Miami Heat mailbag: Don't count on Kel'el Ware starting as a rookie

Welcome to the Miami Heat mailbag! It’s the post with hot questions and even hotter answers. You send in questions, I answer them the best I can. Let’s jump in.

That would depend on two things: (1) Does one of Ware or Bam Adebayo prove they can make enough 3s that playing them together becomes viable on the offensive end? And (2) Do the Heat trade someone out of the backcourt within the next calendar year?

Let’s drill into both of those a bit more…

I have no doubt that, defensively, Ware and Adebayo can play together. Ware can drop as a 7-foot flyswatter while Adebayo wreaks havoc as a roaming free safety. That combination could be fierce. 

But playing two bigs requires one of them to be a very good 3-point shooter – and not just for a center, but, like, actually good.

I still question whether defenses will respect Ware from beyond the arc. Yes, he shot 42.5% from 3-point range last season at Indiana, but on low volume (17 of 40). To get a better grasp of Ware’s real shooting ability, we need a larger sample. If we take his two collegiate seasons and combine them with his summer league performance, Ware made 35 of 105 3-point attempts, or 33.3%.

That might be good for a center, but that’s a hair below what Josh Giddey (33.7%) shot from 3-point range last season. Giddey was famously left open by opposing defenses and became a liability during the Oklahoma City Thunder’s playoff run. He was traded this summer.

Defenses would treat Ware, Adebayo and Jimmy Butler the same, potentially shrinking the floor even more than it already is. This is why Erik Spoelstra has opted to play “small” over the years. With Butler and Adebayo as the team’s tentpoles, everybody else needs to be able to shoot at a high level. This is what makes Nikola Jovic, a 6-foot-10 forward who shot 40% from deep last season, so important.

Teams that play two bigs together have one who is a legitimately good 3-point shooter. The Timberwolves have Karl-Anthony Towns (career 40% 3-point shooter) and Naz Reid (37%) alongside Rudy Gobert. When the Celtics go big, they have Kristaps Porzingis (36%) and Al Horford (38%). If the Thunder decide to play big with Isaiah Hartenstein at center, they have Chet Holmgren (37%) to line up beside him.

As for Pelle Larsson, he showed a lot of useful traits in summer league and made the championship-winning shot, but it was summer league. There’s no reason to rush him into playing time. He still needs to become a more consistent outside shooter and work on picking up fewer fouls.

As for the depth chart, there are a lot of people in front of him. Tyler Herro, Duncan Robinson, Josh Richardson and Alec Burks all play the same position and will have their numbers called before Larsson hears his. Most of Larsson’s important moments will happen behind the scenes in practice or in the G League in Sioux Falls. 

Richardson and Burks will be free agents next summer and, if the Heat trade one of Herro or Robinson between now and the start of the 2025-26 season, then Larsson could get a promotion. But I also haven’t seen anything that suggests Larsson is a long-term NBA starter.

Dereck Lively II’s impact was hugely important to the Dallas Mavericks’ Finals run and he averaged 8.8 points, 6.9 rebounds and 1.4 blocks in 23.5 minutes per game in the regular season.

Including playoffs, he started 42 of 76 games as a rookie – so basically half. He didn’t start a single playoff game. My point is that Lively made his impact without being relied on as a starter. The Mavericks, a veteran team, didn’t feel compelled to thrust a rookie into the starting mix. 

Ware can do the same thing. As a rookie who still needs to add weight and fine-tune parts of his game, coming off the bench as part of an exciting second unit and playing some minutes with staggered starters seems like the more responsible approach.

The main thing I’m looking for with Bam is his offensive efficiency. 

Despite the upticks in his box-score stats, Bam’s 57.6% True Shooting percentage (which takes into account 2-pointers, 3-pointers and free throws) was the lowest since his rookie season.

Why?

Because an overwhelming amount of his shot attempts were long 2-pointers. Of all of Adebayo’s attempts, 61% came from the mid-range, which ranks in the 99th percentile, per Cleaning The Glass. He made just 46% of those shots, which ranked in the 68th percentile. In other words, he wasn’t a good enough mid-range shooter to take as many mid-range shots as he did, which negatively impacted his efficiency.

Bam needs better shot quality. Getting to the rim more would obviously help, and there were flashes that Terry Rozier could unlock another level of Miami’s pick-and-roll before his season-ending neck injury.

This is what interests me most when it comes to Bam’s 3-point shooting. If the goal is to space the floor, then you’ll be disappointed. It will take years of Bam making 3s at a high clip before defenses stop leaving him open on the perimeter. 

But if the goal is to improve his overall shot quality, then that could work. Swapping out a few long 2s for 3s is just good business, especially if more of those 3s are coming from the corner, where he’s shown (particularly with Team USA) that he can make them at a respectable clip.

As 13 becomes a bigger part of the Heat’s offense, his efficiency will need to improve, because that’s the only way to drag the Heat’s overall offensive efficiency out of the bottom 10 in the league.