Ask almost anyone affiliated with the Miami Heat what’s most important for a successful season and they’ll point to the same thing.
Health.
Fortunately for the Heat, they’ll begin training camp mostly healthy, and the word out of media day is that they expect to be in better shape this season.
First, the official update. Everyone on Miami’s training camp roster is a full-go when workouts and scrimmages begin in the Bahamas on Oct. 1. Everyone except Josh Richardson, who will be a partial participant as he recovers from a shoulder injury.
That’s good news. The Heat entered last season already somewhat bruised. Key players barely got time off after playing into June in 2023. Tyler Herro was coming off a broken hand he sustained in the playoffs, Bam Adebayo was coming off battling Nikola Jovic in the 2023 Finals and a FIBA World Cup run, and Jimmy Butler missed the preseason.
The Heat are already healthier than they were this time last season.
No playoff team had more games missed to injury than the Heat last season, who set a franchise record with 35 different starting lineups and limped into the playoffs without Butler, Duncan Robinson and Terry Rozier and lost to the Boston Celtics in five mostly uncompetitive games.
Among other eye-popping stats, no Heat lineup logged more than 200 minutes together in the regular season (the champion Celtics had two linueps that played more than 300 minutes together) an d
No Heat lineup logged more than 181 minutes together last regular season. By comparison, the Celtics’s starting lineup played 623 minutes together.
Miami’s core three of Adebayo, Butler and Herro were limited to just 27 games together, and Rozier played just 10 with those three after arriving from Charlotte in a mid-season trade.
Pat Riley stressed availability during his end-of-season press conference, and Erik Spoelstra at media day said the staff did a deep dive into the organization’s health and conditioning methods over the summer.
“We think it will be better this year,” Spoelstra said. “Sometimes you have to breathe that into existence.”
Added Adebayo: “We just all want to be healthy and win ball games.”