and front office shouldn't be so quick to judge. He still has a chance to help this club, just like it originally believed he could.