1. The Heat will trade for Damian Lillard
Ah, the most crushing blowout of possibly any Heat prediction of all time. Damian Lillard’s trade request to be sent from the Portland Trail Blazers to specifically the Miami Heat at the beginning of the summer took months to play out.
After all the time wasted with little to no progress in negotiations between the Blazers and Heat for the entire duration of the offseason, he was eventually dealt to the rival Milwaukee Bucks. Lillard wasn’t finally dealt until a few weeks before the start of the season, but his repping the “Heat Culture” was a prediction that almost every single basketball fan thought would happen.
Over the years, when a superstar requests out from a team and gives a list of trade destinations they usually always will end up on one of those squads just because of the respect for their reputation. Lillard made it easy, maybe even too easy, by being firm on Miami and Miami only. As he is approaching his mid-30s, Lillard isn’t getting any younger. From being a loyal franchise player in Portland for over a decade and being the only reason they were ever even considered relevant, it was more than fair to assume the Blazers would accommodate Lillard on his request.
But Joe Cronin, the Blazers general manager, thought otherwise. The fact that the assets Miami was reportedly dangling in those trade offers wound up being significantly better than anything they got instead makes it much more painful.
It is only fair to assume that a Jimmy Butler/Bam Adebayo/Lillard trio would have immediately become one of the best in the league, but Cronin sabotaged that opportunity.