3 Surprising lessons the Heat can take from its summer league title run

At the risk of making too much out of a Las Vegas Summer League championship run that has proven to have zero correlation to real NBA basketball games… let’s make too much out of the Las Vegas Summer League championship run!

Jokes aside, the Heat are unique in that they tend to string a throughline between their NBA club and developmental outfits. What the NBA team runs is often similar to what the Skyforce run in Sioux Falls and what the summer league team runs in Las Vegas. Or at least similar in principle.

Also unique to this particular summer league team: There were at least five players who participated in Las Vegas who figure to be on the Heat’s roster next season. First-round pick Kel’el Ware, second-round pick Pelle Larsson, two-way contract players Keshad Johnson and Josh Christopher, and last year’s first-round pick Jaime Jaquez Jr., who played in two summer league games.

So while success in summer league doesn’t mean anything in terms of predicting success in the regular season, there is at least a few lessons the organization can take away from its run.

1. Unleash Kel’el Ware as a rim protector

Weeks after being selected with the 15th pick in the draft, Ware made his summer league debut with a five-block performance in a blowout loss to the Warriors in San Francisco.

The block numbers were impressive, but the Heat were out-scored by 12 points in Ware’s 24 minutes. He was too jumpy and was often out of position to defend the rim. If he didn’t get a block, he was usually getting scored on.

Coaches reined him in. They told him not to worry about posting huge block numbers – the swats will come. Worry about protecting the rim. That meant getting into a stance, corralling opposing ball-handlers entering the paint, and not making it easy for them to get by with a simple pump fake.

Ware finished summer league with an average of 1.8 blocks per game. That’s a lot for the Heat – who didn’t have a single player average one block last season – but far from Hassan Whiteside-style box-score stuffing. 

Ware got better at protecting the paint as summer league went on. By the championship game, opponents were veering away from him. He anchored Miami’s title defense despite recording just one block in the game.

The 20-year-old Ware still needs to get better at doing his homework on defensive possessions early so that he isn’t behind the play. He’ll have to get more physical. He’s far from perfect. But he’s also 7 feet tall with a 7-foot-4 wingspan. The Heat would be wise to tap into that early after ranking 23rd in opponent shooting percentage at the rim last season, per Cleaning the Glass.