The fact that the Miami Heat continue to have more questions than answers about the long-term future of their roster is something that fans should no longer stand for. If the team is not careful, the once-proud franchise is going to quickly spiral into one of the most irrelevant ones in the Eastern Conference.
There was once a time when any Heat fan would be more than willing to blindly trust the front office. Unfortunately, I'm not sure we're living in that timeline anymore. Especially with the questionable moves that the Heat has made recently, fans should be demanding more answers at this point.
Answers that, quite frankly, they're simply not getting at the moment.
The biggest question the Heat need to answer
The biggest of which revolves around what players the front office is building around. Is it just Bam Adebayo as the centerpiece? Where does Tyler Herro factor into that, if at all? I suppose we should get our answer to that soon, if the Heat ends up signing him to a contract extension. But that's still not 100 percent clear at this point.
Even beyond the questions surrounding Herro and Bam, there's little certainty with the rest of the roster.
The Heat has some intriguing young pieces, but there's little, if any, clarity on any one of them. Even with Nikola Jovic, who was recently signed to a rookie-scale extension, there is no concrete grasp of what his future is going to look like with the Heat.
The hope is that he does make that next jump in his development, and I suppose he's certainly off to a good start in preseason, but he still has much proving to do if he wants to live up to his contract.
The Heat are in limbo
At this point, the Heat is pretty much stuck in mediocrity with the way their roster stands. Aside from maybe Bam and possibly Herro, the Heat doesn't have any other clear-cut building blocks. Even with Bam and Herro, we know what ceiling that foundational duo has, and it's not one that can lead this team back into the championship picture.
Is that enough? Should that be enough for the fans?
These are the questions that need to be answered in what is being labeled as a "gap year." Sometimes, many believe that a "gap" year is just waiting out the season for the next opportunity to make a big move.
No, it's not. It's using this year to figure out what you have or don't have on the roster. Can the fans trust that's exactly what the front office is going to do?